Elida Peers | Contributed
Writing this column brings interesting responses. Last week we received a message from Newfoundland. It turns out Dr. Brent Thistle had been seeking information on Dr. William J. McCauley and found his name in a column written here some time ago.
Dr. McCauley was the dentist whose tiny cabin was situated on the highway’s edge below Sooke Elementary in one of the old “tent lots.”
His dental practice opened in 1946, right after the Second World War.
When Dr. Thistle called us from Newfoundland, he was gathering information on the officers in the photo shown, wanting to pay tribute, and we quote his words, “these young men so gallantly served our Nation, and their debt can never be repaid.”
The photo was taken in Moose Jaw around 1940. On the left is Ralph Farmer, a pilot officer in the RAF, who was related to Dr. Thistle, in the centre is Dr. McCauley, and at right, Dr. Oatway, who went on to practice dentistry in Red Deer. The two dentists would have been in the Army Dental Corps. We referenced the plane with our pilot friend Lorne Christensen, who explained it was a Harvard trainer used at an advanced level of pilot training.
When Dr. McCauley arrived with his wife Ethel, son Ron and daughter Joan, the family built a home in Saseenos. They took a prominent part in the community’s social life, with Dr. McCauley becoming one of the initiators of the local Masonic Lodge.
One of the characteristics of his office that little girls remember was that after a dental session was completed, he would pull out a tray of little rings and trinkets for them to choose a reward.
Joan McCauley became a classmate at the newly established Milne’s Landing High School. Readers of this space may recall the name of Doug MacFarlane, with an extensive history as a tugboat man who passed away in 2019 at the age of 92. In the late 1940s, he was a well-known young man about town, and before long, Doug MacFarlane was romancing Joan McCauley.
The outdoors-inclined young couple hiked together, boated together, and were generally inseparable. Somehow, the two did not marry. Joan McCauley married, raised a family in Houston, Texas, and Doug McFarlane raised a family locally. In recent years Joan made several trips to Sooke, and it seems that their love had never wavered, staying with them until the end of their lives.
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Elida Peers is the historian of the Sooke Region Museum. Email historian@sookeregionmuseum.com.
editor@sookenewsmirror.com
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