A little pre-history.....

my father had a very interesting childhood compared to most, not necessarily a great one.. it was fraught with hardships.... he was born in Burma, of a English military chemist and a Burmese woman.. one of several siblings and the middle child... their father died while they were young.. Grandma Hacket and the children moved back to the United Kingdom and lived in Scotland, where conditions were difficult at best..  for his post education he was enrolled in Navel College... (back row, 4th from the right) and was stationed on the H.M.S. Barham

the exact year of this photo i'm not sure of, but would have been in the late 1900 or early 1920's...

the following picture is dated 1920 and includes King George VI who was in a play on 'a' ship (since i don't know if he was on the Barham or not... my father loved to show this photo to anyone that was willing to look at his photo album...

he must have had a small camera at the time because he had a picture of the final days of the  German Battlecruiser SMS Hindenburg 

unfortunately he never wrote what ships these are...

he travelled the world, was the only one on his ship to get malaria, was a champion boxer and had a woman in every port...

after he and his brother got out of the military, in the middle 1920's  Grandma Hacket and her children immigrated to Canada, to the west coast where they went into the wilderness of Knight Inlet and decided to live...

my father got a boat and went fishing to make a living.. and thats where he met my mother...
she was a young girl who was working in a fish camp where he came to sell his fish....i'm not sure how the story goes but they got married in her home town of Courtenay and moved upcoast to settle.......

i wish i had more pictures of this part of the story but in his senior years he threw out hundreds of photos.... these are some of the very few that remain...

more to follow..... (hope i'm not boring you)