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Caledon woman gets back her ID card, after 17 years

November 5, 2014   ·   0 Comments

A bank is known as a place for keeping money safe, but identification cards?

Caledon’s Doris Porter had a card that was issued to her in June 1943, during the Second World War, when she was serving in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, which she had joined early in July the previous year.

“I fought the whole war with a typewriter,” she said, commenting she started her service in Toronto, then was sent to Kemptville, then spent 20 months in Saint John, New Brunswick before being sent over the England for a year.

The card went missing about 17 years ago.

Ms. Porter said she was in the CIBC branch at the corner of King and Queen Streets in Bolton recently to bring an account that hadn’t seen any recent action up to date. It took a couple of minutes to take care of the matter, so she casually chatted with the teller, happening to mention her wartime service. The teller asked her to wait, because she had something to show her.

What she returned with was the missing ID card.

“I was so shocked when she set it down in front of me,” Ms. Porter said.

Anna Staniscia, back office support assistant at the CIBC branch, said she found the card some 17 years ago during a renovation at the bank. A complication was that the card was issued in Ms. Porter’s maiden name, which was Evans, meaning they couldn’t trace it.

“It just felt bad to throw away an ID from a World War II soldier,” she said, adding when Porter mentioned her service, it tugged at her memory that she might recognize the picture on the card. “She looked at it and said, ‘That’s me.’”

“I’m determined,” Ms. Staniscia declared, adding that she took some ribbing for keeping the card all these years. “I was told a couple of times to chuck it.”

Ms. Porter says she evidently left a small plastic pouch with some papers in it at the branch, and the card was tucked in. It seems they eventually got rid of the papers, but kept the card.

“I was very excited,” she said, adding that Ms. Staniscia was pretty pleased too. “She was thrilled to pieces.”

Ms. Porter said her war service saw her working in personnel selection, which she said is what human resources was known as in those days.

She recalled helping to deal with the fact that New Brunswick did not have mandatory education until 1937, so a lot of the young men signing up for the war couldn’t read or write. That meant training sessions had to be set up to teach them the basics. She was involved a lot with that, and said it was largely successful.

“I enjoyed being in the army,” she said. “It was better than being at home on the farm.”

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