Smith Family Memorabilia

George Smith is now a successful bullion dealer in Canada, but he started life in much more humble circumstances. George was born on 19th October 1945 in Palmer Street in the run-down Windmill Hills district of Gateshead. He was the third child of George Edward Smith and French-born Antoinette Smith, known to everyone as Nina - the elder siblings were Jeffrey and Jacqueline. Tragically, none of the children would ever know their father as he was killed on active service in Germany in April 1945, six months before George was born, when Jeffrey was just 2 years old and Jacqueline 6 months.

George Edward had been a professional soldier with the Durham Light Infantry since 1930 when he was only 15, and he'd served all over the world including China, Sudan and Egypt. It was while he was serving in Egypt in 1941 that George Edward met and married Antoinette Marie Pirally (Nina) whose late father had been with the French Consulate in Port Said. Later, with his pregnant wife and children in Gateshead, George was with his battalion in Germany and was part of the final dash towards Berlin. On April 3rd, as the 9th DLI and the Inniskillings in Kangaroo armoured carriers approached the town of Ibbenburen along the main road, they came under heavy fire from numerous small parties of snipers who were concealed around the area. A lot of brave men were lost that day, including 29-year-old George Edward Smith.

The war in Europe was over just a month later, and Churchill declared that May 8th would be VE Day, a day of celebration for Victory in Europe. Among those celebrating was Nina Smith, but for poor Nina, widowed with two children and a third on the way, it was a celebration marred by heartache. She had to face the future without the man she loved.

Nina and the children remained at Palmer Street, Gateshead and they were joined by Nina's mother, Therese, in 1947. Therese died in 1950 and in the same year Nina married gas fitter, Stan. The family then moved to Newcastle, first to Westmoreland Road and then to 4 Lily Avenue, Jesmond. Nina had 3 children to her second husband - Wanda in 1950, Valerie in 1952 and Ginnette in 1954. Stan emigrated to Canada in 1956 and a year later, on 7th October 1957, Nina and her 6 children left Southampton on the M.V. Seven Seas to join him.

The photographs and documents below have been collected by George in Canada and illustrate his own time in England as well as the lives of family members, especially his father, George Edward, and his grandfather, Edward, who served in the Durham Light Infantry in World War I where he was both wounded and gassed. What a range of emotion is shown here! Everything from the joys of childhood - the parties and playing on the beach and in the snow - to the heartbreaking loss of a loving husband and father in war and the death of a child. Most poignant perhaps is the photograph of VE-day celebrations on Windmill Hills with recently widowed Nina Smith in the foreground, one child by her side, another in her arms and a third on the way.

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Image No. 001