Gordon now
|
Born in Chingford (Essex) in 1925, Gordon Mumford
lived in a farmhouse in Epping Forest. He attended St. Mary’s Primary
School and St. Egbert's College in Chingford.
He was fourteen when WW II started in September 1939. His education came to an abrupt end because schools in the London area were evacuated to the
country, and his education came to an abrupt end. Gordon was an air cadet, and the RAF arranged for the cadets to serve on various airfields. His unit was taken to North Weald every day to load machine guns. The threat of attack by enemy aircraft in early 1940 put a stop to that
His father found him a "safe" job as an apprentice at a small arms factory in Enfield. Gordon quit within three months, when he found a position as an office boy in nearby London. |
and then
|
He was too young to join the armed forces,
but he knew that the Merchant Navy took apprentices as young as fifteen. During his lunch break, he visited the shipping offices, looking for an
opening as an apprentice cadet
or deck officer. When he got papers from
Andrew Weir & Company, his mother refused to sign. She did agree, however to to let him train as a marine radio officer. In September 1941, he entered the
Holloway Radio College in London to study for the Special Radio Operator Certificate.
Wartime Merchant Navy
Shortly after he qualified, his father died unexpectedly in August, and his employer helped Gordon get a position with Siemens. Within a few weeks he was at sea as a junior Radio Officer. During the war, he
served in the major war theatres. His first ship, the Soborg was a collier, and sailed Iceland to bunker
ships for the Murmansk convoys. His next ship, Scottish Heather, was an toiler. On December 27, the ship was
torpedoed whilst refueling an escort ship the North Atlantic,
and the crew took to the lifeboats. He served eighteen months on the Empire Harmony, a
heavy duty lift ship that unloaded war materiel in the bombed-out docks
in the Mediterranean and North Africa. He was transferred to the Empire Path in November 1944. On the return voyage, the ship was sunk in the Scheldt Estuary by a mine on Christmas Eve.
At nineteen he was promoted to Chief Radio Officer on the MV Luling, another tanker, taking troops to the beachhead landings in the Pacific. In the clean-up operations after the Japanese surrendered, the Luling was a supply ship to minesweepers. The ship was handed over to the Chinese nationalists as part of the Marshall Plan. Repatriated to England at the end of 1946, he made two voyages on the Adolph S. Ochs,
to New Brunswick and to Argentina, before he left the sea in September 1947. |
African Adventures
Like
many other young men returning home at the end of the Second World War,
Gordon missed the sense of excitement and danger. Restless and unable
to settle down, he joined the Colonial Service in 1949. He was employed as an Assistant Engineer in field radio communications
for the East Africa Posts & Telecommunications Administration, headquartered in Kenya. Working
in the remote deserts of the NFD (Northern Frontier District), he installed
and maintained radio networks. In 1951 he transferred to a new VHF telecommunications project, and was involved in
the field survey safaris and construction of the network. Living
under canvas for months at a time, life on safari ranged from
the heat of remote deserts, to the cold of East Africa’s highest
mountains, and the rains and heat of the game plains.
The VHF radio telecommunications project brought modern long distance telecommunications worldwide in the 1950s. This technology was the basis for broadband and other technologies used today. The prototpe was first installed in Kenya.
Teaching Experience
In 1958, Gordon migrated to Canada and studied at the University
of Western Ontario, the University of Toronto (OCE), and Mohawk College
(Hamilton, Ontario). He qualified as an electronics instructor, and
returned to Africa where he taught both students and trained instructors. He
worked on various international aid projects (including British aid,
CIDA, and UNESCO) in Kenya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and
Indonesia. During his time abroad, Gordon was actively involved in tennis,
and served on many committees, including tennis committees
in Kenya and Nigeria. In Kenya, he was a member of the KLTA, and organized many national and international events, as well as school events. He was also involved in amateur radio, on radio control
points for motor rallies and the world-renowned East African Safari, the Aquarist Society, and electronics organizations.
When he and his family returned
to Canada in 1980, they settled in British Columbia's Lower Mainland.
In 1981, Gordon completed an oversea contract and joined the Pacific Region offices of Communications Canada
in Vancouver. He worked in radio communications and served
as the federal emergency planning liaison officer.
|
