Career
The twenty-year-old British Commonwealth Air Training Program student navigator, who had no pilot training or experience, took over the controls of an Avro Anson trainer of the Number.4 Air Observer School in London, Ontario when the pilot fainted and the plane lurched into a dive. He managed to level the plane for long enough for three crew members to bail out before the plane crashed into Lake Erie, killing him instantly. In 1949, the local school board named a new elementary school to honour his memory.
The medal was purchased by the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa in February 1988.