Name: Rank: Service No: Service: Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Enlistment: Place of Enlistment: Address at Enlistment: Age at Enlistment: Height: Complexion: Eye Colour: Hair Colour: Marital Status: Trade: Religion: Next of Kin: Date of Death: Age at Death: Cemetery: Reference:

Orren Willard Carey

Orren Willard Carey Corporal R/154799 Royal Canadian Air Force August 26, 1921 Avonport, Kings Co., Nova Scotia April 23, 1942 Moncton, New Brunswick Avonport, NS 20 5 feet, 3 ½ inches Medium Blue Light Brown Single Bricklayer, mason Presbyterian Cora Mae Carey (Mother) Avonport, NS October 30, 1944 23 Willowbank Cemetery, Wolfville, NS Plot 231 Listed on the WWII Memorial in Wolfville, NS Commemorated on page 268 of the Second World War Book of Remembrance Displayed in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower in Ottawa on June 10 Orren was the son of Everett John Carey and Cora Mae (Hurlburt) Carey (b. Yarmouth, NS) of Avonport, NS. His parents were married October 8, 1919. Orren was the brother of Mauretia Mona, Edith Helen, and Earl Embert Carey. Private Earl Carey (1925-1986) also service during WWII. (Service No. J/602834). At the time of Orren’s death, Earl was completing his basic training at Camp 60, Yarmouth, NS. He went to school in Avonport and attended Wolfville High from 1936-1938. Orren worked as a mason with his father from 1938-1939 and continued work as a mason for L.E. Shaw in Halifax from 1939-1941, leaving that work to join the RCAF. He enjoyed baseball, skating and hunting. No. 8 Air Observer School RAF was a flight training unit of the Royal Air Force, flying Avro Ansons in Canada. No. 8 AOS was based in Ancienne Lorette, Quebec (just West of Quebec City). Notes from his assessment indicate Orren, “was employed as an Air Signals Instructor, in which capacity he proved very reliable”. Orren was killed as a result of air crash on a night navigation training flight. The aircraft crashed on the side of a mountain nine miles North of Megantic, Quebec (Mount Sainte-Cecile de Frontenac) during air navigation exercises at 0015 hrs on October 30, 1944. The weather had been good over most of the route, but in the particular area where the accident occurred, poor conditions with low clouds had developed. In a letter to his mother on November 8, 1944, Wing Commander C. J. H. Holms wrote, "Your boy was very efficient and happy in his work and was a smart, keen, good all-round airman. He was well liked and will be sadly missed by all. The Air Force can ill afford to lose men of his calibre." Two years after Orren’s death, his brother Earl had a son in 1946, and named him Orren Willard.

Sources Veterans Affairs Canada Greenwood Military Aviation Museum

Orren was days away from graduating and being posted as an instructor in Charlottetown, PEI in October of 1944. As a final act of kindness, he had agreed to fly in the stead of a friend who had had a date on the fateful night. Orren’s body was accompanied home by the friend who had originally been scheduled to fly that night. Orren Willard Carey’s funeral took place at his home in Avonport, NS, and he rests in the Willowbank Cemetery, Wolfville, NS.