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As the steamer drew away from the pierhead at Liverpool I, like the other two hundred school-children on board, tried to wave goodbye to my family. It was September 1940 and we were on our way to Canada as evacuees. The twin towers of the Royal Liver Building rapidly faded away and by next morning we were somewhere off the coast of Ireland, surrounded by dozens of ships in convoy, mostly cargo vessels escorted by fussily busy destroyers. I am not sure what we all did for the next two weeks. Apart from some attempt at school lessons, some physical activity and generally larking about, we did have regular lifeboat drill and were often disturbed by the "whoop whoop" of the naval sirens, but that apart, nothing memorable occurred and certainly we were never attacked by submarines. I somehow think, in retrospect, that a great deal did happen during those two weeks but I seem to have a major "memory block" about the whole voyage - possibly a subconscious attempt to block out something which upset me deeply, namely being sent away from home, my mother whom I adored, as well as the rest of my family and my friends at school. After all, I was not really enthusiastic about being sent to Canada for an unknown period of time, knowing that I might never see my mother again if she was killed in an air raid. Little did we know, as we reached the coast of Canada, that ours would be the last boat-load of evacuees from England, as the very next convoy was attacked by U-boats and one of the passenger boats was sunk, causing the death of many unfortunate children on board.

We docked at Halifax, alongside the Queen Mary - painted grey and turned into a troop ship; and we could see the Canadian soldiers embarking for England to help defend our country at that very crucial period of the war. All the children were then put on what seemed to me to be an enormously long train, equipped with the most luxurious-looking sleeping accommodation, the likes of which I certainly had never seen before.

I was just fourteen, and to me this was simply a great adventure. About twenty four hours later, in the early evening, we were told we were arriving in Montreal - and indeed, as I looked out of the train window there was the floodlit cross standing out clearly on the to Mount Royal.

I was met by my cousin Ralph Sachs and his wife Bella, who were to be my hosts for the next three years. Ralph was a distant cousin of my grandfather Cohen. They had emigrated to Montreal from Latvia in 1923, but stayed with my grandparents in Liverpool for four months en route before going on to Canada, where he became the owner of an abattoir. They took me to a car, which seemed enormous - as I suppose it was, being a very large Buick - and we drove through the well-lit streets of Montreal: a tremendous change after the blackout at home. When we reached their apartment in Outremont, a wealthy suburb of Montreal, I met various members of the family, and regaled them with stories of Liverpool in the blackout, with air raids every night and ourselves trying to sleep under the stairs, as at that time we did not have any Morrison or Anderson shelters. I also told them that how two nights before I had sailed for Canada I had had to have a medical certificate of health. My aunt Lela and I had gone to see a GP, but we then had to spend two hours under a table as a bombing raid was taking place. After the all-clear was sounded we continued our journey home by bus.

While I was in Canada I continued my interests in Scouting. I won lots of badges and eventually became a King's Scout there (photograph 6). Eighteen months after my arrival in Canada my relatives, particularly Ralph's wife, said that they were not prepared to keep me in Montreal any longer. The reasons were mainly that I was too difficult to cope with and it was too expensive (although I doubt very much the latter, as they were certainly not short of money).

I have no doubt that there was a certain degree of truth in my being a difficult child, as certainly I was very argumentative. I was probably not the easiest person to get on with and was always saying how much better England was than Canada. In fact they actually wanted to send me back to England, but it was 1942 and crossing the Atlantic then would have been very difficult and highly dangerous, even assuming that one could get a passage.

My mother wrote to me saying that I must stay in Montreal at least until I finished my schooling and obtained the equivalent of the School Certificate so I could then in due course attempt to enter university back home.

I was fifteen and a half and was not entirely sure what to do. Fortunately two people came to my rescue - one was our local Rabbi, Mr Bender (at that time I was still very religious, attended the synagogue regularly every Saturday, and always fasted on Yom Kippur), and the other was my Scout Master Max Horowitz: a wonderful man, who sadly died at a very young age of cancer a few years later. Between them, they arranged for my school to provide me with free education. They talked to Ralph's brother and sister in Montreal, both of whom were really quite well off. They eventually agreed to provide me with an allowance to pay for my accommodation. This was in my Scout Master's flat, where he lived with his mother. Every Sunday I had to take a street car to Westmount, where Ralph's brother and sister lived and which was a wealthy suburb of Montreal, to collect the money, which somehow made me feel like a pauper living off charity.

Like many schoolchildren in Montreal I then took a Saturday job to make some pocket money. In my case this consisted of collecting money for a telegraph company. People sent telegrams, which they then paid for at a later date, the money being collected by young schoolboys - and I became one of these. I would walk many miles every Saturday, and certainly saw a lot of the city. On one occasion disaster struck when I lost my wallet containing the day's collection of $60 (about £40), which of course for me was a lot of money. This was a terrible blow as I could not pay it back and would have had to take an evening job to help do so. Fortunately an advert in the evening papers brought an immediate response, as someone had found the wallet and returned it to me.

Every Friday night I was invited my Rabbi for the ceremonial pre-sabbath meal, which nearly always included gefilte fish (round balls of minced fish, with onions and egg, fried or boiled and served cold).

The winter in Montreal was always extremely cold, with temperatures dropping to -30oF. I remember once watching firemen trying to tackle a blaze in an apartment building. The water froze as it came out of the hoses and one fireman had to be rescued because he had frozen to his ladder. On a lighter note, I remember suffering from frostbite once while ice-skating, but it was not my hands or feet that were affected - I was wearing very thin trousers and amazingly my penis started to freeze. The real trouble started when it began to thaw - the pain was excruciating and not easily forgotten!

School in Montreal was very enjoyable. I learnt to play baseball, and indeed even took up ice hockey. Also, at the request of one of the maths teacher, Mr Deathe who was English by birth, I helped teach my fellow students how to play soccer, a much easier game than American football! Scouting provided a lot of relaxation, particularly when we joined with the Girl Guides. I well remember one outing which took place on the side of Mont Royale. We were sent off in couples (a Boy Scout and a Girl Guide!) to hide in the bushes and then had to try to approach the Scout and Guide leaders without being seen. This seemed far too good an opportunity to miss, so we both disappeared for the next two hours to discover that embracing in the thick woodland was far more enjoyable than playing at Scouts and Guides.

In the summer of 1943 I knew I had to try and get home to England as soon as possible. My mother had re-married a year previously. She and her new husband, Harry Steele, continued to live in our family home in Langdale Road in Liverpool, but I gathered from her letters that she was probably quite seriously ill. My relatives in Montreal refused to pay for my fare home, so I took a daily job with the telegraph-collecting company to pay for it, and within two months had earned enough money to buy a ticket. It was however quite difficult to get a passage as the U-boat war in the Atlantic was in full force. Passenger ships were not crossing at all but small cargo vessels would take a few people. In early September I received a message to take a train to St John's, New Brunswick, and to report to the shipping office there. Everyone was sworn to secrecy and was told to report there every day. The aim was not to publicise when ships were leaving for England in case spies reported this back to the Germans. On the fourth day I went down to the dockyard and found that I was to be allocated a berth on a relatively small Free-French cargo boat. There were eight of us going home to England, including two other boys who had been evacuated to Canada. We sailed quietly that night, grossly overloaded with crates of aircraft parts. Convoys had by that time been abandoned as they were too easy a target for submarines; therefore we sailed alone for two weeks. It was quite a rough sea passage, but fortunately we were never attacked. We knew we were safe when a Sunderland flying boat dipped its wings as we sailed through the Irish sea to land back again in Liverpool.

All I had with me was a small suitcase with a few clothes and a cardboard box containing a present for my mother. Believe it or not, the Customs officers made me open the box and insisted on my paying duty on a lovely housecoat which I was bringing home for her. It was a bit of a blow, as I was extremely short of money, but fortunately had enough to get a taxi and go straight to find my stepfather Harry Steele. He was in the tailoring business. He seemed to be a very gentle and kind man, but also seemed very sad, no doubt because of my mother's illness. He told me that when she had become ill she had gone to stay with her sister Lela. She and her husband Morris were living in a large flat in West Hampstead in London. Their elder brother Henry also stayed there during the week, but travelled back at the weekend to his own family who had been evacuated to Northampton.

My stepfather was very helpful but said that despite an operation to remove malignant tumours from her ovaries, which was carried out at the Middlesex Hospital, my mother remained very ill and had been moved to a nursing home near to where her sister lived. I then managed to ring my uncle Eliot, who was still in medical practice in Bebbington. By then he had a baby Austin 7, in which he felt safer than in his old Rover when he was driving around visiting his patients during the air raids. I stayed the night with him and then took a train to London. This took all of eight hours, and somehow on arrival I made my way to my aunt Lela's home in West Hampstead. She told me that my mother was dying of cancer and probably only had a few months to live. My brother had already arrived from Australia on compassionate leave from the RAF. My aunt's predictions proved to be only too true. I stayed with my Aunt Lela and spent a few weeks with my mother, who made me promise that I would try and take up medicine as soon as possible.

Because I was short of money I had come from Canada with very few clothes and no suit. My mother was pleased to use clothes coupons towards some new clothes for me. However, I do not think she approved of my hat - a large Fedora, an American-style trilby - but it later proved very useful for Jewish weddings and funerals. My mother died in December 1943, when I was seventeen.

Although I had romantic notions of joining the RAF as a rear air-gunner, my family prevailed upon me to respect my mother's wishes and pursue a career in medicine, which they would help finance, which they would help finance. I set about trying to get accepted at one of the medical schools in London, which was where I decided I wanted to be with my aunt and other members of the family in West Hampstead. The irony of this return to London, however, was that having been evacuated to Canada to escape the bombing and a possible German invasion, by the time I got settled in London the first flying bombs had started to arrive, followed shortly afterwards by the V2 rockets.

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