A black and white portrait of a young man with neatly combed dark hair, wearing a collared shirt, tie, and jacket, standing indoors with a blurred background.

Ronal Mizon- British War Child

During WWII, many children were evacuated from Britain, either to other parts of the Isle or to colonies and allied countries. Nova Scotia was a popular place for refuge, where Ronald Mizon would soon find himself.

In the year ____< Ronald his sister Betty were two of those children. Amongst their placements in Nova Scotia, they lived in Barney’s River station for a while at the home of Linus and Katherine Cameron. Years after the war, Ronald wrote about his experiences as a British War Child in the Uniacke Newsletter “A Blast From The Past”, which you can read below. A few years before his death in 2012, Ronald Mizon emailed the museum, inquiring about Wonderful Barneys River and his old friend, Donald Bannerman. Donald had passed away but Nova, his wife, began corresponding with Mizon and more recently was contacted by Lynne after she and her husband decided to come to Nova Scotia in 2019. Mizon’s daughter and her husband Mark, of Peterborough, England, were retracing the journey her father began as a 12-year-old wartime evacuee from a working class town in Yorkshire, a journey highlighted by stays in Mount Uniacke and Barneys River.

Read an interview from Mizon’s children here: https://www.uniackenewsletter.ca/stories/search-for-british-fathers-footsteps-during-war-leads-to-barneys-river-schoolhouse-via-mount-uniacke

Black and white photo of two young men standing outdoors in winter, smiling and with arms around each other, with snow-covered ground and hills in the background.
Black and white photograph of two women sitting and lying on the grass outdoors, smiling at the camera, with trees in the background.
Two young girls sitting on grass in an outdoor setting, smiling at the camera, with trees and bushes in the background.
A black and white photo of a woman with curly hair standing with her hand on her hip, and a young girl with crossed arms standing outside near a building with horizontal siding.