Although he shares a name with a famous English cricketer of the early 20th century, it was cribbage (and not cricket) that Jack Hobbs learned to play when he arrived in England as a bomber pilot in 1941. “I saw these fellows on the train playing a card game with a board and pegs,” he recalls, “and I asked what it was they were playing.” Today, inching towards his 99th birthday on November 26, Hobbs organizes both bridge and cribbage games at the Wales Home. His memories of the five years he spent in Europe during the war remain vivid, as do many of the other events that marked his life. Although he was born in Toronto, Jack Hobbs is very much a Townshipper. His parents had moved to the Ontario capital for economic reasons and were there when he was born in 1918, but in 1921 , when work dried up in southern Ontario, they returned home to Sherbrooke. Immediately after, his father, who was a driller and blaster, found work in Asbestos at the Johns-Manville open-pit mine. See full story in the Tuesday, May 22nd edition of The Record.
From Asbestos to the Air Force: Jack Hobbs remembers
By newsroom
