Neon sign of Britain’s inspirational wartime leader topped Vancouver Sun contest for Vancouver’s best neon sign in 1941
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The winner was a neon sign of Winston Churchill’s head. But there was a problem: There didn’t appear to be any photos of it.
Longtime Sun reader Ron Watson noticed and gave the paper a call. It turns out there is a photo. It was taken by his dad Harry.
“I arrived here in October 1940 with my parents, and my dad took this picture three or four months later,” relates Watson, 87.
Harry Watson worked as a compositor setting type at The Vancouver Province, which was then at the southeast corner of Cambie and Hastings Streets.
The Churchill sign was across the street at Victory Square, where it sat atop a recruiting station for the Canadian armed forces.
As Britain’s prime minister during the Second World War, Churchill was incredibly popular. So Harry brought his Kodak camera to work one night and took a photo with a long time exposure, which allowed it to pick up the light from the sign at night.
Harry didn’t take a lot of photos, but this one came out perfect.
The black and white print features Churchill in his Homburg hat and bow tie, a cigar sticking out of his mouth.
The swills of neon glass capture his distinctive features — the round face, double chin and what the International Churchill Society calls “a snub nose and jutting lower lip (that) made him look like a bulldog.”
Harry was so proud of his photo he made a print, framed it and kept it on a side table. His son Ron loved it: when his father died, he told his mother “the only thing I want from my dad’s estate is this picture.”
So he got it, and still has it on display in his condo in North Vancouver.
The Watson family had just moved west from Timmins, Ont., when Harry took the photo. Though he was 30, married and with two kids, he was drafted into the army shortly afterward.
“He said, ‘I’m not going to go crawling in the mud,’” said Ron Watson.
“So he went down sign up for the Air Force. The Army came and said ‘You haven’t reported yet,’ and he said ‘I’m already in the Air Force!’”
Harry spent the war as a flight engineer on coastal patrols, flying “800 miles out towards Japan and back looking for Japanese submarines.”
After the air force he went back to The Province, where he became vice-president of the International Typographers Union local. He was vice-present during a famous strike in 1946 that didn’t get settled until 1949.
After the strike was over he moved over to The Sun, where he retired in 1978.
Ron became a chartered accountant, and is now retired. He remains a big Churchill fan.
“He was very inspirational with the English people during the Second World War,” he said. “I’ve read four volumes that he wrote, his memoirs during the Second War.”
And now he’s solved the mystery of the great lost Churchill neon sign.
