Do you know these people? Man's wartime past in P.E.I. leaves mystery photos

An Englishman has a treasure trove of photos of P.E.I. that his grandfather took while stationed in Charlottetown during the Second World War and he's hoping Islanders can help him piece together the history.

Paul Harbord, of Essex, England, is putting together a memorial of his late grandfather, Ronald W. L. Harbord, and is looking for help in identifying some of the people and locations found in the photos. 

He says his grandfather served on HMCS Kamloops, part of the Royal Canadian Navy, and was in Charlottetown when the ship was being refitted in the early 1940s.

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"What I'm trying to do is piece the timeline together of the photos," he said. "There's people in the photos and I have no idea who they are."

The photos show many buildings in Charlottetown and across the Island, as well as local people his grandfather would have known. 

Never-before seen images

"There are photos of Islanders that I have that other people may not have seen before and pictures of buildings, private properties that people may not actually have," he said.

"It's a two-way sort of opportunity for people to perhaps see pictures of their relatives and for me to give names to those people and work out who my grandfather knew and who he was staying with."

Harbord said it also seems as though one of the sailors may have been a local resident as there are photos of a wedding.

'It tells me about the experience he had'

Piecing together the time his grandfather spent on P.E.I. is part of a larger project about family history that Harbord and his father are doing together.

Harbord's part of the project is filling in gaps in what the family knows about his grandfather's history, particularly during wartime.

To go along with the photos, Harbord is even building a model of the Kamloops — which was tasked with venturing the frigid Atlantic waters, escorting supply ships to the U.K.

The project is helping paint a portrait of what his grandfather's life at sea was like in his teens and early 20s —especially the dangerous life at sea.

"It tells me about the experience he had when he was very young," he said.

'Not particularly hospitable'

"It gives you an idea of what he had to go through when he was on the ship. These ships were not particularly hospitable ships, they were very crowded. They were very cold and wet and they didn't handle that well in water either."

Harbord has published many more photos on the Prince Edward Island Family Photos Facebook group.

People who see someone they may know are free to contact him through social media, he said.

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