CREST for Boddington’s 426 Squadron.
Royal Canadian Air Force pilot and former Town of Weston Mayor Charles Wesley Boddington was a true Canadian war hero.
Boddington was born in Weston in 1921 and died in 1984 at the young age of 63. He is buried at Sanctuary Park Cemetery, on Royal York Road.
The Toronto native served in World War II, where he lost an arm and leg when a bomber he was flying was hit by gunfire and ‘exploded’ over Dusseldorf, Germany.
PHOTO of Boddington’s family.
He spent the rest of the war in a German Prisoner of War (POW) camp.
Military records show that Flight Lieut. Boddingtown and a crew of about five from 426 Squadron were shot down as they flew a Thunderbird aircraft over Germany in November 1944. They had taken off from a military base in Linton-on-Ouse, near Yorkshire, England.
RAF records state that “a Thunderbird crew captained by F/L C. W. Boddington also went missing.”
“Four of this latter crew (including Boddington) were made prisoners of war,” according to the military, which added Boddington was injured from the blast, which set a section of the plane on fire.
BODDINGTON was flying a Halifax bomber as this when shot down over Germany. Military photos.
Three crewmembers were killed.
Boddington and four of his colleagues spent more than a year at a German POW camp.
Life at some POW camps were damn dreadful. There was limited rations, clothing or medicine for ailments. The POWs lived in constant fear.
On his arrival back home in Weston in 1947 Boddington carried on with his loss of limbs. He managed to establish and operate a motor vehicle licensing bureau, which he ran until his death.
With much to offer and money in his pocket, he dabbled in politics and ran as a Progressive Conservative in the riding of York West in the 1968 federal election. He placed third.
HIS grave in Sanctuary Park Cemetery.
Undeterred, he ran again in 1969 for the position of Mayor of York, in a tough race, in which he was defeated by Philip White. He ran a third time and was elected Mayor of Weston, before it was swallowed up by York.
He also served on York’s Board of Control after the town was amalgamated with the City of Toronto.
Boddington was named to the Order of Canada in 1977.
The feisty veteran was again in the news in 2014, more than three decades after he passed.
It turned out that the former Town of Weston mayoral chain was missing for a number of years.
Workers noticed that the display case hold the chain had disappeared.
After much investigating, it turned out that the town’s final mayor, Boddington, kept the chain to make sure it didn’t end up stolen of placed in a dusty archive when York became part of Weston.
Boddington was a tough man. In his years as a prisoner of war in a German camp, he was never known to complain or make a scene.
There were as many as 9,000 Canadian soldiers, airmen, naval sailors and merchant seamen who were captured by the enemy and held as POWs during the Second World War. Many were held in miserable conditions in some of the worst prisons.
Perhaps the worst atrocity committed against Canadians during the war occurred after the D-Day invasion in June 1944, when as many as 156 Canadian soldiers were executed by their German captors in the Normandy countryside, after being taken prisoner.