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HMCS Caribou – Royal Canadian Naval Reserve Division Corner Brook Newfoundland
by John M. MacFarlane 2016
Opening of HMCS Caribou. (Photo from Crowsnest Magazine)
On August 28th, 1953, a naval reserve division was commissioned at Corner Brook on Newfoundland’s west coast. Corner Brook had been the headquarters in the Second World War of the Corner Brook Patrol.
The Hon. Brooke Claxton, Minister of National Defence (Photo from Crowsnest Magazine)
The first commanding officer was Lieutenant–Commander F.K. Rowsell RCN(R). Present at the commissioning ceremony was the Hon. Brooke Claxton and Commodore Adams. The guests of honour included, Hon. J. W. Pickersgill, Secretary of State and a Newfoundland representative in the House of Commons; H. M. Spencer Lewin, manager of Bowater’s huge pulp and paper plant at Corner Brook, and Captain V. L. A. Campbell, RN, (Ret'd), wartime Senior Naval Officer at Corner Brook.
A harbourcraft was assigned to the Division which was returned to Halifax when the Division paid–off in 1958.
Some naval officers associated with HMCS Caribou were:
- Butler, Frederick D. – Lieutenant (L) (RCN(R))
- Chaney, Lawrence MBE – Lieutenant (RCN)
- Edward, Peter W. – Surgeon Lieutenant (RCN(R))
- Edwards, Frederick John – Commander (S) (RCN(R))
- Edwards, P.W. – Constructor Lieutenant (RCN)
- Hoddinot, Donald F. – Chaplain (Class II) (RCN(R))
- March, Raymond" – Chaplain (Class II) (RCN(R))
- Newbury, Frank Edwards – Lieutenant (L) (RCN(R))
- Rowsall, Frederick Llewellyn – Lieutenant–Commander (RCN(R))
- Strong, Howard W. – Lieutenant–Commander (RCN(R))
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John M. (2016) HMCS Caribou – Royal Canadian Naval Reserve Division Corner Brook Newfoundland. Nauticapedia.ca 2016. http://nauticapedia.ca/Articles/Caribou_HMCS.php
Site News: December 31, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,910 vessel histories (with 16,293 images and 13,934 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).
Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 45,000 processed so far this year (2024).
The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3997 images).
Thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of the vessel histories in the vessel database. Ray has been documenting the ships of Vancouver Harbour for more than 60 years.
Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he continues to contribute to illustrate British Columbia’s floating heritage.
My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Thanks to John Spivey who is beginning his 4th year of fact checking the entries in the vessel database.