Obituary: Veteran Alex Polowin has an Ottawa street named in his honor

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Ottawa’s Alex Polowin joined World War II at age 17 after relatives in Lithuania shared rumors about what was happening to Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe.

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Polowin lied about his age to enlist in the Royal Canadian Navy, fought in the Battle of the Atlantic, served on the destroyer HMCS Huron, survived six perilous convoy voyages to Murmansk, Russia, and participated in D-Day.

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After the war, he was an active volunteer with The Memory Project, sharing his war stories with over 200 audiences in schools, community centers and seniors’ residences.

His hard work earned him the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers and a permanent place on the map of Ottawa with a street named in his honor — Alex Polowin Avenue.

« He was a nice, down-to-earth guy, » said his son, Cary Polowin. « He got along with everyone and he spoke to everyone. »

He often called five or ten times a day. « He liked to talk, » Cary said.

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Polowin died last month at the age of 97. He is believed to be the last surviving World War II crew member of HMCS Huron.

Alexander Polowin was born in a small town outside Vilnius, Lithuania on May 15, 1925. He moved to Canada with his family three years later.

In Ottawa, his father, Ben, sold fruits and vegetables door-to-door and often brought his son with him because he was so good with people. « I’m a person who learned almost from childhood to get along with people, » he once said. « I learned to adapt to the people I talk to rather than expecting them to adapt to me. »

The family bought a house on York Street and Alex attended Ottawa Technical High School where he joined the wrestling and boxing teams.

When he was only 17, he convinced his father – he could neither read nor write English – to sign a legal letter, attesting to a falsified date of birth: April 15, 1924. He used this letter to enlist in the Royal Canadian Navy in the spring of 1942, believing the navy would put him into action before the army.

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« I wanted to do something, » he explained.

Polowin underwent basic training and was posted to HMCS Pictou, a corvette that accompanied Atlantic convoys. In the summer of 1943, he joined the crew of HMCS Huron, a Tribal-class destroyer.

“It was brand new: it smelled like a new car the first time you got in,” he recalled one day.

As an able seaman, Polowin served as a lookout and a member of the ship’s gunnery crew. In October 1943, HMCS Huron began escorting convoys on the Murmansk route, a dangerous supply route that carried materiel, fuel and weapons from Scotland to the Soviet Union, which then bore the brunt of the war against Nazi Germany.

The route took the convoys through arctic waters bristling with German U-boats in the dark of winter. “You left the watch as a sailor and you had icicles hanging from your nose: you looked like a walrus,” Polowin would later tell the students.

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The ship Huron was present during the Battle of the North Cape which resulted in the sinking of the German battleship Scharnhorst on December 26, 1943.

In February 1944, Huron was reassigned to Plymouth, England, in preparation for D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Huron’s job was to patrol the English Channel and clear it of submarines. It was in the middle of the channel on the day of the invasion, protecting the D-Day convoy from sea attacks. On June 9, he took part in the sinking of a torpedo boat and the grounding of a German destroyer.

Two of Polowin’s uncles were killed during the Holocaust in Lithuania, and he viewed his service as a debt to them. He was one of more than 17,000 Jewish Canadians who served in the war.

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After the war, Polowin returned to Ottawa and began a long career in the insurance business. He married and had three sons, Cary, Sheldon and Howard.

Polowin was a longtime volunteer with the Tamir Foundation, a group dedicated to helping people with developmental disabilities, and an enthusiastic supporter of The Memory Project, a speaker’s bureau for veterans run by Historica Canada. Polowin often played his harmonica during his many presentations on the war.

He became one of Ottawa’s best-known veterans, received the French Legion of Honor in 2006 and attended the ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day. There he met Queen Elizabeth II, President then-American Barack Obama and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among other dignitaries.

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In 2017, the city honored him by creating Alex Polowin Avenue in Manotick.

Polowin was thrilled when a mechanic, who lived on Polowin Avenue, waived the cost of fixing a broken mirror on his car after learning he was the man the street was named after. In fact, Polowin’s son said he was so thrilled he returned twice more with dented mirrors in hopes of getting the same treatment.

« My dad was the worst driver in the world, » said his son, Cary. « He was also a pretty thrifty guy. »

On August 16, Cary Polowin drove to his father’s Riverside condominium and found the newspaper still outside his door. He normally picked it up every morning at 6 a.m.

« When he was still there, I had a bad feeling, » he said. He found his father dead on the floor due to heart failure.

Cary said he will remember his father as a brave, kind and humble man.