Two of Dufferin's finest young men were among 91 sailors lost in the sinking 64 years ago of HMCS Shawinigan in what now are Canadian waters.

Robert Arthur (Bob) Brett of Shelburne and Roy Scott Hunter of Orangeville were still teenagers when a torpedo from the German U-boat U- 1228 sank the corvette on November 24, 1944, a mere six months before Nazi Germany surrendered.

At the time, the Shawinigan had been escorting the ferry Burgeo on its runs between North Sydney, Nova Scotia and Port aux Basques, Newfoundland.

Bob Brett was the youngest son of Shelburne's pioneering car dealer, R. W. Brett, and his wife Mabel. Roy Hunter was the son of W. H. and Reta Hunter and elder brother of Orangeville Rotarian Keith Hunter.

At the time, W. H. Hunter was Dufferin's long-time county clerk, and son Keith says it was during a county council meeting on Nov. 25, 1944, that his father received word of the sinking.

The Shawinigan had been commissioned three years earlier, on Sept. 19, 1941 at Quebec City. She spent the first part of much of 1942 escorting three separate convoy runs over the Atlantic to Londonderry and return. Later in 1942 she was assigned to Halifax Force as an escort for Quebec-Labrador convoys.

After a refit, completed in March 1943, she continued to work as an escort, mainly in Canadian waters. In early 1944 she underwent a second refit in Liverpool, N.S., then traveled to Bermuda for workups in June 1944 before being again assigned to escort duties off the east coast of Canada.

In November 1944, the Shawinigan and the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sassafras were ordered to escort the Burgeo. Since the sinking on Oct. 14, 1942, of the passenger ferry Caribou by a U-boat, and the loss of 136 passengers, including 10 children, all ferries on the route across Cabot Strait were always escorted.

On Nov. 24, the three ships made an uneventful crossing to Port aux Basques and the Shawinigan detached to continue anti-submarine patrols in the area. Although scheduled to rendezvous with the Burgeo the next morning for the return to Cape Breton, the corvette never made it.

It was later learned that U- 1228, which had been St. Lawrence, was nearby, trying to repair a faulty schnorkel. Without the tactical advantage the device provided, commander Frederich-Wilhelm Marienfeld feared his chances should he pass through the Cabot Strait. On that moonlit night, he tested his repairs, found them ineffective and decided to return to Germany, but as he issued orders that would pilot the Uboat back into the Atlantic, the Shawinigan was sighted. U- 1228, which had not yet recorded an attack on enemy shipping, let loose a Gnat torpedo, and exactly four minutes later, HMCS Shawinigan disappeared in a plume of water and a shower of sparks.

All 91 members of her crew died, although five bullet-riddled bodies found later showed some had made it to lifeboats.

The Shawinigan was one of only three Canadian warships that were lost with all hands. Her final resting place is in the Cabot Strait, somewhere between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. Her precise location is not known, and Keith Hunter said the only memorial he is aware of is part of one at Halifax that has the names of all sailors and merchant seamen lost during the Battle of the Atlantic.