The Ace

William Henry Nelson was one of the thousand or so Canadians who travelled to the United Kingdom to join the Royal Air Force before the outbreak of the Second World War. Canada’s tiny air force was underfunded, with few modern aircraft, and was recruiting few potential pilots. Where else could he go to fly?

But Willie Nelson was not typical of those Canadians who crossed the Atlantic to fly with the RAF. He was Jewish, born in Montreal to eastern European parents who anglicized their surname from Katznelson soon after their arrival in Canada. His first year of secondary education was at the heavily Jewish and lower-class Baron Byng High School on St. Urbain Street, and he completed high school at the middle-class but still heavily Jewish Strathcona Academy in Outremont. He was good-looking in an Anglo way, had a Gentile girlfriend for a time, and was athletic, playing rugby and hockey for his school as well as lacrosse and baseball. Above all, as Peter Usher...