Question

What brought Trudy and Barclay together?

Answer 1

When Trudy Menard and Barclay Patoir told friends and family they were going to get married, no-one thought it was a good idea - because Trudy was white and Barclay was black.

"When I told them at work they thought I was daft marrying a black man. They all said, 'It won't last you know,' because it was a mixed-race marriage," says Trudy.

"I think some people thought I was marrying beneath myself."

When the couple had first met, a year or so earlier, Trudy admits she too had been uneasy.
"I had been working at Bryant and May's match factory, but it got bombed in the Blitz," says Trudy, now 96.

People don't walk on the other side of the street like they used to
Trudy
"I needed a new job and was told they wanted girls at the Rootes aircraft factory in Speke. We were paired up with engineers and they told me to go with Barclay. I said, 'I'm not going with a coloured man. I've never seen one before.' But they told me if I didn't I'd be sacked so I just got on with it."

Barclay, 97, was an apprentice engineer who had travelled to the UK from British Guiana in South America, now known as Guyana.
"There was a shortage of engineer skills in Britain in World War Two so young men from the Caribbean volunteered to help the mother country," he says.

Between 1941 and 1943, 345 civilians from the Caribbean region travelled to Liverpool under a scheme to increase war production. Barclay was assigned to work on Halifax bombers at the factory in Speke and Trudy was chosen to work as his assistant.