Harry DeWolf

Vice Admiral Henry George "Harry" DeWolf CBE, DSO, DSC, CD (26 June 1903 – 18 December 2000) was a Canadian naval officer who was famous as the first commander of HMCS Haida during the Second World War.

Early years

DeWolf was born in Bedford, Nova Scotia. His father owned and operated DeWolf & Sons, a ship brokerage business.

DeWolf entered the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in 1918 at age 15 when he attended the Royal Naval College of Canada at Esquimalt, British Columbia. The original RNCC had been destroyed in the Halifax Explosion the previous winter.

DeWolf graduated from RNCC in 1921 and was sent on an exchange with the Royal Navy to serve on board the battleship HMS Resolution. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant in 1924 and took a six-month course in gunnery, torpedoes and navigation at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Returning to Canada in the summer of 1925, he was posted to one of the RCN's two destroyers, HMCS Patriot.

In early 1930, Lieutenant (Navy) DeWolf received his first command, the Battle-class trawler HMCS Festubert at Halifax. In May 1931, he married Gwendolen Gilbert of Somerset, Bermuda, whom he had met while serving aboard HMCS Patriot, which had spent a winter training there several years earlier. In 1932, DeWolf was posted to the destroyer HMCS Vancouver and then in 1933 to the destroyer HMCS Skeena.