The Through Veterans Eyes projects has uncovered new evidence on one of Canada’s most unique soldiers of the Great War: that of Archie Belaney, who is more commonly known in Canadian popular culture as Grey Owl. The name Archie Belaney may have been easy to glance over as just another soldier applying for […]
Yearly Archives: 2017
17 posts
Captain George Burdon McKean was an Englishman in the CEF and an esteemed recipient of the Victoria Cross during the Great War. He moved to Edmonton, Canada in 1902 at the age of 14 and enlisted in the CEF with the 14th Battalion in 1915. He earned the Victoria Cross […]
Japanese-Canadian servicemen of the CEF are an underrepresented group in the national memory of the First World War, and whose stories remain largely untold. Between 1915 and 1918, 222 Japanese men served in the CEF.[1] Jennijo Kubota was among them, a private in the 49th Battalion out of Edmonton. Like […]
With the end of the First World War in November 1918 and demobilization following soon after, hundreds of thousands of servicemen returned to Canada and civilian life. Veterans approached their relationships with the government as they applied for state assistance in various ways, but ex-officers typically wanted to avoid dependence […]
When Arsen Kaprielion Saroian enlisted in 1915 in Edmonton, Alberta to fight in the First World War, his life had already been fraught with terror and loss. Born in Armenia, at the time a region within the Ottoman Empire, Saroian lost nearly everything before he had even made his way […]
The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration that can be awarded within the British Empire. During the First World War, seventy-three members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force were awarded the Victoria Cross, one of them was Filip Konowal. Born March 25, 1887 in a small Ukrainian village near the […]
Before the men of the Canadian Expeditionary Force had even reached the battlefields of France, their hospitals were already filling up with patients. Many of these men had not been wounded in training accidents however, instead they had contracted some form of Venereal Disease, or VD, as a result of […]
One of the most common and severe injuries suffered by soldiers of the First World War was the loss of limbs. Battlefield amputations were gruesome, followed by years of painful rehabilitation. The bloodshed necessitated an urgency in the development of effective prosthetics, and advancements in design and production were made […]
The pains endured from fighting a war do not end with the fighting. For many veterans of the First World War, their battle scars never healed and continued to affect them for decades after the war ended. One of these veterans was Private Thaddeus “Thaddie” Knockwood. His pension files and […]
Gunner Thomas McSmart was raised in Chicago, Illinois by his adoptive parents. He joined the thousands of Americans who flocked to the Yukon in 1898 as part of the Klondike Gold Rush. Unlike many of his fellow miners, McSmart fell in love with the region and remained there as a […]
After being discharged in October 1919, Lieutenant Gaskin began his post war struggles with mental illness. Gaskin served four years in the First World War in both France and England, beginning his service with the 106th Battalion as a Corporal and concluding as a Lieutenant in the 78th battalion. […]
Fred Atkinson was born on June 6, 1887, and at the age of 27 enlisted in Victoria, BC. His hard work and strength quickly singled him out to superior officers, and in 1916 he was transferred to the Third Tunnelling Company of the Canadian Engineers. His work with this company […]
The digitization of Canada’s First World War veteran pension files offers a new glimpse into the early life of one of Canada’s most famous leaders, Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester B. Pearson. Born in 1897, Lester Pearson was a young man when the First World War broke […]
On April 22, 1915, chemical gas was introduced on the Western Front, killing and irreversibly damaging hundreds of British, French, and Canadian soldiers. James Gordon Baker was one of those Canadians. As an underage-enlister out of Toronto in September 1914, seventeen-year old Baker joined the 3rd Battalion, Toronto Regiment, and […]
Canada in 1915 had more to deal with than just an overseas war and the costs that came with it. World War I became distinct compared to past wars for the high rates of survival of soldiers who fought in it. Their return home put a new pressure on the […]
The story of Pavel Absolon is one of the harrowing and curious tales present with the Through Veterans’ Eyes collection as he is possibly the only man to ever receive a Canadian pension for service in the First World War despite starting the war technically at war with Canada. Born […]
Guy Melfort Drummond was one of Canada’s earliest war heroes of the First World War. The son of Sir George Alexander Drummond, a wealthy industrialist and financier based in Montreal, Guy Drummond was widely recognized as one of the most promising young Canadians. A peacetime officer in the Canadian Militia […]