This blog was produced in collaboration with the students and Christine Ritsma of Stratford Northwestern Secondary School, and the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies. By Carter Stock and Cameron Hahn James Emanuel Hahn was born on 30 July 1888 in New York, New York. His family moved […]
All Soldiers
31 posts
Enlistment into the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the First World War was restricted to soldiers aged eighteen to forty-five, but thousands of eager young teenagers managed to make it to the front lines. By 1916, approximately thirty-eight percent of soldiers arriving in Europe were underage managing to enlist through […]
Francis Pegahmagabow is perhaps the best known Indigenous (Anishnaabe) soldier of the First World War. He is the most decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian military history and holds the record of Canada’s top marksmen with 378 kills. Much is known of his military and post-war life, many having written of […]
During question period in June 1919, Member of Parliament (MP) Newton Wesley Rowell, the chairman of the special house committee on veterans’ pension, was asked about returning soldiers’ eligibility for pensions. MP Richard Clive Cooper said, Under this pension scheme the man who went to Siberia, which is a pretty […]
When Canadian veterans returned home from the Great War in 1918, two government programmes were available to them. The first was the vocational training programme, which was created to help ex-servicemen re-enter the job market on an equal footing with their non-veteran counterparts. The philosophy behind this system was to […]
The 1920s is commonly referred to as the “Roaring Twenties” in Canada. As the narrative goes, the cultural scene exploded with jazz music and films, while industry and manufacturing grew, and Central Canada underwent an urban transformation. Preceding these boom years, Canadian veterans made their way back home after four […]
William John Roberts was born and raised in King’s Cove Newfoundland, a small fishing village notable only for its lighthouse. Roberts’ parents both died when he was a baby, and so he was raised by his uncle, Kenneth Monk. Although Monk was a poor fisherman, he worked hard to ensure […]
John Coulson did not have an easy start in life. Born with a severe mental handicap to a poor family in Chesterfield England, Coulson’s father was an abusive alcoholic who abandoned his family forcing John’s mother to care for the family on her own. With a severe mental handicap and […]
Over three thousand Canadians were taken prisoner in the First World War. Prisoners were often subject to hellish conditions, being used as forced labour and subject to brutal punishments. Often men were denied access to proper medical care or even proper shelter. There was a strong desire to escape from […]
Alexander George Edwin Smith was among the most famous Canadian veterans of the First World War. Born August 14th, 1880 on the Six Nations reserve just outside of Brantford, he was the oldest son of Alexander George Smith, Chief of the Cayuga on the reserve. Before the War, Smith worked […]
Shell shock affected many soldiers who fought in the First World War, both during and after combat had ceased. Little understood, the trauma that active military service members experienced manifested itself in different ways. For Private Edmond Montgomery, shell shock appeared in the form of seizures and a debilitating speech […]
In a time where East Indian immigrants to Canada had few rights and were subjected to harsh racism, a small number of Sikh Indians decided to serve their new country. Though the participation of Sikh Indians in the First World War is under researched, Bukkan (Buckham) Singh’s pension file offers […]
The advent of the aeroplane and its adaptation for military use changed the face of battle forever. During the First World War, thousands of Canadians offered their service to the Empire as a part of the British Royal Flying Corps. One of these men was Captain Charles Lambert Bath. Born […]
William Henderson Gray, born in 1887 in Scotland immigrated to Canada in 1909, fleeing an unhappy marriage and his first child. Settling in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he worked for various companies as a driver and mechanic. He met Sarah Fowler there, and the two became involved. William was unable to obtain […]
When James William Morrison enlisted in November of 1914, he was ready to fight for his adopted country. Born in Scotland, he had a made a life for himself in Canada as a carpenter in Ontario. James’ war on the front would be cut short when at the age of […]
Douglas A. Stewart was born in Lobo Township February 18th 1870. He attended school until the age of sixteen when he left to help his father care for the family farm. In 1898, Douglas got married and moved to Poplar Hill to attend Detroit Business University. He only spent six […]
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Morley served overseas from 1914 to 1915 until he was discharged in August of 1915 following a gunshot wound of the right leg. Lieutenant Colonel Morley’s pension files reveal the struggles that soldiers endured during the First World War, and the repercussions that came as a result […]
Thomas Clelland was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1891. A farmer by trade, the Scotsman immigrated to Canada and settled in Regina, Saskatchewan. Enlisting on March 13th 1916, Clelland was placed in the 195th Battalion. The 195th had been formed over the winter of 1915/16 to recruit within the city […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]