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 Ashley Gojmerac, Aliya Valdez and Lanna Gowland Private Henry Hornick was born 16 October 1885 in Tavistock, Ontario. He was born into […]
Enlisted Men
29 posts
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 Cameron Wiickhorst, Masen Ankenmann and Cooper Moorehead Frank J. Hodsoll was among many of the local Stratford men who enlisted to fight […]
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 Marisa Winkel, Noelle McLellan and Dani Bale Born 24 December 1887, Albert Hansford grew up living at 132 Water Street in Stratford, […]
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 Ethan Spahiu, Ethan Skinner and Zack Torraville Henry Ernest Jackson was born in Birmingham, England on 3 October 1878. In 1912, when […]
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 Jacob Jackson, Liam McGregor and Will Schlotzhauer Frank Wilfred Gardner was born 9 November 1897 in Stroud, England. He was single and […]
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 Nolan Traynor and Matthew Tachsel Barratt Jesson was born on 21 September 1882 in Leicester, England. He lived at 574 Erie Street […]
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 Luke Riehl, Jackson Nickel and Josh Rogers James Hastings was born 23 March 1890 in Stratford, Ontario. Prior to the war, he […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]