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 […]
Officers
9 posts
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]