Major-General Hardy Ganong
Carleton and York Regiment
3rd Infantry Brigade
8th & 6th Divisions

Gen. Ganong is the proud owner of about 30 pipes, all of which are presentation pieces marking milestones on his eventful military career. His batman, who has served with him since the outbreak of the present war, know each of them by the first name of the donor. The General refers to them in the same way … But getting back to the matter of the General’s first cigarette. He will smoke it, he has promised, in the Allied officers’ mess in Tokyo!

(Vancouver Sun, 16 Oct 1943, 6)

Born in St. Stephen, New Brunswick on 18 April 1890, Hardy Nelson Ganong was a manufacturer, curler, and First World War veteran. He went to France in November 1916 as a reinforcement junior officer with the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles. Wounded in March 1917, he returned to the field eight months later and served until the end of the war. A member of the militia since 1909, he became commanding officer of the Carleton and York Regiment in 1938 and mobilized with the battalion the next year.

Having worked for the family chocolate business, Ganong Brothers, Ltd., the colonel remarked before an official inspection, “I’m just a poor chocolate maker from New Brunswick – if anyone wants this command he can have her.” Despite these doubts, in March 1941, he was promoted to brigadier of the 3rd Infantry Brigade. Command of the regiment passed to fellow First World War veteran, Major W.C. Lawson.

On an inspection tour of Canadian senior officers, General Bernard Montgomery found Ganong, “No great trainer, but a grand fighter.” With a promotion to major-general, he returned to Canada in July 1942 to command a division with the Pacific Command. When called on to train the troops in mountain and bush warfare, he admitted, “I am very much in the position of the late Will Rogers, who said that all he knew was what he read in the papers. Few, if any of us, have had any experience.” Ganong headed the 8th Division until it was disbanded in October 1943, then the 6th Division until it too was disbanded in December 1944. He next transferred across the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, where he commanded Allied forces in Newfoundland until retirement from the army in 1945.

His twenty-three-year-old son, Lieutenant Russell Edward Ganong, died of wounds with the Carleton and York Regiment in the Italian campaign on 18 March 1944. He had first enlisted with the RCAF and received an infantry commission after his father had left the regiment.

Ganong unsuccessfully contested the riding of New Brunswick Southwest for the Progressive Conservatives in the 1949 and 1953 federal elections. He lost both times to Liberal MP Wesley Stuart.

Ganong died in a car accident in New Brunswick on 24 February 1963.