Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Ensor
Carleton and York Regiment

 Officers and NCO’s were prime targets and didn’t last long. Jerry snipers watched for them. Even our colonel, Jack Ensor had no rank insignia. They also hid their binoculars and pistols inside their tunics.

We called everyone by their first name. When we wanted our colonel, we hollered Jack, his name was Jack Ensor. A lot of boys from St. Stephen knew him anyway from back home.

(Quoted in Robert Hawkins, We Will Remember Them, 63)

Born in Charlotte, New Brunswick on 5 February 1919, John Parks Ensor worked for Ganong chocolate company and as a teenager joined the Carleton and York Regiment under the command of Hardy Ganong. He earned a commission overseas and within a four years became one of the youngest lieutenant-colonels in the field and one of the very few battalion commanders to have risen from the ranks.

In April 1942, he and several dozen CYR soldiers participated in a commando raid on the village of Hardelot along the French coast. The assignment ended in a “fiasco” as Ensor’s craft became lost, and the commandos aborted the mission. Nevertheless, Ensor was decorated as a Member of the British Empire: “While ultimate success was not achieved due to causes beyond his control the courage and ability he displayed proved a fine example to his command.” Ensor concluded his own after-action report, “I should like to emphasise that the spirit of the men was very high and that they are all longing for another chance.”

In February 1943, Ensor, now promoted to captain, and other Canadian officers were assigned to the British First Army in Tunisia to gain fighting experience in the North African campaign. The German soldier was not invincible, Ensor reported, “He is far from it. A good attack pushed home with determination usually puts him on the run.”

He served with the regiment for virtually the entire war from the landings in Sicily to the hard fighting up the Italian peninsula to the redeployment to Northwest Europe near the end of the war. He assumed command in October 1944 after Lieutenant-Colonel Dick Danby was wounded at the Gothic Line. As regimental historian Robert Tooley explained:

He was promoted substantive Lt Colonel on 18 December 1944. For him it was the culmination of a remarkable military record in which he rose from Pay Sergeant on mobilisation to regimental command in the space of five years … By most he was rated the best of the Battalion’s field commanders.

(Tooley, Invicta: The Carleton add York Regiment in the Second World War, 298)

Following the end of the war in Europe, Ensor relinquished command to join the Pacific Force, which would be demobilized following Japan’s surrender.

He returned to the Ganong Brothers, Ltd., later becoming general manager. He retired after forty years with the company and died in Fredericton 29 August 1979.