Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie McLean
11th (Ontario) Tank Regiment

Lt-Col. McLean has always shown the most outstanding qualities of leadership and resourcefulness and complete disregard of personal danger. Time after time he has rallied the men of his regiment to carry on under almost impossible conditions.

(D.S.O. citation, 10 Nov 1945)

Born in Virden, Manitoba on 17 March 1913, Charles Milton McLean was a prewar member of the Manitoba Dragoons and went overseas as an officer with the Fort Garry Horse in 1941. He joined the Ontario Regiment in Italy in January 1944 as second-in-command under the new CO and fellow westerner Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Purves.

He succeeded Purves as commanding officer in April 1945 and led the Ontario Tanks during the final battles in the Netherlands and Germany. After the end of the war in Europe, he received the Distinguish Service Order for his long record of exemplary service over the previous eighteen months. In the Battle of Arnhem in mid-April: “He was the first member of the regiment to cross the Ijssel River with one of the first waves of assaulting infantry in a buffalo-borne scout car under heavy artillery, mortar and machine gun fire … he constantly toured the town, which had not been mopped up in order to coordinate the use of tanks in the street fighting.”

McLean led the regiment home to Oshawa, Ontario in November 1945. Following demobilization, he rejoined the militia and later the regular army in 1950. He became second-in-command of the Lord Strathcona’s Horse in 1952, went to Vietnam as an international observer in 1955, and served in the Northwest Territories in 1959.

He died in Calgary on 25 February 1990.