Lieutenant-Colonel R.L. Tindall
The Perth Regiment
Westminster Regiment

Considering this officer’s age, I do not believe that he would be able to command a motor battalion successfully under the conditions of intense and prolonged strain involved in mobile operations of an armd formation.

(Confidential report by Maj-Gen. E.L.M. Burns, 5 Feb 1944)

Born on 28 September 1899 in Lennoxville Quebec, Ralph Lockhart Tindall had enlisted as a sixteen-year-old in April 1917 and transferred to the Boy’s Battalion once overseas. By 1918, he had joined the Royal Air Force and was appointed flight cadet a month before the armistice. Back in civilian life, he took out a patent on an early automobile turn signal device and started work for the Imperial Tobacco Company in Montreal in 1932. Commissioned with the Royal Canadian Hussars since 1932, he became second-in-command of the Perth Regiment after mobilization in 1940.

When Lieutenant-Colonel G.W. Little relinquished command of the in Perths in May 1942, Tindall assumed temporary leadership for several months until the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel J.S.H. Lind. A year later, in April 1943, Tindall received his own command when he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel J.E. Sager of the Westminster Regiment.

In November 1943, the unit deployed to Italy as the motorized infantry formation in the 5th Armoured Brigade, 5th Armoured Division. His active service in theatre would however be brief. Deemed over-age and unsuited for the strain of active combat, Tindall was relieved in February 1944, He was replaced by Major Gordon Corbould, second-in-command of the Irish Regiment but originally from New Westminster, British Columbia.

Tindall transferred to the 5th Division Maintenance Area until a confidential report in January 1945 recommended his replacement: “Owing to this offrs History, length of service in both fd units and as OC DMA and taking into account his age it is considered a change of employment to some base or L of C Unit is essential.”

Tindall died in Montreal on 26 April 1959.