Lieutenant-Colonel John L. Reiman
Régiment de la Chaudière

Il se mérita des promotions et finalement parvint au commandement du nouveau régiment qui devait peu de temps après se couvrir de gloire dans la guerre qui vit durant la campagne allemande contre les Pays-Bas la destruction des derniers membres de la  famille Reiman qui étaient restés sur le vieux continent.

(Le Guide, 11 Mar 1958, 2)

Born on 8 March 1886 in Montreal to a Dutch father and Belgian mother, Jan (John) Louis Reiman grew up in Holland. He moved back to Canada after the First World War and worked in New Brunswick before settling in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. He worked in the paper and pulp industry and joined the Canadian militia. In December 1936, he founded Le Régiment de la Chaudière and served as the first commanding officer. The unit mobilized as a machine gun battalion following the outbreak of the Second World War.

Deemed too old for active service, fifty-four-year-old Reiman was replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel G-R. Bouchard, who was actually three years older, in January 1940. Reiman’s foreign ancestry also apparently provoked rumors that he was in fact German with relatives serving in the German army. He took up training duties in Quebec and retired from the army in 1946.

Reiman returned to work in the pulp industry and died in Quebec City on 17 February 1958. As a eulogy, “The Regiment de la Chaudière sees with great regret the departure of its first commander and the memory of devotion and love of duty that Lieutenant-Colonel Reiman left after his long career will remain to inspire those who follow. the traces he has so firmly imprinted on the sands of time, his greatest monument.”