Lieutenant-Colonel R.J. McPherson
Highland Light Infantry of Canada

Made of good, solid stuff … would do well despite conservative ideas and limited imagination.

(Bernard Montgomery quoted in English, Monty and the Canadian Army, 68)

Born on 20 March 1906 in Puslinch, Ontario, Robert John McPherson was a prewar member of the Highland Light Infantry in Galt and mobilized as second-in-command in 1940. He succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel J.A. MacIntosh in January 1942. The next month, during his inspection of the 9th Infantry Brigade, General Bernard Montgomery, thought McPherson “good stuff” with promise to do well, although Monty also noted that the newly promoted colonel evidently lacked imagination.

Montgomery, however, was unimpressed with the HLIC second-in-command, Major R.E. Bricker, who had succeeded McPherson on his taking over from MacIntosh. Deemed to lack the necessary character and drive, Bricker was soon replaced and sent back to Canada as a prisoner-of-war escort.

McPherson meanwhile remained in command of the HLIC for nine more months until the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel H.W. Foster in December 1942. Foster held temporary command for only a few months before his promotion to brigadier and his eventual recall to Canada to take command of the 13th Infantry Brigade in the Aleutians campaign. In February 1943, Major R.F. Shantz took over the HLI, while McPherson went on to command a reinforcement unit in England until 1944.

He died in June 1963.