Lieutenant-Colonel Arnold McLellan
North Nova Scotia Highlanders

Breath sounds are clear all over chest, no adventitious sounds, but mor distant and weaker over and about scar … Complain of shortness of breath, slight on exertion, also pain at times in wound.

(Medical History of an Invalid, 30 Jul 1919)

Born on 20 April 1892 in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Arnold Guy McLellan was president of a gold mine company and commanding officer of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders since 1936. He had enlisted with the 193rd Battalion in March 1916 and two years later reverted from corporal to private to join the 85th Battalion in France. He was invalided from a through-and-through bullet to the chest in September 1918, which required a long recovery.

McLellan was granted a commission with the Cumberland Highlanders in 1921 and became lieutenant-colonel of the militia regiment in March 1936. At the end of the year, the Cumberland Highlanders amalgamated with the Colchester and Hants Regiment to form the North Nova Scotia Highlanders under McLellan’s command.

When the NNSH mobilized for active service in June 1940, McLellan relinquished command to his predecessor in the Cumberland Highlanders and fellow 85th Battalion veteran, Lieutenant-Colonel H.W. Murdock. McLellan commanded the 2nd (Reserve) Battalion in Nova Scotia until retirement at the end of 1944. He unsuccessfully contested the riding of Cumberland East for the Progressive Conservatives in the 1949 provincial election.

He died in Amherst on 4 June 1967.