Lieutenant-Colonel F. Arthur Sparks
North Nova Scotia Highlanders

Finally the battalion started to run out of lieutenants. In the end we only had one left. This guy had to be shuffled from company to company; he was killed by a blast of machine-gun fire on the [Oct] 15th. Almost every company commander that went into that Breskens battle became a casualty—not wounded, killed.

(Quoted in Whitaker, Tug of War, 298)

Born on 14 June 1912 in Woodstock, Ontario, Frederick Arthur Sparks work for the textile mill Newlands & Co. in Galt and belonged to the Oxford Rifles militia regiment. He mobilized with the Highland Light Infantry  and went into action on D-Day as a company commander. Having been made second-in-command in July 1944, he transferred to the North Nova Scotia Highlanders after the replacement of Lieutenant-Colonel C.C. Petch with Lieutenant-Colonel D.F. Forbes at the beginning of August.

Sparks served as second-in-command until November when Forbes suffered an ankle injury. Although promoted to lieutenant-colonel, Sparks reverted to major when Forbes resumed command in January 1945. He took command again after the end of the war in Europe and received the Distinguished Service Order.

Sparks returned to management of Newland & Co. after the war and in retirement was quite active with civic leadership in Galt. He died in Cambridge, Ontario on 22 November 1998.