Lieutenant-Colonel C.E. Parish
28th Armoured Regiment (B.C. Regiment)

The Regiment received a staggering blow on 9 August 1944. We lost our Commanding Officer, the Adjutant, all the Squadron Commanders and the Rear Link Capts of each Squadron, plus six Subalterns, and 101 Other Ranks wounded or missing. With this, also came the loss of 46 tanks, which left us hardly a nucleus with which to build another Regiment … Casualties have not been light, but that must be expected in a war of this kind.

(War diary, August 1944)

Born on 29 August 1906 in Wentworth, Ontario, Charles Ernest Parish was a graduate of McGill University, and a Montreal engineer. He was commissioned into the Wentworth Regiment in 1932 before transferring to the Canadian Grenadier Guards three years later. In September 1943, he transferred from the 22nd Armoured Regiment to the 28th (B.C. Regiment) as second-in-command under Lieutenant-Colonel D.G. Worthington. He assumed command on 9 August 1944 following Worthington’s death in Operation Totalize.

Parish led the British Columbia Regiment over the next two months from France into Belgium. Following much needed rest leave he was replaced by Major A.G. Chubb in November 1944. Parish was treated for oral sepsis and carious teeth, which required total extraction of all remaining teeth. He was evacuated to hospital in the United Kingdom for the surgery and to be fitted with dentures. He was discharged in January 1945 and took command of a training unit.

He earned a mention is despatches but returned to Canada in March 1945. He remained in the reserve army and served as commanding officer of the Grenadier Guards from 1950 to 1954. In addition to a career in the construction industry, he served as president of Montreal Construction Association until 1970. Parish died in Toronto on 4 November 1981.