The Birthday Boy

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Brigadier General Victor Williams
8th Infantry BrigadeWilliams

 The whole front was a tangled mass of ruins. Only a few isolated posts were alive. General Mercer was dead. And General Williams, leg broken and spine twisted, yet fighting gamely against odds, with only a wooden wiring-stake for a weapon was being clubbed into submission by the butt-end of a Mauser in the hands of a German infantryman.

(Toronto Globe, 2 Jun 1928, 17)

Victor Arthur Seymour Williams was the most senior Canadian officer taken prisoner during the First World War. He was captured at the battle of Mont Sorrel on 2 June 1916, incidentally his forty-ninth birthday.

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The Queen’s Own

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Major General Malcolm Mercer †
3rd Infantry DivisionMercer

It is now fully believed here that General Mercer is dead.

Nothing whatever has been heard of him since and it is now considered almost certain that his body lies in the shell torn area where the former front trenches were, but are now practically obliterated.

(Montreal Daily Mail, 6 June 1916, 1)

Malcolm Smith Mercer was the highest ranked Canadian officer killed in the First World War. He was born on 17 September 1859 in Etobicoke, Canada West. While a student at the University of Toronto, he joined the Queen’s Own Rifles in 1881. He became commanding officer of the Regiment in 1911 and was posted to the 1st Infantry Brigade when the First Contingent assembled at Valcartier in August 1914.

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The Ironman

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Lieutenant Colonel Lorne McLaughlin, D.S.O.
2nd (Iron Second) BattalionMcLaughlin

Such loyal and ready support as this always goes a long way to foster the already good feeling which exists between your own battalion and the one which I have the honour to command. With very best wishes. (McLaughlin to Bart Rogers, 3rd Bn., 11 Nov 1917)

Lorne Tolbert McLaughlin was a farmer born on 14 February 1879 in Tyrone, Darlington Township, Ontario. He was a militia officer and member of Loyal Orange Lodge No. 764. In March 1915, he enlisted with Lieutenant Colonel J. A. V. Preston’s 39th Battalion from Belleville. After the 39th was broken up, McLaughlin transferred to the 2nd Battalion on the front. Continue reading →

The Tory

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Lieutenant Colonel B. O. Hooper, M.C.
20th (Central Ontario) BattalionHooper

Remembrance Day in a sane world should be to remember the character of the enemy.

Remembrance Day should not be a mockish, sentimental thing. If the English race would remember more of what happened, they would remember that they are dealing with a people that speak in a different language.

(Hooper, Globe and Mail, 11 Nov 1938, 15)

Bertram Osmer Hooper was a Hamilton banker and member of the 13th Royal Regiment. He was born on 20 August 1879 in Churchville, Ontario. He volunteered in November 1914 as a subaltern in John McLaren’s 19th Battalion. He distinguished himself at the front and won the Military Cross for a leading a daring trench raid in January 1916.

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The Disgruntled

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Lieutenant Colonel Hercule Barré
150th (Carabiniers Mont-Royal) Battalion Barre

If it had been intended to punish me and my battalion for a breach of discipline, no more drastic measure could have been adopted than the order to break it up and disperse its men, without their Officers, through the cadres of four different English speaking battalions.

Even if the necessity of breaking the cadre were conceded, from every point of view, the dispersion of the men is indefensible.

(Barré to Edward Kemp, 14 Feb 1918)

Born on 31 March 1879 in Montreal, Hercule Barré was a Quebec advertising manager with eighteen-years’ experience in the 65th Regiment. Wounded in the leg while fighting with the 14th Battalion during the second Battle of Ypres, Barré was invalided to Canada on board RMS Hesperian. When a German U-boat torpedoed the ocean liner off the coast of Queenstown, Ireland, Barré assisted the crew in evacuating the ship and loading the lifeboats. Sam Hughes praised the major, noting that his “conduct was only keeping with his splendid service at the front.”

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The Tax Man

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Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Glass
252nd (Lindsay) Battalion

War brought with it conscription—not as we used to see it, as the last horror of military tyranny, but as the crowning pride of democracy. An inconceivable revolution in the thought of the English speaking peoples has taken place in respect to it. The obligation of every man, according to his age and circumstance, to take up arms for his country and, if need be, to die for it, is henceforth the recognized basis of progressive democracy.

(Stephen Leacock, The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice, 1920)

James John Glass was a customs collector born on 12 November 1872 in Mariposa Township, Victoria County. Beginning in late 1916, Glass, a captain with the 45th Regiment, attempted to raise a battalion from Lindsay. However, the home county of Militia Minister Sam Hughes had supplied most of its young men for the earlier battalions. With the volunteer system nearly at an end, Glass managed to recruit just over one hundred men.

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The Niagara Guard

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Lieutenant Colonel W. R. Turnbull
19th (Central Ontario) BattalionTurnbull

He had the interests of the men ever at heart, and would do anything to procure them comfort and security.

(Toronto Star, 22 May 1919, 8)

William Robert Turnbull was a 13th Regiment militia officer and founder of the 91st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He was born in Hamilton, Canada West, on 9 January 1865. From November 1914, he served as second-in-command with the 19th Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel John I. McLaren.

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The Liaison

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Brigadier General John Embury
28th (Northwest) BattalionEmburyJFL

Words can but inadequately express our feelings. Your personality at work or at play was an inspiration to all ranks, your personal disregard of danger, your sympathy with the wounded, and your human understating of our frailties will always dwell in our memories.

(Illuminated address to Embury from 28th Bn. Officers, 1920)

John Fletcher Leopold Embury was a Regina lawyer and commanding officer of the 95th Saskatchewan Rifles. Born on 10 November 1875 in Hastings County, Ontario, he was a graduate of the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall. In late 1914, Embury was authorized to form the 28th Battalion from the Northwest. The battalion’s official history declared, “No better choice could have been made. The colonel was a man’s man and won the confidence of all ranks…”

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The Monocle

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Lieutenant Colonel G. E. Sanders, D.S.O.
2nd Pioneer Battalion
Sanders

I would sooner see a man go around and murder people outright than have him peddling this sort of thing [cocaine]. It is apparently the greatest danger and menace against which we must contend. Once addicted to the habit, a man is never cured and is no longer a human being but a beast.

(Sanders, Calgary Herald, 15 Jan 1913, 12)

Born in Yale, British Columbia on 25 December 1863, Gilbert Edward Sanders was a graduate of the Royal Military College and a Calgary police magistrate. A former Northwest Mounted Police inspector, he was also a veteran of the 1885 Rebellion and the Boer War, where he won the D.S.O. Notorious for his harsh sentences, corporal punishment and blatant bigotry, Sanders once remarked, “the cells were the proper abode for many of the coloured men.”

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The Dragoon

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Lieutenant Colonel C. T. van Straubenzee †
Royal Canadian DragoonsStraubenzee

It was the C.O.’s intention to ride with “B” Sqdn. Whilst he was walking to his horse from a point where he had been reconnoitring, he was killed by a shell.

(R.C.D. War Diary, 9 Oct 1918, 9)

Born on 17 June 1876 in Kingston, Ontario, Charles Turner Van Straubenzee was a professional soldier and veteran of the Boer War. In 1897, he joined the Royal Canadian Dragoons as a lieutenant and distinguished himself in numerous battles during the South African campaign. He was promoted to major in 1911.

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