Lieutenant-Colonel C.J. Loat
&
Brigadier John Sager
Westminster Regiment
4th Infantry Brigade
![Sager](https://matthewkbarrett.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/sager.jpg?w=201&h=289)
Known as “Brick” to his friends and intimates and affectionately as “Little Joe” by all the men of the Westminsters during the period of his command, he was a good athlete and was fond of athletics and it was through his energic leadership that his regiment became outstanding the Canadian Army for their athletic prowess.
(Chilliwack Progress, 26 May 1943, 10)
Born on 29 May 1898 in Stirling, Ontario, John Earl Sager moved to British Columbia in 1909 and worked as a teacher at the Vancouver technical high school. At the end of the First World War, he had belonged to the officer training corps at the University of British Columbia and joined the Westminster Regiment in 1923. Second-in-command before the war, he succeeded the aging Lieutenant-Colonel C.J. Loat in January 1940. Standing five-foot-five, Sager was known in the unit as “Little Joe.”