Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Motzfeldt
Royal Highlanders of Canada (The Black Watch)

It was a Scot—and a vain one—who said there were only two classes of people in the world: those who were Scots and those who would like to be Scots. That explains why Napier Moore, editor of The Financial Post, searching through “Clans and Tartans of Scotland” … was unable to find any reference to the Clan MacMotzfeldt. But there is such a tartan. It is of recent creation and the story of its coming into being is very interesting.

(Reprinted in Windsor Star, 3 Nov 1949, 4)

Born in Denmark on 8 June 1908, Ulric Johan (Eric) Motzfeldt graduated from the University of Copenhagen and in 1929 immigrated to Canada where he worked as an insurance broker in Montreal. He joined the Black Watch as a lieutenant on the declaration of war and rose to company commander by the time the regiment deployed to Normandy in July 1944. As a member of the Royal Highlanders, he jokingly called himself MacMotzfeldt and others knew the six-foot-two officer as “the Great Dane.”

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