Lieutenant-Colonel G.C.A. Macartney
Irish Regiment of Canada

It is rather disconcerting, in the middle of the 20th century, to sit down with a Canadian and hear about Indian raids. Yet G.C.A. Macartney, a one-time Hudson’s Bay Company trader at Yellowknife, N.W.T., who left Canada’s north because it was “too cold,” is one of the few white men who works and lives in an area where Indians still loose volleys of arrows at invaders.

(Montreal Star, 22 Feb 1955, 12)

Born in India on 21 August 1919, George Charles Antony Macartney came to Canada from England in 1938. Two years later he enlisted in the Irish Regiment in Toronto as a private and gained a commission before going overseas. He earned the Distinguished Service Order at the Gothic Line and rose to second-in-command when the unit redeployed to Northwest Europe. In June 1945, he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel Leige Payne, who had volunteered for the Pacific theatre, and led the regiment home to Toronto by the end of the year.

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