Lendrum McMeans

The Senator

/ Matthew K Barrett / Leave a comment

Lieutenant Colonel W.H. Sharpe, MP
184th (Manitou) Battalion
WHharpe

The man who is not prepared to serve his country at the present time should have no place in the affairs of Canada.

(W.H. Sharpe, Debates, 23 Jan 1917, 9)

William Henry Sharpe was a homesteader, merchant and politician. Born in Scott Township, Ontario on 19 April 1868, he moved to Manitoba and was elected Conservative MP for Lisgar in 1908. After a failed bid in the 1915 provincial election and an appointment to the Senate, Sharpe was authorized to raise the 184th Battalion. His younger brother Sam Sharpe, fellow Conservative MP, commanded the 116th Battalion.

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Lt. Col. McMeans

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Lieutenant Colonel Lendrum McMeans
221st (Bulldogs) Battalion McMeans

I desire to reiterate what the honourable gentleman [Mr. Sharpe] has just said. I too have lost of my substance and of my blood in this war; I too went out and did my best to raise men; and this honourable gentleman [Mr. Bennett] has no right to get up and sneer at men who have done that.

 (McMeans, Senate Debates, 26 May 1920, 434)

Born on 1 August 1859 in Brantford, Canada West, Lendrum McMeans was Conservative member of the Manitoba Legislature (1910—1914) and civic leader in Winnipeg. In April 1916, McMeans was authorized to raise the 221st Battalion. His oldest son, thirty-one year old Major Vivian Arthur Vinton McMeans returned from the front in August to join in his father’s battalion. The colonel’s youngest son, twenty-six year old Captain Ernest D’Harcourt McMeans, had been killed in battle on 22 May 1915.

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