Brigadier Norman Gianelli
2nd Armoured Regiment (Lord Strathcona’s Horse)

I resent very much his using the title brigadier. He has it on his door. I don’t know whether he uses it to make people think they are coming up before someone high and mighty, but as far as I’m concerned, a brigadier is only a lance-jack general.

(Councilman David Post in Toronto Star, 17 Feb 1955, 26)

Born in Toronto on 29 January 1895, Norman Angelo Gianelli was a First World War veteran and professional army officer. Commissioned with the 8th Canadian Mounted Rifles in February 1915, he went overseas for training and instructional duties. While on a tour of the front with an artillery battery in May 1916, he was wounded and shell shocked. On return to Canada in 1917, he served as assistant adjutant-general in Ottawa, and joined the Permanent Force in 1920. Serving for twenty years with the Lord Strathcona’s Horse, he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel F.M.W. Harvey in July 1940.

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