Salt Spring Island Archives
| Accession Number | |||
| Date | 2008 | ||
| Media | digital recording | Audio | mp3 √ |
| duration | 25 min. |
377_Chris-Arnett_Salt-Spring-in-World-War-One_War-Memorial_2008.mp3
otter.ai
17.02.2024
no
Outline
Speaker 1 0:00
Gonna give this talk sort of in tribute to my, my grandfather, who's up on the screen here, Thomas Anderson, and he fought in the First World War, enrolled in March of 1916. With 158 overseas battalion and the Duke cannot own rifles that Vancouver unit. And he had he had served in the militia for three years. He was 20 years old when he joined up 1916 And he fought in the war for a year and he was wounded at lands, which is just north of me Ridge, battled lens and wound the wound was serious enough to have him as a patriot to England, where he served the rest of the war as a fitness instructor. And so I knew my grandfather very well. I spent every summer with him. He retired in Santa she served for two years in the Vancouver Fire Department, as a Assistant Chief and chief of fire hauls went into downtown Vancouver. And as a youngster I used to play with his bayonet I was into pirates and stuff. And so I would always use his passenger permission to wear his bayonet around and but he never talked much about the war at all. And then it was only in his later years when I was just sort of very interested because I'm a historian and wanted to get his account of his experience. And the only thing he told me, he said, none of it made any sense. And that's all he had to say about World War. His participation will were one, so the Dukes cannot swing over there. And they're immediately broken up into a reserve battalion and sent off to different units, which happened to a lot of BC Militia units. Just a few statistics to start off British Columbia had the highest per capita volunteer enrollments in World War One, average 90 per 1000 of people in British Columbia. And this is as compared to 75,000 in Ontario 54,000 in the Maritimes, 25,000 in Quebec. So a very high percentage of enrollments, Vancouver has the distinction of being of having the most sent more fighting men to France than any other city of comparable size in North America. City was very proud of that. So out of a population of 450,000, which is British Columbia in 1914 to 1914 9017 55,570 men went to or volunteered for out for war and 43,000 were sent overseas. And of those 43,000, almost half were killed or wounded. That's quite a high casualty rate. Almost 50%. And, yeah, so in Salt Spring, you know, if we had an enrollment rate of 90,000, in British Columbia Saltspring had enrollment rate of about double that number. So 180, say per 1000 142 Men eventually, plus actually don't have the full figure because my data that present only goes up to about September 1917 up till that point, 142 Saltspring men cert in various armies and World War One. These includes not only Canadian Army, but French army, and may have been other armies as well. But British Army definitely see the next slide. This is the Cenotaph that all of you are familiar with I'm sure. In Stanley Park originally stood in the traffic triangle in Ganges was it? Oh, sorry, what did I say? Stanley, okay. Got my Vancouver mindset. Okay, this Ganges and carries the names of 26 men from Saltspring Island who were killed in the war. And not all of them were killed in action. Like I'm still using the data and a lot of these names when you come across their death notice that says died in war, unknown causes or died of illness. So not all these men were killed in action. And that's something we always got to remember about war is often the majority of casualties are from illness just from people taking sick and dying in the exposed conditions of the battlefield. Now these names I would wager most sold Springer's today would look at these names and not recognize many of them. Some standout here, for example, ah Churchill, people know the Churchill road and they might think of that man, he was one of two brothers who homesteaded there at the early part of the 20th century. Others Norwich and of course, a descendent son of John Norton, one of the original settlers of 1859. But if you look up information about him in various books in Salisbury, you won't find his name anywhere except in reference to this monument. Even in the in the statistics 1912 and 19. Fall census you won't find Robert Preston Norton in there John Duncan Craig down here. He was born in Ganges where Hastings houses was a property owned by his father Leftenant. Colonel Craig. They were from Britain and he was born in Salt Spring, one of the few sort of people of British ancestry actually, on this monument from Saltspring Island. The majority of men on this monument were from England, Great Britain. And most of them single too. But to anyone who studies war, it's not too surprising to find that statistic. And this accounts to for the higher rate of enrollments in British Columbia, because British Columbia at that time was sort of a destination for a lot of so called remittance man, or just people who wanted adventure in Britain, you know, Irish Scottish British gentleman of means, you know, chose Saltspring as a place to live and many of them gave their occupation as rancher and I'll give you there's an example of one young man in here he was a rancher, but you know, you look in the census and he was a boarder at at Drew Andrew Drake's house, but he styled himself a rancher and a lot of ranchers in the in the testament roles. Could we see the next one? The cenotaph, so we just looked at they became very popular after World War One because World War One was the first sort of war where people had to deal with unprecedented slaughter and casualties, you know, it really kind of overwhelmed people. So they after the war, they began erecting monuments to the fallen. Now, this is what I'm gonna focus on today. This is sort of the focus of this exploratory talk analysis of the contribution of Saltspring islanders to World War One. This is not a Cenotaph. A cenotaph, by definition, is an empty tomb. So it's a memorial to to to the dead. This was erected in September of 1917 by Leftenant, Colonel Mariette, not sure who he was to use, obviously, from an army, but I don't think he was from Saltspring. And on it are 250 names from all the different islands of the Gulf violence. And it at the time, it was referred to as two different things an honor roll and as a, as a war shrine or an award shrine. And it's listed not only the casualties, but the list of the names of every man who had enlisted up to that point. And all arranged more or less in alphabetical order. So it's a really amazing piece of information to see the next one. It's like, here's a, and it was, it was the building was about eight or 10 feet high, stood down to the traffic triangle in front of the old trading company store. And it had on three sides of board these plaques, long cedar boards, with the names of the men who had enlisted in the war. And here we see the panel from Galliano Island, and there's about 20 names there. And you can see five dots, and the dot indicated the person was dead or killed in action or died of wounds or illness. And over here we have so this is one panel from Galliano, and there's one from Maine and small ones from the other islands and Saltspring had three panels. And this is the first one, we see a lot of leads up there, Alan Beech blandy be on who some of you may have heard of, and so on. A gentleman just contacted us in the archives, HS green, and his wife is a descendant of HS greens down here somewhere. So this is when I first came across this, you know, in Frank's awesome collection of historical photographs. And it really intrigued me because here we have a really interesting cultural document, it gives you a window into that era, that some would not be available anywhere else, because it has the names of not only those who enrolled and listed but those who were killed. And so it gives us an incredible demographic of the island's population. So I was kind of curious about what this meant, you know, what it why it was erected at this particular time. And so I thought one way to do this would be to look at the names when basically the story I'm going to go from now on is basically these people talking to us through the various records that have been left and I've just made a cursory kind of a examination this material, mostly through the records in the Canadian archives, which are all available online, you can go to a site, Canada archives, World War One soldier site, and you enter the name of the soldier and it'll give you all well not all the information but it gives you initial start on it gives you is that a station paper which is the way we'd have here and
Speaker 1 9:55
this is the this is the one by James Douglas wins Who was young black men, he was, I think about 18 years old. And he signed up in 1917. And this basically was a paper that you signed when you joined up. And it was an attestation, which was sort of an oath. And it consisted of about seven parts. The first part here is your personal information. Here we have WIMS, James Douglas. So it's interesting. He's named after the first governor of Vancouver Island in 1860s. Of course, he was the son of the son of William winds. The Father has given up there William winds and it's interesting he gives the name is Salt Springs Island. It's kind of reflects a local pronunciation Salt Springs. And the whims of court slipped up in the area of whims road. And they gave, you know, there's information next of kin, date of birth, Trader calling he's a farmer. And then other information if you're married. No, he was single, I willingly vaccinated. Yes. Did you belong the act of militia? No, no. And not everybody belongs to the active militia. In fact, most of these old men were civilians. And this is just his, his statement. The first one is a declaration that he makes to, you know, pledging allegiance to the Canadian Army, you know, verifying that the information is given his true and that he'll follow the command of all his superiors. And the same with the second one that's an oath directly to His Majesty King George the fifth his heirs and successors, that he will be in duty to honestly faithfully defend his majesty, His heirs and successors, and we have to think we got to remember in World War One, it was one of the last sort of old time European wars sort of a it was almost a family, squabble, those of you who've studied the history, you know, know, that the Tsar of Russia, the Kaiser of Germany, and the king of England, we're all cousins. They're all on grandchildren, Queen Victoria, all related. And when you look at the early documentation about the beginning of the war, it was it was very much like a squabble these letters back and forth, and you know, taking umbrage with the other one had said, No, you can't talk to me like that, and all this kind of petty bickering. And then it finally came down to the Kaiser who, one night after receiving some back and forth stuff, you know, I don't know what he'd been doing maybe drinking too much or something. But he gave the order for the, the German army to move. And the Germans had a war plan that had been evolving for years. I think it was like a seven year plan. And so as soon as the cars gave the word, the railway began rolling, and was one of the biggest troop movements in history. And the Kaiser actually relented a few hours later, he said, You know, I, you know, made a mistake here. We can't in the general Moltke said, Well, it's too late now. And the war just took off from there. But this is all documented, because, you know, a lot of records were kept, you know, not just the the lowly infantry men, but the, you know, the highest commanders in chief, here's just more of this after station paper, the back page has all kinds of interesting physical information, you know, the height, he was complexion colored, no marks or distinctions of any kind. And then it was signed by a doctor, basically saying he was okay. And you can list your faith if you wanted. James Douglas twins didn't. So this is the attestation paper and all these are available online. So basically, what I did, I went through that list of names on the war shrine, and look them all up. So I have all the demographic information. There's some copies of it over there, on these individuals, and then I thought, why not tell the story of this war. From there? We're leaping ahead. Why not tell the story of this war from their their date of enlistment? Because I was kind of interested in that, you know, they didn't all join up in once this 142 men. It was kind of interesting to look at the you know, the history of the enrollments and what was happening on the homefront that led up I what I'm trying to do here is placed that that war shrine in it sort of historical context, and I'm actually letting the shrine give us that context by going through the histories of the men whose names appear on it. We see the next one. So the war began, what was the ultimatum August 5 1914. I might not all have my dates completely accurate. But within a couple of weeks, this man left for the front. And he was the first man from Saltspring Island to leave for the Great War. And this is Paul Dion, who was in the French Army Reserves. And there was an article in Cowichan leader August 2019 14, said misure Mr. Beyond of North Saltspring a French reservist has been called to the colors and left amidst much demonstration last Monday and is believed to have proceeded directly to join his regimen in France. So that was August 20. And he left some time before that. So this was five days before the first country entered in BC troops left Vancouver, which was on August 26, when units of the first BC regiment left Vancouver for the mobilization camp of elkaar che in Quebec. So he has the distinction of being the first. Now this man was a unique man. And I won't go into too much of his story because I've given presentations on it, but he was in the French Army Reserves. When the war broke out, there was 300 French army reservists and BC who immediately returned to their units. And most of them, I guess, went to Vancouver and then took the train to Quebec and then or to St. John's, New Brunswick, and then the CPRF steamers over to France. And so he was, like I said, the first, but within just a few days, there were others left Saltspring. In fact, there were the next one was Robert Norton, who was born on Saltspring Island. And he turns up in Val cars che in September 16 1914. So he must have left around the same time as beyond, and made his way because these were men that, you know, felt the call to arms and wanted to get involved. And so here was a man born in Saltspring, to this family of Portuguese ancestry and left for the front. And he was followed shortly after by two friends. They must have been friends because they listed on the same day and they're both from Saltspring Island, and they're both from England. One was Max calth trip and the other was Alfred Churchill. We saw Alfred Churchill's name on on the Cenotaph earlier, and he was one of two brothers, well off brothers, who may have had some relation to the family, Winston Churchill. Somebody told me that and I'm going to I'm going to verify it. And they of course, homesteaded where Churchill beaches now and Churchill road that was there a homestead so he left with Max calcium, so they're probably two friends who decide to leave Saltspring to rebel car che and they enlisted on September 23. They also probably joined they were joined by another individual Alfred store. One of the story brothers and these were two brothers who had lived with Henry Bullock. And as we'll see a lot of the bullet so called bullet boys, young men who worked as farmhands ended up joining up in the Armed Forces offered was followed shortly thereafter by his brother cloud. And so and two others, Alexander camp and a guy named cm blindly, and they were men in the British Army, and blandly was a blandy was a captain in I believe in the Royal Artillery, and camp served in the Lancashire Fusiliers. Now, it's interesting of the of this group 12345678 Men, more than half of them were killed by the end of the war. Can we see the next slide? Of course, the worst started out was a for those who studied World War one it was, you know, a slaughter because they were the the the the commanders in chief were fighting a European War of 100 years. Earlier, think of Waterloo the Napoleonic Wars, you know, sending troops in Mass Information such as this one, this was a photograph taken by Paul Dion, from an airplane probably of his regiment, the 320 knights, French infantry regiment. And in the first days of the war, they fought and open formations like this. The Germans made a major offensive through when they began their war, the one that the Kaiser couldn't stop their mobilization, they plowed through Belgian, they crushed the Belgian army within weeks, and then they moved into France, Northern France, and of course, they had a pincer movement. They're heading for Paris, that the French army had to them off North of Paris. And after lots of fierce bloody fighting, mostly in the open where people were just you know, being mowed down by machine guns. The the army stalemated on what became the front for the next four years of the war, which is the Western Front, we have a good map over there showing the battle line basically extended from the pot of Kelly through northern France and ended on a nice summer in the east on the Alps. And so this just turned into a four to five no man's land in some places, you know, the opposing lines, the the German and the allies, armies were only meters apart. So they were basically you know, being fed into a meat meat grinder, this part stage of the war. Can we see the next one?
Speaker 1 19:43
Here to the story of brothers who enlisted right away now, there is some debate, we found Frank and I found several sets of photographs of these two gentlemen wearing suits, you know, in different poses, and in some they're identified as the spring foods and some they're identified as the stores So I don't know if anybody has any further information about that. But there were young, you know, British bachelors who felt the need to join up. And both these men, you know, joined up in in 1914. And within By the spring of 1915, a few months later, both were dead. They were killed within a month of each other at Yepes. The first battle eats in Belgium. See the next one? Now, this is the first group. So I've just been talking about the first soldiers that left Saltspring sort of on their own, you know, in twos and friends. This is a group of friends photographed on the boat on the way to the front, and it's sometimes referred to as the first group from Saltspring. But they weren't there, but they were pretty close. I mean, these men were all from Britain. On the left, we have Percy Lau there he is from Bristol. To his left is Norman Heaton. He was from Christiana Norway. Then Cecil Springfield at the back. So I think the other guys are the stores. This is Cecil spring furred. Next to him is Godfrey mills. And then I'm not sure about the order of the others, but FC not and Harry longdon. Harry longdon, he might be the one in the center. He was one who was a rancher who boarded with Alan ward. And of these friends, and they were all friends, because when you look at the attestation papers, you know, they every every individual is given a regimental number. And they all fall within the same sequence pretty well like 772. What is it 777212772127721377219. So you can tell they all went over there between November 1 and November 9 1914. And enlisted in the 88th battalion, which was the local Victoria militia. And the ADA Victoria Fusiliers was one of these Militia units and it was raised in 1912. This was part of the war fever, people knew that something was going down. And so young man, these men were all in their early 20s, I think the oldest guy who was 27. And most of them were in the 88 Victoria Fusiliers. And I'm sort of like my grandfather, he joined, you know, the 150/8 Duke cannot. And you know, thinking they would serve in this unit, when the 88th went to France, it was broken up, it was put into a reserve battalion, and they were basically just fed out to whatever units needed the the reinforcements. So the 88 actually ceased to exist after June 1916. And I bet it was really demoralizing to the man because, you know, they were all friends and they joined up with the intention of serving together in a certain unit and only to find once they're over here, they're kind of warehoused and parceled out to different units. This happened to my grandfather who served in two different units. After he, his unit arrived in England, and was turned into a reserve battalion. So of these men, three of them were killed, and the only one who returned to the island as far as I know, I could be wrong with Cecil spring for the man up at the top of the back and he was paralyzed from the waist down, but continued to live. He was one of the few untag, I think the only man in this group who returned to Saltspring. Did he? Okay, good. Yeah. And I also appreciate any comments because I've only been working on this for about a month or so. So if anybody has, I know it's a huge subject. And it's one I'm going to pursue more in depth to over the years, or the year, whatever. Hopefully before the centennial one anyway. So they left and so that was the end of 9014 and the end of 1914 brought a sad note the first man from Saltspring Island was died in the war. And that was Alexander camp. And he died on December 24, Christmas Eve 1914. And again, the information is very vague, so died have died in war, unknown causes. And he was buried in Kent, England, which leads me to suggest see what leads me to believe that he wasn't killed in the front that maybe contracted something in cancer while he was undergoing some training. But I don't know I'll find out more about it. So click on the next one. So so the war began and there was lots of excitement and lots of enthusiasm. When you read the newspapers and sort of the letters of the day you know, troops riding home. There's a lot of good books about it. Now combined mentioned one in the last driftwood book by Harris is really good on Vinnie Pierre Burton's book company. He's Excellent. You know, they contain a lot of firsthand experience about the war, which is the only way to really appreciate what this war was like, is to read The reminiscence of those who were actually took part in it. This is I hope I got it right. I think this is Willis point in Victoria, where a lot of the where the ADA Victoria Fusiliers train, and I think this is probably the ADA, it's on maneuvers. And so we find in the first few months that 1915 is quite a he a burst of enrollments, we had, what 16 men enrolled in 1914. And the number almost doubled through 1915 People were anxious to go to war. It was it was an exciting thing. You know, we forget there was a depression in British Columbia before the war started. So there was a lot of unemployed single men who, who wanted to participate in a great adventure. And this is the way it's described in their letters, you know, they, they weren't not motivated so much by country so much or by nationalist feelings as the desire to be part of a great adventure. Because there hadn't been a great war in Europe for 100 years. Nobody's really sure what a war would be, like. You know, I think they referred back to you know, the Boer War, the colonial wars, you know, the rial rebellion, these sort of things. But anyway, most many. So beginning in 1915, they were studying enrollments from the spring, all through, right through the war every month, couple of men here, a couple of men there, they joined up in sort of ones and twos. And but and then casualties starting coming in. With the first battle at Yepes. We had Alfred store was killed in in May, just a month after his brother cloud, or Claude. On May 4. Francis Corbett was killed may 22, Harry Long's, and one of the men on that boat was killed Just after he got there he was killed Claude store and Churchill was killed in the Royal Artillery on September 7. And looking at the stats, I think, you know, information got back to Saltspring pretty quick, probably within a month about these casualties and just seems to be a spike in enrollments, when people on the homefront got word of their friends killed, they all most, you know, there were 5123456 men killed within a month, you know, between in, you know, April May. And so I think people felt compelled to take part and and so they did Henry Churchill, the brother of ALEC Churchill joined up in Vancouver, he went to Vancouver and joined a famous unit, the 29th battalion known as Tobin's Tygers. Those of you who study Canadian CF, that unit was involved in a lot of heavy fighting, he survived the war, he only returned to Saltspring, to sell his property to other coin bees to still own it back in, they sold that in the early 1920s. This is the attestation paper of Jesse Thomas bond, who joined up in May 25 1915. And you see, he was in the military force, the ad hVF. So he's a member of the militia. And again, we have all these statistics, you know, he's born in Tacoma, Washington, his mother, and so on very, very valuable information up at the top is his regimental number. And this regimental number, for those of you who want to research your ancestors, or any of these men, you sent to Ottawa, and they'll give you like, a document like this is my grandfather's record. And it gives you almost a day by day account of him in the war. And you can collate this with the units and you so you can trace your ancestor and what he was doing on a given day what His unit was involved in his war diaries, there's an amazing amount of stuff. And a lot of it's available on the internet. That's where I got all this stuff from the internet. Sometimes it wasn't easy, because I was dealing with initials when you have some like, you know, our Smith, and you're putting are Smith, there were tons of them. So I don't have information on all 142. Man, I have information on about 130 Maybe. But there's still some who we don't have information on from the Canadian records. But they may be indeed indeed the in the British Army. If you see an X one, and here's his and these are great, they have the signature of the soldier and you know, the date he gave his oath and so on. Keep going and physical information. It's a really, it's a real gold mine. Here's another man. So that's Jesse Biden. He was he gave his occupation as a farmhand. You know, he worked for Henry Bullock. Here's another man who joined up
Speaker 1 29:37
to millions or miles. He joined up a little later and it's interesting to look at where he was born. He was born in New mulisch Bombay, India. And he was 90. He's born at 93. So, you know it's early or late 20s and gives his next of kin his um, his father major Edmond miles, so he's from a military family. And here's his occupation. He's a rancher, the sky miles. And I've been sort of going through the 1911 census to correlating some of these individuals with that. And I don't know if I found his information. So I'm not sure what he was just another single man living on Saltspring. And he joined up December 15 1915. He's one of the last to join up during the month of December. And there and during the December, there were two brothers from Saltspring, the lovelies. Here's just physical information from Maurice miles. And he was also killed in action to here again, we have these two guys, either story brothers or the Springfield brothers. I'm thinking there. I'm not sure actually. This guy kind of looks like to Cecil Springfield on the boat. Yeah. So we'll find out but both these men went to the war and served. Okay, see the next one? And here's an unidentified man, somebody may have a idea and who he is. And the farmhouse is kind of interesting. It looks like the beyond farmhouse. But I'm not absolutely sure about it. But he's wearing a militia uniform. This is an irregular uniform. Love to use some computer magic Franc and look in on his badges. Because every unit in the sea, the Canadian Expeditionary Force had its own unique badge. So by zooming in on his hat badgers lapel, we could find out his units number. Okay, next one. This is an interesting man, Augustus Laurie arrow, he was a good friend of he came to Salt Spring Island with Paul Dion. This man was born in Hong Kong. He spoke fluent Chinese. And he met beyond in in Vietnam and Saigon, and actually agreed to come to Saltspring island with beyond in 1910. And to work with him on his large farm. And so he stayed behind like beyond, you know, left very early, and left behind his wife with four children and, you know, large farm to run and he stayed behind to help run the farm. But by the end of November, he and and two other men from Saltspring, Alfred Byrd, and F spring furred joined up on the same day in Victoria. So they're probably three friends. And they joined up on November 11 1915. Part of the study enrollment of 1915, you know, there were these were. But again, there weren't many people who had actually been born in Saltspring Island. One exception was Percy Horrell, from the royal family. But again, the majority of these individuals 35 men who enlisted 1915 were, you know, people who had young men who had been living here from Great Britain, or the United States or somewhere else. This is Alfred Laurie arrow, he originally served in the in a trench battery unit in the CF. And then because he spoke, he wanted to get out of the trenches. And because he spoke fluent Chinese, he applied to be to take a commission in Chinese labor in the Chinese labor core, which were units raised in British Columbia of Chinese men, who basically just did labor worked, you know, building trenches, or whatever physical work had to be done. And so he rose to the rank of seven second left tenant, and never came back to Saltspring. He met a woman in France and eventually sold his interest to be on it again, and, you know, sort of an idea of the multicultural makeup of the Saltspring Island, people who enlisted and this is, of course, is what they were heading for. After the first you know, experimental warfare 1914, early 1915. They settled down into the trench warfare that most people are familiar with. And this is a photograph taken by Paul Dion in the trenches, somewhere, probably in Champagne. And these show his man resting, they're all just catching some much needed sleep, just sleeping wherever they are. And there's a sword and I'm sure that belonged to Captain Vietnam, because he was a captain in the French infantry. And they carried us swords into battle. And just gives you an idea of the horrendous conditions in the trenches, you know, we really have no idea what it was like, you know, clothing infested with lice and rats everywhere, you know, you just imagined and all the death and destruction and just the sheer unhygenic unhygenic conditions. And again, you know, just to remind you that I haven't got the actual stats, but I think it's just as many people died of illness and disease in these conditions as were killed in action. Next one, and here's beyond our beyond here. rose to the rank. He was eventually promoted to the senior staff. So he was able to get out of the trenches. But you know, still had to this is his one of his offices in the field, you know, well protected bunker. Next one, we have a lot of photographs of his. So 1915 rolls around and casualty start coming in, but there's still a lot of enthusiasm, you know, and, you know, amongst people wanting to enroll, so 1916 rolls around, and enrollments are slightly down. There's 33 Men enroll in 1916. And it's interesting to look at, in 1914 9015, the majority of individuals who joined up were of foreign birth, rather Great Britain, you know, some people from India, but you know, British ancestry or from the US. But in the first half of a 19th, or in actually most of 1916, a lot of Saltspring, islanders native Saltspring islanders enlisted, and one of the first was this man, David maxvill, who's BB Lingard. Grandfather. And he enlisted on January 4, in in a forestry regiment, again, we can see his badge there if we zoom in on that, but we have his regimental number, you know, eventually I'm going to trace the histories of these men in during the war. But for now, we're just looking at. He's going through the different individuals. He was joined a few months later by his brother, James Maxwell James enlisted in March. And he, I don't know if he served in the front row still, but he he died in in unusual circumstances, while traveling between Ireland and Britain. Isn't that right, Barb? Yeah, it's sort of mysterious conditions. And so he died in the war. This man was Harold Warburton, Warburton, who joined up in in the spring of that year. And again, you know, there were just native, so let's be honest, still, the young man from Britain, you know, who didn't have families, they're all single men, ranchers, farmers, decided to join up and enlist. Because especially with 1916, and again, in April, you see another spike in the enrollments, when words of casualties are coming in use the light went off here. That's all right. Yeah, there was a Norton, one of the first native born Saltspring, who left in August 14 died in the in the spring of 1916. And he died of illness, he wasn't killed in action. There are others here whose names are on the monument. I can't read them offhand. But 12345 casualties and this was probably from the the fighting it was happening 1916 In Song chorus, Assam, which, when you look at the newspapers of the day, the Psalm was having a very demoralizing effect on enrollments because of the horrendous nature of that battle. You know, it's just, you know, it was a meat grinder, where 1000s died, you know, within minutes in different actions. You know, when they're sent across these trenches into the, to the wall of lead into steel. So there were spikes in enrollments. When, for example, young Saltspring, or was 18 year old Craig, John Duncan Craig, whose family owned where Hastings houses now that little beach in front of it used to be known as Craig's beach. And it's often mentioned in the early you know, in the, when the early Brits are writing about Salt Spring, and they're the parties and stuff, they always mentioned, Craig's beach, and he was the only son of Leftenant, Colonel John Craig and his wife. And so he joined up 18 years old on in July in the summer, and then there are a few more joined up in the latter part of 1916 to WIMS is
Speaker 1 39:07
from sons of William winds, representing the black community of Salt Springs joined up and it's, it's kind of interesting to look at their tastes attestation papers, they joined up, they were not assigned to a fighting unit, they were put in a in the second construction battalion. So there may have been some you know, social restrictions in the second construction battalion was actually a unit of an all black unit of this of the Canadian expeditionary force that was raised strictly to do work. And forestry, mainly in France was attached to the unit at the Canadian Engineers and just involved but it was very important work. The construction and the whole infrastructure of battle you know, we forget you know, we think of war we just think of the soldiers but the for every soldier in the front there was a whole network of individuals behind and maintaining the infrastructure of war. And here we have Bazi. Elliot, who's another on the right, who was another one of the so called bullet boys, who enlisted in 1916. And a lot of these men never returned, not because they were killed, but they just, you know, went on to do something else found other callings, and didn't come back to Saltspring. On his left is one of the nightingales. And it's always interesting, you know, when you look at this monument of the war, the names that don't appear on the monument, you know, we, we have a certain demographic group that's represented in the names of the men who enlisted in the war, mostly a British ancestry. And you wonder about the politics of the day, it shows you that not everybody was supportive of this war, there may have been all kinds of other factors, you know, people did have farms to run they needed men to work on the farms, but just what makes you wonder about the social fabric of the island at the time. Okay, can we see the next one? So 1916 rolls out. And here's a before it does, though, this is one of the Lee's in lists. And this is either William Lee, son of Edward Lee, or the other Li, Melbourne Lee, son of Thomas Lee. We're not sure who he is. But they enlisted in, in 1916, as well. So we see the next shot. So this is, oh, this is taken in 1916. And January, February, March, April, May, somewhere in France, the names up there. And this is one of these aerial photographs taken by Paul beyond showing just the network of trenches. This is kind of the, the situation these young men found themselves in. You can see the sort of zigzaggy or the I don't know what you call that crenelated trench formation, the front is a main frontline trench. And these other trenches are, are connecting trenches where they could bring in supplies from the back, you know, to the front lines, you know, ammunition, food, whatever takeout wounded, so on. And you can just see the obliterated countryside, you see all the shell holes, you know, some of these and this is part of the collection we have in our archives. We have hundreds of these photographs taken by Paul Beol, who served as an intelligence officer for the the First Army Corps, the French army, so we have a lot of information there's not even available in France. See the next one? Here's some more people from Salt Spring. Gavin Mowat here. Now interesting thing about Gavin Boyd, I couldn't find any information on him is, you know, one thing about the attestation papers, they're not complete. So I you know, you can type in some of these names, they don't all come up. But you know, his his papers around somewhere. Next to him is, is Arthur Bartlett, a friend of his from Salt Spring Island. And these other gentlemen are probably also from Salt Spring, but I don't know their names. I know, it's anybody recognize these individuals will be doing more research on that. So the next one? So, in the newspapers of this time, you know, there's a lot of trouble going on BC there were 1970s rolling around now. And so we've had steadily rising enrollments. 1915 was the peak year 1916, almost steady, you know, a couple of less 1917 enrollments drop off significantly, for the whole year, only 10. There are only 10 men from Saltspring that joined up and listed and one of them was a draft. That was the first draft because the 1917 was rolling around. There was word was coming back from the front about the horrific conditions. There were political situations at home. I believe there was a general strike in, in British Columbia 1917 having to do with the death of ginger Goodwin, who was you know, was a war resistor, and prominent in the labor union. And there was, you know, a lot of people were really questioning the war, and the bloodbath that was going on, of course, 1917 rolls along. And this is, of course, the great battle of Vimy Ridge. I wish I had a picture of me, but it's probably not unlike this sort of situation. There was a huge spike in casualties 1234567 men from Saltspring were killed in April and May, this word would have got back pretty quick, you know, within a month, maybe even sooner. And there wasn't this corresponding spike in enlistment. And one of the individuals the young 18 year old Charlie Dean was killed April 10. And I don't think he reached his 90th birthday or certainly not his 20th and his father, of course, was a Methodist minister. So there was an increase in casualties in in a decrease enrollments in the first draft. And the first draft was a man named Lee Edward Lee, but I don't think he was a member of the Lee family because he gave his next of kin as his sister, Mrs. Harris in Victoria, but I don't know. That's something to find out but he and shortly after he was drafted, one of the women's brothers was drafted and this was kind of interesting to me because William winds had had three sons who had already volunteered for the war and yet they drafted his his last remaining son was at home and of course like the other ones he was put in one of these construction battalions and wasn't didn't serve on the front
Unknown Speaker 45:45
and so yeah, and so this is a QC the next one
Speaker 1 45:54
and just giving you the details, some of the names here so we recognize you know, Percy Hoppy, horrible up there, Percy Horrell L. Hamilton, Lawrence Hamilton, who was related to the Hamiltons of Fulford harbour, he turned up at the top was killed in 1917. Long Jenner course and camp These are men who enlisted early were both killed by this time. Here's that gentleman at L'Oreal and the lovely brothers, lovely brothers. Apparently, in this book, by Harrison, Vinny rich, they were said they were killed by the same shell, which is kind of interesting to me, because there's no record of one of their deaths, just the one who was killed in December 1915. And it's interesting, maybe they you know, in the war, they often, you know, there was no trace of any bodies, half of the casualties were never recovered or buried. And he was may have never been recorded as killed. His name appears on the Cenotaph though. So the local people knew that he was, had been killed. So a lot of brothers went, you know, the families, and so on. And a lot of people on here who we don't know much about, because you go to the next one. So so we have the situation, we have a horrific fighting Vimy Ridge, which was also you know, a significant victory. And the highest number of casualties suffered at any time by the population of Saltspring. But you know, and so this is where we come into this cultural artifact, this word shrine. Now, this was built on September 22 1917, and directed where the traffic triangle is now in Ganges. And the driftwood you know, identify this as early cenotaph and it is not a cenotaph, because it's not an empty tomb. I'm just starting to study the history of these things. They first appeared in England, in the inner city of London, and they were known as neighborhood shrines. And it was a way for, to kind of reinforce it and and support and garner your neighborhood pride, you know, they would build these little shrines on the streets, showing all the men who had listed from that neighborhood in the in the war effort. They started appear, and they started appearing in 1917. And this is when you know, there was a lot of pressure for people to enroll. And scholars have done studies on these shrines in New Zealand and Australia. In Australia, they erected these shrines in stone. And they actually emblazoned the names of everybody who enlisted, and everyone who had been killed. And the idea was to shame people into joining up. This was one of the reasons, you know, it was both to honor the fallen, but also to keep the war momentum going. And this shrine was not built by a local person. It was built by Leftenant. Colonel Marriott. And so I have a feeling he was in. I don't know much about it. You know, I'm still I'm still a lot of tenuous and a lot of information here in details, but I think only a military man would have access to the type of information on this, like, it's every enlisted man. And, you know, all kinds of where they're from and details on when they were killed in that. So it was set up there it was painted red, and put in a prominent place and decorated on three sides. But if the role if the goal of this was to increase enrollments, it didn't really work on Saltspring, because there was only one enrollment after this date, and one draft and the man who enrolled just about within a few weeks of this shrine being built. There's a 49 year old accountant in Kingsbury from Dublin, who felt compelled to join up and he's the only man because, you know, the island was tapped of it's sort of eager volunteers and but you know, there was a lot of pressure on people. But I don't know if this was universally shared by people on the island. I'm not sure I have a letter written by Madame Dion, who was the wife of Paul Biya. them and got it on display over here I brought a volume of letters that she wrote to her husband from Saltspring. And a volume of letters that he wrote to her from France from his from the trenches. And she mentioned the shrine, we're going down to see it, she said it was an event in Ganges and we went down. And she didn't know what to make of it. She didn't think it was a monument. And she thought it actually looked like a washroom an outhouse. You know, she, it didn't sort of fit into her term of reference, you know, so something for and it was a, an unusual thing. But to some of these people, of course, it meant a great deal. You can see over here on the podium on the right, that is the Reverend dean. And he must have known by now, you know, what he didn't know by now that his son had been killed his son, Charlie dean. And so he officiated at this, this memorial, and you see the people here, they probably all had some connection to man on that, whose names appeared on that board. And the beyond family that the young beyond boy, you know, they'd flowers, there was a, we see the next one, I think there's a there's a sort of the, yeah, there was sort of flower pots all around the base, and the young beyond. Lad laid flowers underneath the board with his dad's name on it. But here, you can give another indication of this function of the sciences, this honor roll contains the names of all from the islands specified, and who, from their sense of duty and love of country and freedom, responded to the call of arms in defense of our lives and homes. And, you know, this was a way to honor these people. But if your name wasn't on here, you've probably, you know, may have had different feelings about it. I mean, I don't know, this is a thing about artifacts like this. This is you know, material culture. And we have to look at him in the context of the day. And you know, why they were created. So, um, so it was one enlistment after this, actually the end. There's one more draft I mentioned William whims. So the war, of course ended in 1918. Three more solid Springer's were killed the last one? Well, the man whose attestation paper we started out this talk. James Douglas winds died April 19 1918. Slow shortly after him Joseph Mason was killed. And the last Saltspring to die was left tenant George George panes the royal field artillery, British unit, and he was killed just a few weeks before the armistice as of November 11. His name sir? Yeah, right here towards female, left Saltspring. To to die in action. So there's one more back there. Yeah, so that sort of concludes my talk. You know, there's a lot of things you can say about this kind of thing. And I thought it would just be an interesting exercise exploratory exercise to just kind of look at a monument like this, a piece of Saltspring history and see what kind of window it could give us in the world. And, you know, try to understand it through just sort of a brief survey of the names and the lives of the men who, who appeared on this interesting shrine. Of course, this shrine was placed in 1922 by the Cenotaph and Paul Dion had something to do with that cenotaph and others, you know, returned veterans. And so and the boards, this is something I've been putting a little bit of putting the word out just to see if anybody knows what happens in the boards that appeared on this apparently, were put in the original Canadian Legion, which was established on the island in the 30s by a lot of the veterans of World War One. And they were apparently in the Legion for many years. And then you know, since disappeared, but we see the next one. But there's this interesting document that is can be found today in the Legion. I don't know who made it. But you can see that the style of lettering is very similar to the boards and includes, I think includes all the names on the boards and a lot of additional names. There's some people I didn't mention like, like loose, loose more and others who did not appear whose names weren't on that original monument of 1970 and these were probably may have been men who, who joined up later or, or who were involved in the Legion when this this particular monument was made. But of the original boards, we don't know what happened to them. So if anyone knows it'd be kind of interesting to locate them. But anyway, that concludes my talk. Thank you any questions? Is there like like this on a piece? Okay. So anybody have any idea who made that? Or like there's a name here, but I can't
Unknown Speaker 55:23
Oh, was it?
Speaker 1 55:26
Okay. So has anybody ever seen these boards?
Speaker 2 55:30
Any man original Legion was the wild west now feels different. Right? But they just seem to have disappeared from the face of mass
Speaker 1 56:00
that race. I guess maybe we should take one last look in the basement of man Hall before they muck around with it too much. Everybody. That's very interesting. And I couldn't see anybody destroying somebody like that. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 56:22
All those paint fumes. But anyway, I just want to say there's a preliminary study. So I welcome any feedback or input and I'm gonna write it up actually as a paper one day. Okay, yeah. Really? Do you know who that was?
Unknown Speaker 56:42
Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 56:47
Sure, yeah, no, I hear you. I mean, it's like my granddad. He never talked about at all. Canadian. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. You mentioned Burton's book, because he mentioned the Canadian Minister of War. I'm not sure he was very flamboyant figure. He actually went over to London with the first contingent and demanded that the Canadian serve as a their own kind of independent unit. Yeah, curry from British Columbia. Arthur Curry. And they're both
Unknown Speaker 57:26
in a hospital
Speaker 1 57:29
that's right. Yeah. I wasn't able to find much information on him because he served in the British Army. And yeah, but his parents were from ran the Fulford he did Oh, he did okay. Oh, Inky. Yeah. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 57:53
That's the gentleman we saw there.
Unknown Speaker 57:59
Yeah, there was one. I've got their names in here. The was Edward Nukem Li. Yeah, he joined up on in October 1917. Oh, no, sorry. Sorry. No, no, no, that's the guy was drafted.
Speaker 1 58:25
He know, the two leaves were Melbourne, Kitchener Lee, who's the son of Thomas H. Lee, and William Hudson Lee, who is the son of Edward. Yeah, yeah. And getting back to this gentleman over here was mentioning about the Canadian self identity. When you look at the statistics on like, you could do a lot of statistical analysis of these enrollments. For the first two years of the war, they're mostly they are they anybody from Celsius, and mostly British ancestry joined up, and the Canadian started joining us. I mean, the native born when started joining them 1916 Just in time for those big battles like Vinny where they really distinguished themselves. And as Burton points out to and makes a really good point that it was sort of the frontier initiative, the gaming advantage in the war, because they were used to kind of outdoor situations and, you know, sort of tougher than the average European recruits. And people like Arthur Curry, of course, pioneered all kinds of special tactics to was a horrendous war. You know, its effects are still with us today. Because the end of the farming community on Saltspring basically, because a lot of changes happen
