Poetry

Once the reader was finished with this copy of The Busy East, printed in Sackville, New Brunswick, it was turned into a scrapbook for saving war poems printed in local newspapers.

In 1916, S. Rupert Broadfoot published this book of poems in aid of the Canadian prisoners of war overseas. 

Written by Private Albert W. Drummond from Halifax, Nova Scotia, the poem describes the experience of an on-duty soldier with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in a military camp.

This poem was written by Army Medical Corps’ Private Albert W. Drummond from Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was published at the Witley Military Camp overseas in Surrey, United Kingdom.

Albert Drummond was a nurse in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when he joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps in December 1916. He eventually served overseas with the 15th Canadian Field Ambulance. Judging by the titles of the poems, this volume was probably published in 1917.

These souvenirs cards, with original art by Lewis E. Smith, were produced in 1919 to mark significant events of the First World War, using the poems they inspired.

The Second World War was a less poetic war than the First had been, but there were enough amateur poets in the Canadian army in Italy to fill this collection of poems, all of which had originally been published in the military newspaper "The Maple Leaf."

John McCrae's famous poem inspired countless responses, including this one by R.W. Lillard, reprinted in a leaflet distributed at an exhibition of captured war trophies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Already nearly fifty years of age when he enlisted in the 193rd Battalion, Stanley Fullerton of Amherst, Nova Scotia, was plagued by ill health while in uniform and never got closer to the front than England.

Al Pat or "the Irish soldier poet" had served in the infantry in the First World War, and wrote about his experiences in a collection called "Rhymes of an Old War Horse." A sergeant in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, he also published this volume of rough doggerel about life on various Canadian airfields.