Remembering

Ron Laidlaw, longtime resident of London, Ontario, was a war photographer with the RCAF during the Second World War. He was, allegedly, the first Allied photographer to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and among the first to enter the newly liberated city of Paris. He brought back with him a collection of Nazi artifacts and Adolf Hitler collector cards, as well as official photos that he took in England, France, Holland, and Germany.

Although this service was held after the Second World War, its content and symbols were redolent of the First.

Joseph Reed Sams enlisted in 1943 and fought with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry. While he was at the front, his family kept a scrapbook of newspaper articles concerning the major battles in which they believed he had fought. Throughout the scrapbook are items that are more personal, such as the telegram informing the family that Sams had been wounded. Other interesting items, added after he had returned home are a Nazi badge, Sams' campaign ribbon, and a fifty-Reichsmark bill.

After the Second World War, this wholesale and retail dry goods firm published a booklet to recognize staff members who had served in uniform.

Fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, this Montreal unit laid up its colours in accordance with military tradition.

The Remembrance Day service in Bathurst, New Brunswick, probably early in the Second World War.

The 1st Canadian Armoured Carrier Regiment, nicknamed the Kangaroos because its vehicles were intended to carry infantrymen, published this history of its participation in the campaign in north-west Europe after the Second World War, when the unit was stationed in the Netherlands.

Walter Arthur Wylie (on the right in this photograph) was a student at Yorkton High School in Saskatchewan when he enlisted in the 196th (Western Universities) Battalion in March 1916. He served at the front for seventeen months with the 46th Battalion and was wounded early in the Hundred Days Offensive. Wylie returned to Canada in 1919, to marry Blanche Robinson and begin a long career as a doctor. He treasured these souvenirs from his time in the CEF, and also kept diaries of his wartime experiences (currently being digitized).

Ross McIntyre of Komoka, Ontario, served in the Black Watch rather than in the Canadian Corps - but he still made the trip to France in 1936 for the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial.

Cecil Bruce Ferris, born in Kingston in 1885, enlisted in the 2nd Field Company, Canadian Engineers in September 1914. While serving in France, he sustained a gunshot wound to the chest and spent time in convalescent hospitals in England; during one of his leaves, he married his sweetheart Clara (known as Rosie) in Deal, England. The collection includes their marriage invitation, and dozens of letters between Bruce and Rosie that were sent to his mother Alice, whom Bruce kept well informed on his life, both at the front and in England.