Remembering

A Winnipeg tradition was the Armistice Day dinner hosted at the Fort Garry Hotel by the 90th Regiment, Winnipeg Rifles, to honour the battalions it had helped to recruit for service in the First World War.

In this leaflet, the Canadian Legion's Manitoba Command provided a suggested order of service for Armistice Day and reprinted John McCrae's famous poem "In Flanders Fields" - although the author's name and the date of the poem are given incorrectly.

John Bridgman of Roseland, Ontario, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1943 and qualified as a bomb aimer at #9 Air Observer School in St Johns, Quebec. Amongst his wartime souvenirs are a certificate indicating that he had completed a tour of operations and aerial photographs taken on some of the bombing raids in which he participated.

Ceremonies that involved placing flowers on the graves of ex-soldiers were common across Canada, and usually followed the same pattern as this service in Morden, Manitoba.

Despite the inscription that suggests he enlisted voluntarily, Percy Norris of Sprague, Manitoba, was actually conscripted in May 1918. The fact that he later ordered this souvenir scroll suggests that he was not a reluctant conscript.

This colourful scroll was available in both French and English, and could be personalized (following the suggestions on the back) by adding the details of an individual's service career.

John Bridgman served with the 5th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, during the First World War, and was wounded and evacuated home to Saskatchewan in 1917. Nearly thirty years later, he spoke at a Remembrance Day assembly in London, Ontario, and told high school students of his experiences during the war.

This address, read over the network of the Canadian Radio Commission on Remembrance Day 1935, compared the Unknown Soldier to Jesus Christ.

John “Jack” Smith was born in Scotland in 1906 and came to Canada as a teenager. He enlisted early in the Second World War, serving in the 5th Field Ambulance of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. While he was overseas, he sent snapshots and other souvenirs of his travels to his family in Hamilton, Ontario, to show them the more mundane parts of serving in the army: field exercises, barracks life, an inspection by the King and Queen, and the surroundings in Spitzbergen, Russia, where he was posted for a short time in 1941.

This 1938 financial statement of the Canadian Legion has a curious hand-written notation on it: "Legion cigarettes."