CEFRG – Canadian Expeditionary Force Research Group 1914-1919

  • No.3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) in the Great War

    No.3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) in the Great War

    No.3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) in the Great War describes the origins of the unit beginning in August 1914 with Herbert Stanley Birkett, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University, until May 1916. The Call to Arms (4 August 1914 – 5 May 1915) Origins of No.3 Canadian General Hospital When war declared…

  • Company Quartermaster Sergeant William Alexander in the Great War

    Company Quartermaster Sergeant William Alexander in the Great War

    Shot at Dawn CEFRG presents the account of an execution, a soldier Shot at Dawn. The date of his death indicates the account must be that of Company Quartermaster Sergeant William Alexander. CQMS Alexander served with the 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion (Alberta Regiment). This Shot at Dawn story comes from Canon F. G. Scott in…

  • Corporal Percy Harper Reeves in the Great War

    Corporal Percy Harper Reeves in the Great War

    Married to the Pecqueur Sisters of St-Pol-sur-Ternoise Corporal Percy Harper Reeves 422314 enlisted with the 44th Battalion, at twenty-two years of age, in Winnipeg on 18 March 1915. He stood 5′ 8″ tall, with a scar over the left eye. Dark complexion, brown eyes, and black hair. Born in Parishville, NY on 27 August 1893.…

  • Corporal Filip Konowal VC in the Great War

    Corporal Filip Konowal VC in the Great War

    Ten years following the Great War, Corporal Filip Konowal VC, a homeless veteran, living on the streets in the nation’s capital. “…the Victoria Cross does not protect a man from poverty.” Liberal MP John James Kinley According to Brigadier General (Ret’d) Alan Mulawyshyn, deputy executive director of the charity Veteran’s House Canada, more than 100…

  • Lieutenant Ivor Castle in the Great War

    Lieutenant Ivor Castle in the Great War

    Lieutenant Ivor Castle, the second of the three CWRO photographers, and the first war photographer of the Daily Mirror in the Great War. “At Liege I listened to a bombardment such as I had never heard in the Balkan wars; and yet the bombardment of Liege was but a dull firework display, an exhibition for…

  • Monday, 10 February 1919, in the Great War

    Monday, 10 February 1919, in the Great War

    While Spartacans on the rampage in Berlin, the Irish Guards hockey game held at Cologne, Germany on Monday, 10 February 1919. No Canadians attended – 1st Canadian Division HQ had closed at Marienburg on 12 January 1919. CEF participation in the Allied Occupation of Germany lasted only a month. Meanwhile in Paris, the Supreme War…

  • Private Edmund E Hopey in the Great War

    Private Edmund E Hopey in the Great War

    Private Edmund E Hopey the first battlefield casualty of the 14th Battalion (Royal Montreal Regiment), CEF in the Great War. The Royal Montreal Regiment (RMR) experienced death on the battlefield for the first time in March of 1915 just prior to the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle. This the story of Private Edmund E Hopey and the RMR’s initiation in battle. The…

  • Sapper Roy Abraham Shapcott in the Great War

    Sapper Roy Abraham Shapcott in the Great War

    Sapper Roy Abraham Shapcott suffered the misfortune of being the final casualty of the 123rd Battalion in the Great War, falling 14 September 1918. Roy, along with 1,000 men of his battalion, had formed the 9th Battalion, Canadian Engineers earlier in May 1918. Enlistment of Private Roy Abraham Shapcott The son of Thomas and Sarah…

  • Private Edwin Pye in the Great War

    Private Edwin Pye in the Great War

    Private Edwin Pye 21651 served with the 5th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the Great War. Born 7 April 1893 in Westerham, Kent, England, he trained as an accountant and working in western Canada when he enlisted in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan. Pye taken on strength as a Private in the 11th Battalion, E Company, at…

  • Lieutenant Leonard Aynge Edens in the Great War

    Lieutenant Leonard Aynge Edens in the Great War

    Lieutenant Leonard Aynge Edens 2547 the son of Thomas J and Margaret Mary Edens, of 39 Queen’s Rd., St. John’s, Newfoundland. The couple married on 13 February 1889, and had four children. Thomas Edens the proprietor of two grocery and provisions outlets in the city. This property at 39 Queen’s Road the site of the…

  • LCol William George Barker VC in the Great War

    LCol William George Barker VC in the Great War

    British Empire’s Most Decorated Serviceman The deadliest air fighter who ever lived LCol William George Barker, VC, DSO & Bar, MC & Two Bars, Silver Medal, Croix du Guerre, 1914-15 Star, Victory Medal, British War Medal, the most decorated serviceman in the history of Canada, and the British Commonwealth. LCol William ‘Billy’ George Barker, the less famous of the two ‘Billies’, eclipsed…

  • Colonel Redford Henry Mulock in the Great War

    Colonel Redford Henry Mulock in the Great War

    Colonel Redford Henry Mulock of Winnipeg, the first Canadian Ace, later the highest ranking Canadian airman of the Great War. Mulock and Sir George Perley nearly convinced the Minister of Militia that an independent Canadian air force should be formed in 1917. In the later stages of the war, Colonel Redford Henry Mulock helped develop…