Mapping the Losses of Kitchissippi Families in the 20th Century Wars
By Dave O’Malley with Jamie McLennan
Young men and women who are killed on active service are said to have paid the “supreme sacrifice.” There’s not much more that you can give than your life, but we posit that the greatest sacrifice of all is borne by the families of those killed in the line of duty. Airmen, soldiers and sailors who die in battle are lionized, and rightly so, but it’s their mothers, fathers, wives and families who are conscripted to carry the burden of that sacrifice to the end of their days. This project is dedicated to those families of Hintonburg, Westboro, Mechanicsville and other neighbourhoods of Kitchissippi Ward that lost a loved one in the great wars of the 20th Century.
The neighbourhoods of Kitchissippi are truly perfect places to start a career, raise a family, build a business and live out a life, but once it must have felt like the saddest place on Earth. Its avenues ran with apprehension and despair, its busy serenity masked the constant high-frequency vibration of anxiety and the low pounding of sorrow. Behind every drawn curtain hid anxious families, broken parents, heartbroken wives, memories of summers past and lost, the promises of futures destroyed and children who would never know their fathers. These were the years of the world wars.
There was nothing particularly special about the these neighbourhoods that brought this plague of anguish, nothing that it deserved, nothing that warranted a special attention from death. Indeed, the neighbourhoods of Kitchissippi were not singled out at all, though it may have felt like it was to its citizens. Every community in Canada took the same punishment, felt the endless blows to its heart, felt its life blood seeping away. Parents stood by while their sons and daughters left home, the routines that gave comfort, the futures that beckoned, and began arduous journeys that would lead most to war and great risk of death.
Some would die in training, others in transit. Some of disease and even murder. Some in accidents close to home, others would fall from the sky deep in enemy lands. Some by “friendly” fire, others by great malice. Many would simply disappear with no known grave, lost to the sea, a cloud covered mountain, a blinding flash, a trackless jungle. Some would die in an instant, others with prolonged fear and
pain. An extraordinarily high number would not come home in one piece.
Though it was not alone in its sorrow, Hintonburg was the first community in Canada and indeed in all Allied countries to feel a blow in the Second World War. The parents of the very first Allied service person to die in that war lived on Spadina Avenue. Pilot Officer Ellard Cummings was killed just a few hours after war was declared on September 3, 1939, when the Westland Wallace aircraft he was piloting crashed into a mountain in Scotland in heavy fog.
We began to wonder how many other stories there were in these streets and avenues. How many more had been lost? How many families were affected? What we found out left us speechless. In the age of the “infographic,” we set out to demonstrate visually what that number of fallen meant to each community in Ottawa by mapping death’s footprints. And so began a quest to find and map the homes of the loved ones of the fallen soldiers, airmen and sailors of Kitchissippi — Hintonburg, Ottawa West, Westboro, Mechanicsville, Laurentian View and others — the once young neighbourhoods of a growing city.
In Hintonburg and Westboro, as in most urban neighbourhoods at the time, the Grim Reaper took the form of the telegram boy who had the duty to deliver both good and bad news. Mothers, looking out from their front porches, fathers from their parlours, wives from their washing, must have cringed to see the young man from the Canadian National Telegram and Cable Company pedal or drive down their street, and willed them to move on.
Each pin on the map represents the home of the fallen’s next-of-kin. For the most part, this meant the parental home, the marital home or residence where a wife was living with her parents. In some cases a sibling, grandparent or even a friend was all the soldier could muster as nextof-kin. We used only addresses that were mentioned in casualty lists, service files or as reported in the daily broadsheet newspapers and cross-checked these sources for accuracy.
The 269 men we were able to pin to the map represent only a tiny fraction of the Canadians who died in First and Second
World Wars. But among them, we found the complete picture of these wars as it affected this country.
Among the dead of the “Great War” we found men who died on Ypres, Passchendaele, the Somme, the Battles of Hill 70, Amiens, Cambrai, Courcelette and Vimy Ridge. There were men who died in the opening months of the war and men who died in the closing days. Many of the major battles that Canadians were involved in during the Second World War are represented by someone in this group — the Battle of the Atlantic, North African Campaign, Defence of Hong Kong, Dieppe Raid, Battle of Ortona, D-Day and the Normandy Campaign, Battle of the Scheldt Estuary, the never-ending campaigns of Bomber Command, Fighter Command, Coastal Command, Transport Command, and the dangerous activities of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
More than 50 of these men simply vanished — vapourized by artillery or their own bomb loads, buried in the mud, lost on some nameless jungle track. Others disappeared into the English Channel, Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Irish Sea, or the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Their mothers and fathers would have no answers, no headstone, no closure as we call it today. Simply a name on a wall in place they will never visit, a picture of a boy in a uniform on the mantle and memories to haunt them until their dying days.
If this map included a pin for every family in Kitchissippi that had a son or daughter at risk during these wars, the underlying streets would not be visible. As it is, it reveals an astonishing toll paid by these families. Families just like yours and ours.
When the Second World War started, many Kitchissippi families were still recovering from “the war to end all wars” — parents still shattered by the loss of their children, veterans coping with the effects of amputations, gas poisoning or “shell shock” — or as we now call it, PTSD. The marks of that trauma were everywhere in Kitchissippi neighbourhoods in 1939 when the worry and pain of a new paroxysm of violence shook it once again.
This map is not about the dead per se. It is a map of the addresses of the nextof-kin of those who died. It is a map of
sorrow, a geographic depiction of the carnage on the home front and a way to change the abstraction of remembrance into a visceral understanding of the emotional damage done in Kitchissippi over that 30-year period.
We have made no judgment on the manner of death. If they were on a casualty list or in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial, they were included. The vast majority died in action or on military service.
In the last two years of the First World War, we discovered more deaths from disease — influenza and pneumonia were sweeping the trenches and accomplishing what artillery and mustard gas had not yet done. In the Second World War, there were fewer deaths by disease, but far more deaths caused by aerial combat.
It puts things into perspective when we reflect on the challenges we face today — homelessness, employment, healthcare, child care or work-life balance. Our stresses are real, but we don’t live in fear that our sons and daughters will be killed in a war. We live in a self-centric and entitled world, and it’s important to know that other families have survived far worse pressures and tragedies; that others postponed their happiness or even forfeited it for a collective cause. In the First World War it was for “King and Empire” (as misguided as that was) and in the Second it was to fight absolute tyranny, cruelty and oppression. Time, as it always does, heals all, or perhaps obscures all. It has put temporal distance between these events and our own lives. New families have replaced these families in Kitchissippi’s houses, and in turn they have been replaced. Though these men are now long dead, Kitchissippi’s neighbourhoods are still home to their ghosts and we should acknowledge their presence, should remember them in the name of their families.
This project began as a result of curiosity and then became an homage to the parents, brothers, sisters, wives and grandparents, some of whom carried the terrible weight of sacrifice well into the 21st Century. An homage to the Silver Star Mothers, the broken fathers, the shattered families and the solitary wives. God bless them.
FIRST WORLD WAR
1: Pte. Edward W. Archer, 1153 Wellington St. W (P)
2: Pte. Louis J. Aubin, 1123 Wellington St. W (F)
3: Pte. Harry Baird, Westboro General PO (F)
4: Cpl. Charles Ball, Gould St. (F)
5: Pte Albert Boisvert, 113 Spadina Ave. (F)
6: Pte. Arthur A. Boucher, Atlantis Ave. (M)
7: Sgt. Edward Bourgard, 64 Armstrong St. (M)
8: Gnr. Samuel Bradley, 29 Sherbrooke Ave. (F)
9: Capt. Alexander Campbell, 190 Bayswater Ave. (M)
10: Pte. Leo P. Charbonneau, 31 O’Meara St. (F)
11: Pte. Charles E. Beard, 95 Hamilton Ave. (F)
12: Pte. Harry Choquette, 20 Armstrong St. (F)
13: Pte. Edward Booth Clark, 113 Melrose Ave. (F)
14: Pte. William C. Clemo, 250 Parkdale Ave. (M)
15: Pte. Patrick J. Cronin, 124 Forward Ave. (PF)
16: Pte. Harry W. Davis, Prospect Ave.1 (M)
17: Pte. Lorne Dewart, 39 Spadina Ave. (F)
18: Pte Wilfred Dodd, Westboro General PO
19: Sgt. Wilfred L. Doyle, 60 Loretta Ave. (S)
20: Pte. James Edge, Clifton Rd. (F)
21: Pte. Alfred Evans, 12 Devonshire Pl. (M)
22: Pte. William R. Ferrin, Westboro General PO (M)
23: Spr. John L. Foley, 61 Rosemount Ave. (F)
24: Lt. Raymond G. Foley, 61 Rosemount Ave. (F)
25: Pte. Oliver Forrester, 339 Parkdale Ave. (M)
26: Pte. Frederick Shaw, 60 Stirling Ave. (F)
27: Pte. Charles H. Gibson, Main St.2 (F)
28: Pte. Elmer J. Goulet, 16 O’Meara St. (M
29: L/Cpl. Samuel T. Greenway, 207 Holland Ave. (F)
30: Pte. Robert L. Hamilton, Westboro General PO (F)
31: Lt. John B. L. Heney, Westboro General PO (F)
32: Pte. George L. Holmden, 41 Fairmont Ave. (F)
33: Lt. Edward W. F. Hopgood, Strathcona Ave.3 (F)
34: Pte. Henry King, 41 Champagne Ave. (S)
35: Pte. Nelson Labrecque, 91 Armstrong St. (M)
36: Pte. Joseph Ladouceur, ? Hillson Ave. PO (F)
37: Pte. Archibald Lapensee, 83 Holland Ave. (F)
38: Pte. Robert Marshall, 120 Hamilton Ave. (M)
39: Sgt. Charles Henry McAuley, 17 Rosemount Ave. (F)
40: Bdr. Fred R. L. McAuley, 47 Rosemount Ave. (XF)
41: Pte. William McLarnon, 315 Parkdale Ave. (G)
42: Pte. Daniel McLaughlin, 184 Armstrong St. (S)
43: Spr. James McNulty, 1153 Wellington St. (S)
44: Pte. Napol1 eon Michaud, 60 Stirling Ave. (F)
45: Pte: David Millar, 36 Huron St. (F)
46: Pte. Lorenzo Monette, 166 Carruthers St. (F)
47: Spr. Kerby M. Mooney, 8 Ladouceur St. (F)
48: Pte. Alfred Morin, ? Carruthers Ave. (F)
49: L/Cpl. Louis W. Morris, Hintonburg, unknown (F)
50: Gnr Martin Murphy, ? Victoria Ave.4 (S)
51: Pte. Lester C. Neuman, 39 Sherbrooke Ave. (F)
52: Pte: Leo Herbert Neuman, 39 Sherbrooke St. (F)
53: Pte. Arthur Joseph Newman, ? Holland Ave. (M)
54: Pte. William Oakley, 168 Bayswater Ave. (F)
55: Pte. Henry Pharand, 42 Champagne Ave. (F)
56: Pte. Alexander Potvin, 68 Armstrong St. (F)
57: Pte. Wilfrid Proulx, 114 Irving Ave. (M)
58: Pte. Peter Fraser Roy, 94 Sherbrooke Ave. (F)
59: Pte. John Smith Shaw, 110 Stirling Ave. (S)
60: Pte. Frederick Smith, 42 Armstrong St. (F)
61: Gnr. Alexander Stewart, 53 Spadina (XF)
62: Bdr. Albert Summers, 16 Gwynne Ave. (M)
63: L/Cpl Walter Wendland, 2 Richmond Rd. (M)
64: Pte. Adolphis Tapp, 48 Spadina Ave. (F)
65: Pte. Walter James Taylor, 44 Grant St. (M)
66: Dvr. George Thompson, Westboro General PO (F)
67: L/Sgt. Arthur E. Tierney, 66 Stonehurst Ave. (M)
68: Pte. Oscar Antoine Venasse, 23 Melrose Ave. (F)
69: Pte. George Williams, 476 Holland Ave. (F)
70: Pte. William J. Wright, Riverside Park5 (M)
71: Pte. Ernest Wellwood Foster, 80 Spadina Ave. (F)
72: Pte. Clifford Pack, Westboro General PO (F)
73: Pte. Richard D. Thompson, Westboro General PO (F)
74: Pte. James Tipson Greenway, 207 Holland Ave. (F)
75: Pte. Thomas Wesley Rawlings, 12 Oxford St. (F)
76: Pte. Dalton Richardson, 147 Bethany Rd.6 (F)
77: LCpl. J. Tourangeau, 76 Forest Ave. (Now Hinchey) (M)
78: Pte. William Trappitt, ? Hilson Ave. (M)
79: Pte. James Collins, 1153 Wellington St.
80: Pte. Rodolphe Allard, 42 Pinhey St. (F)
81: Pte. Ernest A. Bonner, 149 Holland Ave. (F)
82: Pte. George Braden, 284 Carruthers St. (M)
83: Pte. Wilfred James Smith, Box 16, Ottawa West (F)
84: Spr. James Alfred Branch, 24 Hilda St. (F)
85: Pte. Thomas A. Cornforth, 243 Carruthers Ave. (M)
86: Dvr. Walter Cox, 1153 Wellington St. (P)
87: Dvr. Roy A. Marion, 127 Spadina Ave. (F)
88: Gnr. Thomas H. Moore, 5 Richmond Rd. (F)
89: Lt. Goldwin O. Kemp, Westboro General PO (F)
90: Cpl. Frederick Gorman Hicks, ? Clarendon Ave. (M)
91: Pte. John Standing, 64 St. Francis St. (F)
SECOND WORLD WAR
1: Pte Norman George Angel, 417 Athlone Ave. (S)
2: F/O Joseph Ash, 1339 Wellington St. W (F)
3: Pte. Donald Edward Badour, 82 Hinchey Ave. (F)
4: Pte. Joseph A. O. Beauchamp, 126 Strling Ave. (F)
5: Pte. Orphila Beauchamp, 7 Merton Ave. (F)
6: F/O Robert Lowell Benson, 467 Athlone Ave. (F)
7: Cpl. Harold R. Blais, ? Loretta/356 Richmond (M)
118: P/O Officer John Thomas Rose, 5 Huron Ave. (F)
Where They Now Lie
Note: 25 from the First World War on this map have no known grave. They were simply vapourized by artillery and mortar fire or
in the mud of the Western Front. Their names are inscribed on larger group memorials created to honour those whose bodies were never found — such as the Vimy Memorial or the Ypres Memorial (the Menin Gate).
119: Pte. Roger Roy, 150 Hinchey Ave. (F)
120: Sgt. Sheldon Scrivens, 1047 Somerset St. W. (F)
121: P/O Albert Cecil Scruton, 82 Spadina Ave. (F)
122: Cpl. Frederick R. Shepherd, 86 Carleton Ave. (F)
123: LAC Joseph E. S. Sigouin, 328 Carleton Ave. (M)
124: Sgt. Patrick Ernest Sloan, 43 Kinnear St. (S)
125: Pte. Douglas Henry Smith, 55 Huron Ave. (F)
126: Sgt. Donald Murray Smith, 481 Cole Ave. (F)
127: F/O Leonard Ian Smith, 481 Cole Ave. (F)
128: Sgt. George B. D. Smith, 57 Hampton Ave. (F)
129: Capt. Albert N. Smith, 561 Brierwood Ave. (M)
130: LAC Norman K. Standing, 205 Armstrong St. (F)
131: Lt. Charles L. Stevenson, 470 Highland Ave. (M)
133: P/O Clifford Roy Sullivan, 558 Helen St.10 (F)
134: F/O John F. E. Tabor, 44 Westmount Ave. (F)
135: Sgt. James Harold Taggart, 43 Huron Ave. (M)
136: CPO: Anthony A. Tapp, 967 Wellington St. W. (M)
137: Tpr. Richard V. Taylor, 38 Duchess Ave.7 (F)
138: LAC William Mossop Taylor, 76 Clarendon Ave. (F)
139: Capt. Edward Louis Terry, 47 Geneva St. (M)
140: F/O Donald G. Tinkess, 624 Brierwood Ave. (F)
141: Pte. Ernest Albert Toombs, 151 Clarendon Ave. (F)
142: Cpl. Romeo Paul Tremblay, 67 Caroline Ave. (F)
143: Sig. Joseph Leger Trottier, 104 Carruthers Ave. (F)
144: Cpl. Joseph K. Trudeau, 1019 Gladstone Ave. (F)
145: Rfn. Wilfred Celestine True, 218 Devonshire Pl. (F)
146: Sgt. John Allan Ryerson Turner, 30 Cole Ave.7 (F)
Note: 27 men from the Second World War on this map have no known grave. They were mostly lost at sea on air or naval operations. Their names are inscribed on larger group memorials created to honour those whose bodies were never found — such as The Runnymede Memorial, Halifax Memorial, Ottawa Memorial or Malta Memorial
147: Sgt. Ralph Gilmore Wardlaw, ? Carling Ave. (F)
148: F/Sgt. Harry Arthur Wilkins, 376 Huron Ave. (F)
149: F/O Donald Arthur Willett, 66 Spadina Ave. (F)
150: L/Cpl. John G. C. Wilson, 145 Faraday St. (M)
151: Pte. William Wissel, 18 Patricia St.11 ( (M)
152: Sgt. James F. Wolff, 470 Broadview Ave. (M)
153: Pte. Francis Wright, 295 Sherwood Dr. (F)
154: WO2 Michael C. Cameron, 13 Champagne Ave. (F)
155: F/L Louis E. Murphy, DFC, 1069 Gladstone Ave. (M)
156: F/L Maurice C. Cuthbert, 1069 Gladstone Ave. (M)
157: F/L Joseph A. C. Bouchard, 408 Hinton Ave. (F)
158: S/L John Osmond Gilbert Cann, 44 Julian Ave. (M)
159: LAC Ambrose S. Fahey, 30 Sherbrooke Ave. (F)
160: RSM Henri La Branche, 1182 Wellington St. W. (F)
161: F/S William Francis Morin, 141 Hamilton Ave. (F)
162: Patrolman Merrill D. Walker, 124 Forward Ave. (M)
163: Cpl. Basil Donald Anderson, 539 Denbury Ave. (F)
164: F/Sgt. Ronald C. Brooks, 683 Melbourne Ave. (F)
165: Pte. Richard John Vahey, 2 Imperial Ave.12 (M)
166: Cook Edwin G. Whittemore, 318 Athlone Ave. (F)
167: S/Sgt. John N. Cherry, 354 Roosevelt Ave. (M)
168: Cpl. Joseph Wilfrid Gervais, 44 Ladcouceur St. (F)
169: Maj. Charles Edward Slack, 215 Holland Ave. (M)
170: Cpl: Benedict M. Fagan, 131 Parkdale Ave. (M)
171: Gnr. Harley John Shouldice, 93 Spadina Ave. (F)
172: L/Sgt. Frederick S. Coleman, 19 Hampton Ave. (M)
173: Pte. Michael J. V. McMahon, 2 Richmond Rd. (S)
174: Pte. Aldege Joseph Clouthier, 6 Armstrong St. (F)
175: F/O Benjamin Thomas Cook, 5 Huron Ave. (M)
176: S/L William Absalom Garland, 420 Parkdale (F)
KOREAN WAR
1: Gnr Urbain Joseph Levesque, 131 Parkdale Ave. (F)
2: Sgt. Stuart F. Cowan, 134 Spadina Ave. 1952 (F)
Air Force Ranks
LAC Leading Aircraftman
Cpl. Corporal
Sgt. Sergeant
F/Sgt. Flight Sergeant
WO1 Warrant Officer 1st Class
WO2 Warrant Officer 2nd Class
P/O Pilot Officer
F/O Flying Officer
F/L Flight Lieutenant
S/L Squadron Leader
Navy Ranks
SA Supply Assistant
OS Ordinary Seaman
AS Able Seaman
LS Leading Seaman
CERA2 Chief Engine Room Artificer 2nd Class
S/Lt. Sub-lieutenant
Army Ranks
Pte. Private (Infantry)
Dvr. Driver (Artillery Teamster Private)
Gnr. Gunner (Artillery Private)
Rfn. Rifleman (Rifles Private)
Spr. Sapper (Engineers Private)
Sig. Signalman (Signals Private)
Tpr. Trooper (Cavalry Private)
L/Bdr. Lance Bombardier (Artillery Private)
Bdr. Bombardier (Artillery Corporal)
L/Cpl. Lance Corporal
Cpl. Corporal
L/Sgt. Lance Sergeant
Sgt. Sergeant
RSM Regimental Sergeant Major
Cadet Officer Cadet
Lt. Lieutenant
Capt. Captain
Maj. Major
Civ. A Civilian lost to sinking or bombing
It’s personal.
Jamie McLennan
My Kitchissippi is a broad and diverse community, a collective of beautiful, sometimes stately, sometimes funky, always unique neighbourhoods — a social amalgam of hipsters, artists, civil servants, gourmands, small business entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals and window shoppers. It has been a pleasure to call it home for both my family and my business over the past ten years. Though we moved out of the ward a couple of years ago, I still operate Character Creative Services, my graphic design studio, from offices on Wellington, Hintonburg’s busy high street.
At the start of the 20th Century, this neighbourhood was a much different place. For starters, it was not called Kitchissippi nor was it part of Ottawa then. but rather a chain of still growing and largely blue collar communities strung out along the old Richmond Road south of the log-choked Ottawa River— Mechanicsville, Hintonburg, Ottawa West, Laurentianview, Westboro, Woodroffe and McKellar. So far out of town were these communities in 1914 at the start of the First World War that most had no street numbers and mail was received “care-of” the local post office. While it certainly was not the culturally rich, socially diverse, mixed-use Kitchissippi we know today, a hundred years ago its citizens were not much different than us.
Though we live in a time of accelerating technological change unimaginable in 1914 and 1939 when the world wars were touched off, families were much the same. Parents hoped to find good
work, a steady paycheque, a stable household and to offer their children a love-filled life with the opportunity to better themselves. Like me, some ran small businesses while others found steady work in the foundries, sawmills, breweries, rail yards and lumber yards to the east in LeBreton Flats or in the government offices of downtown Ottawa. It’s hard to believe that over 260 sets of Kitchissippi parents, no different than my wife Kim and me, lost sons in the wars of the 20th Century. Eight unlucky families lost two sons. Those numbers seem shockingly high to me even by today’s Kitchissippi population numbers, but back in the years of the First and Second World Wars, the populations of these west-of-Ottawa neighbourhoods were far smaller. The social destruction would have been unthinkable.
Despite the time that has passed (more than a hundred years in the case of the First World War), I can see visual threads of those years everywhere here in Kitchissippi. My business occupies the floor above Morris Home Hardware, an iconic Hintonburg business that has been in continuous operation on Wellington Street since before the Korean War. Many of their early customers were returning Second World War veterans who were looking to build a new life and home here in the same neighbourhood where they grew up.
For years we lived at 127 Hinton Avenue, just around the corner from my office — a working class street in the Second World War and now a leafy, fashionable
neighbourhood. During the war, just three doors down at 133, lived James and Marie Robinson and their three daughters. Their youngest son, Louis, was a gifted navigator serving with 404 Squadron in Scotland. His brother Earl was also overseas. Louis was killed when the aircraft he was in collided with another in 1944.
Now and then I will meet my hockey buddies for a beer at the Carleton Tavern, our favourite place to rehash the game. In fact, the tavern sponsored our championship team, the Carleton Tavern Wings, back in 2017. Long ago in this same beloved tap room where we laugh and shout and razz each other, proud soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Second World War, home on embarkation leave, shared a cold beer or two with their old school chums before heading off to war or, perhaps, they sat at these tables upon returning from the war to blur their memories along with others who had seen what they had seen. I love this place more knowing it has that history.
My daughters attend Ottawa’s storied Nepean High School. It was built between the two world wars to serve the growing communities to the west of Ottawa. I know that building and the youthful exuberance that fills it intimately. It is a very fine place for my daughters to learn, grow and graduate as young women. It’s a hopeful place.
In all, 642 former Nepean students served in the Second World War with 46 of them making the ultimate sacrifice. Four of the five sons of widow Amy Smith of Cole Avenue — Lennie, Donnie, Dave and Allan — were graduates of Nepean and served overseas in the Second World War; three in the Royal Canadian Air Force and one in the Royal Canadian Engineers. Her husband, J. Grove Smith, the former and first Dominion Fire Commissioner, had died in 1939. Three years later, Lennie Smith was killed on bombing operations in 1942 and Donnie, the oldest brother, would die in 1944 in the crash of his bomber while training in England.
The distraught parents of these 46 young sons of Kitchissippi would never see their sons again — even worse, they would never have the chance to visit their graves or the memorials where they are commemorated. Many knew nothing of the manner of their deaths. Closure was not an option. There was no spectacle of grief. No counsellors to
rush in. No disorder to diagnose in the aftermath. Because of this, people today make the sad and somewhat arrogant assumption that folks in those days didn’t love their children as deeply as modern parents do now. Those people are dead wrong.
During these wars, the death of a son in training, transit or combat would surely have broken the hearts of the mothers and the hopes of the fathers and left its ghastly mark long after the war. As the father of two daughters, I wouldn’t have had to worry about them going off to fight in the wars of the last century, but that didn’t mean those women weren’t at risk. Many parents, especially during the Second World War, had daughters who wanted to contribute to the war effort in a meaningful way and that meant working in war industries or wearing the uniform of one of the all-female services like the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (WACS), the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRENS) and the Women’s Division of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Others did the important and often dangerous work of ambulance drivers and Nursing Sisters in battlefield dressing stations, war zone hospitals and veterans’ hospitals.
Many of these young women spent their service life far from home in Canada or even overseas. They were at the same great risk crossing the U-boat infested waters of the North Atlantic as were the men. While their rates of death were significantly lower, (there were none in Kitchissippi), this did nothing to assuage the worry of parents waiting at home.
Kim and I are blessed with the decades of peace and relative prosperity that these men and women had won for us. Soon we will watch as our girls start out on their own life journeys — safe, hopeful and excited for their futures.
The sacrifice and life of pain carried by these 260 families so long ago is no longer an abstraction, but one I feel personally. It reminds me just how lucky I am.
Jamie McLennan (Character Creative) and Dave O’Malley (Aerographics) are both graphic designers in Ottawa. Each has built a business and raised a family in their respective communities and works to build stronger and more vibrant neighbourhoods through design, place branding, sponsorship, volunteerism and community involvement.
Brothers in arms
Many Kitchissippi families paid a terrible price in wartime. Some paid it twice.
BY DAVE O’MALLEY
Over 260 families in Kitchissippi lost sons in wars of the 20th Century. During these wars, the death of a child was a heavy and lacerating blow to every family, but back then it was often drawn out for many months, revisited again and again as each layer of hope was stripped away after the first missing-onoperations telegram. Many would never know the manner of their deaths. Closure was not an option. There was no spectacle of grief. No counsellors to rush in. No disorder to diagnose in the aftermath. Because of all this, people today make the sad and somewhat arrogant assumption that folks in the last century didn’t love their children as deeply as modern parents do now. Those people are dead wrong.
Imagine taking your teenaged son or daughter to the train station tomorrow and knowing that when that train pulls out there is a very good chance you will never see them again and that they might die in a terrifying and violent manner. This was the unavoidable gamble for Kitchissippi parents in those wars. Most would see their sons and daughters return, often psychologically damaged, but many would not. Some suffered this horror twice.
Eight Kitchissippi families had their lives shattered by the death of a son, and then months later had a second son taken from them. It’s hard for us in our soft 21st Century lives to imagine the heightened terror after the first and the crushing weight of that second blow.
THE MCAULEY BOYS
(left) and Fred Mcauley
Many families in Westboro and Hintonburg in the First World War were immigrants or first generation from Great Britain. When war was declared on August 4th, 1914, their sons felt an immediate patriotic call to arms for the old principles of King and Country. The McAuleys of Rosemount Avenue had two sons
of military age and it was not long before they took the tram to the nearest recruiting office where business was brisk. Fred McAuley, the younger of the two and a salesclerk, enlisted within days and found himself in training at Valcartier, Quebec just two weeks later. He was posted to the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in France. His older brother Henry, a milkman with Ottawa Dairy, followed a couple of months later, joining the 4th Battalion of the Canadian Mounted Rifles. Both were in France by mid-1915.
Their widowed mother Clara got worrisome telegrams as the war progressed. In June 16, Henry suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his head, hip and back and was recovering in hospital in Boulogne. A year later, Fred was shot in the chest on the frontline and was in hospital in Amiens. Henry was married in England on leave in 1917 and his bride Jean
travelled to Canada to take up residence on Rosemount and await her husband’s return. During their service, both men suffered other diseases brought on by the stresses of trench warfare, with Henry contracting severe appendicitis in September of 1918.
With newspaper rumours of an imminent armistice circulating for months, Clara must have had high hopes in October of 1918, that after four years away at war, she would see her boys again soon. That dream was not to be realized. Fred was killed in action on the Western Front on October 10, just four weeks before peace was declared.
Henry, who had never really recovered from his appendicitis, continued to decline, developing pleurisy and a massive pelvic abscess. On January 13, 1919, while most Canadian boys were boarding troop ships for home, Sergeant Charles Henry McAuley died alone in Bassingstoke Hospital, Hampshire. Two months later, crushed and broken by the deaths of her two sons, Clara died in her Rosemount home at the age of just 47.
The Second World War was but 225 minutes old when Ellard, the son of James and Edith Cummings of 46 Spadina Avenue became just the second Allied serviceman to die in the war and the first Canadian. The first died a couple of hours before when he lost control of his aircraft near London.
Flying a lumbering Westland Wallace biplane, a target-towing aircraft, Cummings was proceeding north from Aberdeen, Scotland to a gunnery school near Inverness when he entered heavy cloud obscuring the tops of the Bennachie Hills, a low massif that rose from the rolling farmland of Aberdeenshire. The Wallace crashed into the craggy and fescue-covered slopes and both Cummings and his drogue winch operator were killed instantly.
James and Edith were just coming to grips with the possibility that Ellard might be in danger in the months ahead, when there was a knock at their door. The telegram they opened had to be an utter shock to them. Of the nearly 45,000 Canadian families that lost a son or daughter in the war, the Cummings family had the tragic honour of being the first. But that was not the totality of their sacrifice.
Ellard’s younger brother Ken (he had four brothers and one sister), inspired by his brother’s early departure from the war, joined the RCAF as soon as he turned 18 in November 1941. Like his lost brother, he trained as a pilot, and the age of just 20, he found himself the captain of a Handley Page Halifax bomber with 102 Squadron of the RAF. The weather over Europe was abysmal in late ‘43 and early 1944. Despite being with the squadron for five months, he had only taken his crew on six “ops” over enemy territory.
On the night of February 19-20, Cummings took off with his crew, bound for a raid on Bremen. A few hours later, nearing the target, his Halifax was hit by a night fighter or perhaps flak and he lost control. As the aircraft spiralled down, he ordered
Charles
Ellard (left) and Ken Cummings
the crew to abandon the bomber. Only two men managed to get out of the aircraft in the chaotic descent. Ken Cummings, as aircraft captain, would have waited until all others in the front of the aircraft had left before bailing out. He never made it.
THE CASEY BROTHERS
After two weeks of embarkation leave in May, 1941, Sergeant pilot Raymond Casey of 43 Granville Avenue said goodbye to his mother Mary and stepped up into the car of the Ocean Limited in the dark train shed of Ottawa’s Union Station, bound for Halifax and was gone forever.
Great Britain and joined the crew of a 431 Squadron (now the Snowbirds) Lancaster. Nearly a year would go by with cheerful letters from John. The war was clearly winding down with the Allies pushing into Germany from the west and east. Mary’s hopes were for his safe return were growing, but German flak was as devasting as ever and on the night of March 31, five weeks short of VE day, John’s Lancaster was blown out of the night sky south of Hamburg, Germany. His remains were recovered from the wreckage by German authorities, buried locally and eventually removed to the large Reichswald Forest War Cemetery near the Dutch border.
One can only imagine what memories came alive in her heart when, eight years later, she walked alone in front of thousands at the National War Memorial up the stairs to place a wreath as the nation’s Silver Cross Mother, representing all mothers who sacrificed their sons and daughters in war.
THE SMITHS
He wrote to her often throughout the next year as he trained on ever-heavier aircraft and then joined 35 Squadron of Bomber Command as the captain of a 4-engine Halifax bomber crew — an extraordinary responsibility for a 20-yearold. In July of 1942, he piloted his Halifax on a night raid to Duisberg, Germany. Over the city he was hit by flak and the port outer engine was damaged. Unable to feather the engine (stop the propeller from windmilling), the bomber was difficult to control, yet he managed to get it back over England where he ordered everyone to bail out. Along with the flight engineer, he tried to bring the aircraft down safely but finally lost control and the Halifax dove vertically into the ground killing them both instantly. Mary received her telegram two days later. His younger brother John, a farm labourer at the Central Experimental Farm, inspired by his brother, enlisted when he turned 18 the following year. He was thought to be very young but suitable officer material. Upon his graduation from Bombing and Gunnery School he was made a Pilot Officer. In April, 1944, he traveled home for two weeks of embarkation leave and, on April 21, left from the very same train platform as his brother did. His mother’s trepidation as he pulled out from the station was now very much justified. John completed his gunnery training in
Like many the mothers of the men who volunteered for service in the two world wars, Amy (Wright) Smith of Westboro was already a widow and raising her family on her own — four daughters and five sons. Her husband John, an Oxford trained engineer was the former Dominion Fire Commissioner. They lived at 68 Helena Street at the time. At least two of her sons Donald (Donnie) and Leonard (Lennie) enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at the outset of the war. It’s possible other children enlisted, but those records are not readily available to the author.
Lennie, the younger of the two, trained as a pilot in Canada, went overseas and soon found himself as the captain of a Vickers Wellington bomber crew with 115 Squadron of the RAF. Shortly after joining the squadron on the night of October 6, 1942, his Wellington was hit by flak detonating his bomb load in flight over the town of Uelsen Bentheim, Germany. The
entire crew died instantly. Only fragments of the crew were recovered, and Lennie was identified only by his identity disc. Amy received the first of her two “regret to Inform you” telegrams at her new residence at 480 Cole Avenue.
Older brother Donnie, a file clerk in the Department of Finance, had joined the air force six months before Lennie was killed and was well on his way to be trained as a navigator, one of the most difficult jobs among bomber air crew. He embarked a troopship for England on August 25, 1943, for further training on the Wellington bomber at No. 26 Operational Training Unit.
On the night of March 23, Lennie and his crew were almost finished a lengthy nighttime cross country training flight, when inexplicably, the pilots lost control and the aircraft dived into the ground “from a considerable height.” The station commander wrote to Amy, assuring her that he and his crewmates were killed instantly and did not suffer, leaving her however to imagine the abject terror her beautiful boy endured as they fell from altitude. As was common practice in those days, he enclosed photographs of the funeral service and burial four days later. Parents often appreciated these mementos as they were likely never to visit the graves of their sons.
THE CARRUTHERS BROTHERS
In mid-February of 1942, the two Carruthers brothers of 278 Sherwood Drive spent a shared leave together in England. Carl, the older of the two, was a Flight Sergeant air gunner with 15 Squadron based out of RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire and flying in the enormous Short Stirling heavy bomber. He had been with the unit for almost a year. His younger brother Ford, also an air gunner, had arrived in England at the end of 1941 and was then with No. 25 Operational Training Unit at RAF Finningly. Carl and Ford, sons of Orrin and Beulah (Ford) Carruthers, likely spent it in London, enjoying the sights
and the nightclubs. They were a contrast in personalities. Carl was assessed in training as “Abrupt almost to the point of rudeness… excellent in character and habits… needs grooming and discipline” while the younger Ford was considered “well disciplined, smart in appearance, pleasing in manners”.
Following their leave, Ford took the train back to Yorkshire to continue training and Carl went back to the war. Not much later, on the night of March 9, on his second bombing operation since returning, Carl’s Stirling was hit by flak over Holland and the entire crew killed. By September of that year, Ford was on a crew with 12 Squadron, a Vickers Wellington medium bomber unit based at RAF Binbrook. Returning from a night operation to Duisberg, Germany on the night of the 6th, his Wellington was shot down over the North Sea, likely from flak along the coast of Holland. In less than six months, Beula and Orrin had lost two of their three sons.
THE ANGELS OF D-DAY
Harold (left) and Norman Angel
Norman Angel, aged 36 and his brother Harold, who everyone called “Buster”, aged 30 were ancient by the standards of soldiers of the Second World War. Despite their age they were just private soldiers in the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa. They were two of four brothers who had joined the army. Two others had returned to Ottawa, both suffering from prolonged illnesses. One of them, Charles, was a veteran of more than three years fighting in the First World War as well. Their mother was deceased in 1936 but their father Thomas, a First World War veteran and locomotive engineer was still alive. Despite this, in their Second World War service records both had listed their sister at 417 Athlone Avenue as their next of kin, though Norman was married to Mary Montpetit and they had three children in Iroquois, Ontario.
Raymond (left) and John Casey
Lennie (left) and Donnie Smith
Carl (left) and Ford Carruthers
REMEMBRANCE
The two waded ashore with the Camerons on D-Day along with 14,000 other Canadians. Three days later, Harold went missing. For days, Norman searched the front where the Camerons were operating, but his brother was eventually confirmed killed on the June 9. Four weeks later, Norman himself was killed in action in Normandy. They came ashore together on D-Day, and now they lay buried in the same war cemetery in Calvados, France.
THE HALLS OF HINTON AVE.
Warrant Officer Clement “Tubby” Hall and his brother Alfred were the two sons of Effie and Clement Hall of 420 Hinton Avenue. Both joined the RCAF in the Second World War. Tubby, the younger of the two was the second to enlist. One of his reference letters supplied upon his enlistment stated that “He belongs to a splendid family and is himself a clean, honest, energetic type of boy”. A recent graduate of Ottawa University he worked at various retail stores as a sales clerk to help offset his education costs. After he
earned his pilot’s wings, he shipped out to Halifax to await a troopship to England. It was there, with just hours to go before boarding that he married a woman named Mildred McPhee, who did not disclose her marriage to his family or her employer for fear of losing her job. Unknown to Effie, who was the beneficiary of her son’s war gratuity cheque after his death, Mildred came out of the woodwork, laid claim and was granted the money, which Effie was forced to return, despite the fact that Clement had named her as beneficiary.
Tubby, one of Ottawa’s best known college athletes, was the captain of a Wellington bomber still on a training course at No. 12 Operational Training Unit at RAF Chipping Warden. A part of the course, he was required to join in actual operations over enemy-held territory. On the night of September 6, 1942, and with little combat experience, he was pilot in command of a Wellington bomber on an operation to Duisberg. His aircraft failed to return. He is buried in Rheinberg War Cemetery
Effie’s oldest son, Alfred Hall, a draughtsman, was married in 1937 and had two daughters by the time he shipped overseas. He was trained as a wireless operator/air gunner and was assigned to 420 Squadron of the RCAF. On the night of April 30, 1944, his Halifax was part of a bombing raid on the rail yards at Somain, France, about 20 kilometres east of the site of Vimy Ridge. As his crew turned for home, they were hit by flak or a night fighter and went down in the English
Channel. The entire crew was lost, but Hall’s body washed up six days later on the shore of the Somme River-Abbeville Canal estuary close to the village Le Hourdel, France. When he was buried in a local war cemetery his wife would have had the right to decide on the epitaph on his headstone which reads “Now flying with a better squadron in a better world”
THE KELLY BROTHERS
John Lomer Kelly of 128 Breezehill Avenue was a cub reporter for the Ottawa Journal daily newspaper. His father, a detective with the Ottawa Police Department, had died before the war and his mother Mary Kelly took on sole responsibility for raising her four sons and daughter. Her oldest, Flying Officer Harold Kelly, was a navigation instructor at Portage la Prairie and her youngest, Richard, had yet to enlist.
John earned his pilot brevet on single engine aircraft and following embarkation leave with his family, he sailed by troopship from Halifax
to Bournemouth, England. After a refresher flying course, he was posted to No. 8 Operational Training Squadron, where he would undergo training on the Supermarine Spitfire in the photoreconnaissance role — a dream posting for a young pilot. No. 8 was located on the northeast coast of Scotland at RAF Fraserburgh.
During one of his training sorties on November 19, 1944, he lost control of his Spitfire and crashed into the North Sea east of Aberdeenshire. His body was never recovered, and his only memorial is his name carved in the granite panels of the Runnymede Memorial along with the names of more than 20,000 Commonwealth airmen lost on operations in Europe with no known grave. Around the time of his death, younger brother Richard enlisted in the RCAF. The war in Europe was winding down, but there seemed no end to the war in the Pacific. It was known that when the war against the Germans ended, many would be shipped to the Pacific, so Mary Kelly must have been troubled by his enlistment.
During his training, Japan surrendered unconditionally, and Mary felt her two remaining sons in the RCAF would now be safe. This was also not to be. During his training, he contracted tuberculosis, and was admitted to the Royal Ottawa Sanatorium (the presentday Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre), where he died just two days before Christmas, 1945.
