the north grenville
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TIMES
Vol. 3, No. 44
The Voice of North Grenville
November 4, 2015
Remembering: 1915 - 2015
The North Grenville Times is Locally Owned and Operated
Merrickville/ Wolford Times First Edition Page 11
Image courtesy of Donna Hummel-Small by David Shanahan One hundred years ago, Canadians were facing the second Christmas of World War I. The initial euphoria and outpouring of patriotism that had marked those first months had largely dissipated, as news began filtering home of Canadian casualties at Ypres, of poison gas being used by both sides, of trenches and mud and machine guns and barbed
wire. But this was a new kind of warfare for those on the Home Front too. In our issue this week, we remember those days, the events and reports that reached the homes in Oxford, South Gower, Kemptville, Merrickville and Wolford. So far away from the battles, yet intimately connected through Red Cross collections, letters and postcards, and newspaper reports, the people left at home were part
of the conflict in a way Canadians had seldom known before. By the end of the year, more than 200,000 Canadians had enlisted, a far higher number than ever imagined in the late summer of 1914. 50,000 of them were already in the trenches, and another 60,000 were finishing their training in England before shipping over to France. Prime Minister Robert Borden announced in Parlia-
ment that he had committed Canada to supply 500,000 in total in support of the British Empire. He, and the Canadian people, realised that a long war lay ahead of them. Even so, with the long agony of Gallipoli as a warning, they could not have known that the following year was to bring new placenames into their minds and hearts, names that would be forever part of their lives: Verdun, the Somme.