Toronto’s Fighting 75th in the Great War 1915–1919: A Prehistory of the Toronto Scottish Regiment (Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother's Own)

Canadian Unit, Formation, and Command Histories

Units – regiments, corps, squadrons, and ships – form the foundation of the Canadian military. This new series from Wilfrid Laurier University Press critically explores the organizational, personal, societal, and cultural themes of those units by blending traditional operational history with innovative approaches in military scholarship.

The warmth, kindness, and natural good cheer of the teenaged Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (born 1900, seated left) brought solace to convalescing soldiers at her ancient family’s legendary Glamis Castle, Scotland, during the Great War. She became Duchess of York in 1923 when she married HRH Prince Albert, who ascended the throne in Dec. 1936 following the abdication of his brother King Edward VIII.

In 1937 the new queen became colonel-in-chief of The Toronto Scottish Regiment, successor to the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion. She visited her boys nine times in Toronto and welcomed them whenever they were in England – always delightful occasions – during her remarkable 65-year tenure. To mark her mother’s 100th birthday, Her Majesty the Queen proclaimed The Toronto Scottish Regiment Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’s Own. (RCIN 2585074 – Royal Collection Trust/All Rights Reserved)

Timothy J. Stewart

Toronto’s Fighting 75th

IN THE GREAT WAR 1915–1919

A Prehistory of The Toronto Scottish Regiment

(Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’s Own)

Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. This work was supported by the Research Support Fund.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Stewart, Timothy J., [date], author

Toronto’s Fighting 75th in the Great War, 1915–1919 : a prehistory of the Toronto Scottish Regiment (Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’s Own) / Timothy J. Stewart.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77112-182-8 (hardback).—ISBN 978-1-77112-183-5 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-77112-184-2 (epub)

1. Canada. Canadian Armed Forces. Toronto Scottish Regiment. 2. World War, 1914–1918—Regimental histories—Canada. 3. World War, 1914–1918—Campaigns—France, Northern. 4. World War, 1914–1918—Campaigns—Belgium. I. Title.

Cover design by Blakeley Words+Pictures. Text and map design by Mike Bechthold.

Front cover main photo: Lt.-Col. Colin Harbottle (right) with officers and men of the 75th Battalion near Arleux, France, March 1918. Canadian War Museum, Maj. J. Falkner album (20060144-p11a). Front cover background image: Ernest Brooks, Men of the 8th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, going up to the line near Frezenberg during the Third Battle of Ypres, 5 October 1917. National Library of Scotland, C.2494.

© 2017 The Toronto Scottish Regiment

Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press

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To the men of the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion who served King and Country in the Great War, 1915–1919

Contents

List of Maps

List of Award Abbreviations

Foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales, Colonel-in-Chief

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction    The Road Through Vimy

Part I    Toronto and Mississauga Horsemen (1904–1914)

Chapter 1    Toronto and Mississauga Horsemen

(1901–1914)

Chapter 2    Canada Prepares for War

(July–September 1914)

Chapter 3    Samuel Beckett Organizes the 75th

(August 1914–July 1915)

Part II    Beckett’s Fighting 75th (August 1915–March 1917)

Chapter 4    Shaping Soldiers in Niagara and Toronto

(August 1915–March 1916)

Chapter 5    Bramshott and the New 4th Division

(April–August 1916)

Chapter 6    St-Éloi: Getting Bloodied

(Mid-August–Mid-October 1916)

Chapter 7    The Somme: Regina and Desire Trenches

(Mid-October–November 1916)

Chapter 8    Vimy: The Battle in the Snow

(December 1916–April 1917)

Part III    Harbottle’s Shock Troops (May 1917–November 1918)

Chapter 9    La Coulotte, Lens, and Passchendaele

(May–December 1917)

Chapter 10    From Vimy to Arras

(January–July 1918)

Chapter 11    Amiens: The 75th and Le Quesnel

(August 1918)

Chapter 12    Smashing Hindenburg: Dury Ridge, Canal du Nord, Bourlon Wood, Cambrai (September 1918)

Chapter 13    The Final Push: Valenciennes

(October–November 1918)

Part IV    Harbottle’s Men Carry On (December 1918–September 1939)

Chapter 14    The Long Goodbye

(December 1918–June 1919)

Chapter 15    From 75th to Toronto Scottish

(July 1919–September 1939)

Appendices

A    75th Infantry Battalion: Final Orders

B    Regimental Lineage, 1901–1936

C    Great War Battle Honours

D    Honour Roll, 1915–1921

E    Awards and Decorations, 1916–1919

F    Captain Bellenden S. Hutcheson, VC MC

G    Citations for the Award of the Distinguished Service Order

H    Citations for the Award of the Military Cross

I    Citations for the Award of the Distinguished Conduct Medal

J    Recommendations for the Award of the Military Medal

K    Military Offences in 11th Brigade, August 1916 to 30 April 1917

L    Courts-Martial Record, August 1916 to 30 April 1917

M   Commanding Officers, 1915–1939

N    Regimental Sergeants–Major, 1915–1939

O    Regimental Choruses of the 9th Mississauga Horse and the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion

Notes

Index

List of Maps

Operations of the CEF/Canadian Corps, 1915–1918

The Somme campaign, Jul.–Nov. 1916

The Somme – Ancre Heights: 4th Canadian Division at Desire Trench, Nov. 1916.

4th Canadian Division trench (gas) raid at Vimy Ridge, 1 Mar. 1917

Vimy campaign, 9–12 Apr. 1917

Vimy 4th Canadian Division sector

Canadian front around La Coulotte, south of Lens, May–Jun. 1917

75th Battalion trench raid, La Coulotte, 8–9 Jun. 1917

Hill 70 and Lens

Passchendaele, Oct.–Nov. 1917

Passchendaele – 75th Battalion

Amiens, 8–26 Aug. 1918

Arras, 26 Aug.–5 Sep. 1918

Canal du Nord, Bourlon Wood, and Cambrai, 27 Sep.–11 Oct. 1918

Final Advance – Valenciennes to Mons, 22 Oct.–11 Nov. 1918

4th Canadian Division trench (gas) raid at Vimy Ridge, 1 Mar. 1917

List of Award Abbreviations

DCM – Distinguished Conduct Medal

DFC – Distinguished Flying Cross

DSO – Distinguished Service Order

ED – Efficiency Decoration

MBE – Member of the Order of the British Empire

MC – Military Cross

MiD – Mention-in-Despatches

MM – Military Medal

MSM – Meritorious Service Medal

VC – Victoria Cross

VD – Volunteer Decoration

In 2002, I was enormously proud to become your Colonel-in-Chief, following in the footsteps of my beloved Grandmother, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who filled the appointment with love and devotion for sixty-five years.

I was prouder still when, accompanied by my wife, I presented new Queen’s and Regimental Colours to my Regiment in November 2009 on the campus of the University of Toronto. The Colours I presented that day were a symbol of the loyalty and devotion to duty which marked the service of The 75th (Mississauga) Battalion in the First World War, and The Toronto Scottish Regiment in the Second World War.

This history covers the activities of The 75th Battalion from its formation in 1915 to its transition to The Toronto Scottish Regiment in 1921. I read with interest that in July 1916, my Great-Grandfather, King George V, inspected the Battalion at Bramshott Camp, near Aldershot. And in October 1918, my Great Uncle, Edward, Prince of Wales, visited the 75th Battalion near the village of Haveluy, in France, spending two hours touring the lines and left the kindliest of impression behind.

It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to write this foreword, and I hope that this history will delight and inspire those who read it.

In closing, I send my best wishes to all who have served, or who continue to serve, in my Regiment.

Preface

Late in and following the Great War, many Canadian regiments set about preparing their wartime histories, while memories were fresh. These were usually written by veterans. There were two early birds in the 4th Canadian Division’s 11th Brigade, to which the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion belonged. The 54th (British Columbia) Battalion, keen to give the men a printed keepsake, produced a short history while billeted in Belgium in 1919; the 102nd (North British Columbians) Battalion’s history appeared in October 1919. Both books relied heavily on the War Diary, a daily record of happenings in a war zone that every battalion had to keep.

In the 1920s, with time for proper gathering and assessment of information, a spate of regimental histories emerged. In 1923 came Lieutenant Professor Ralph Hodder-Williams’s lavishly illustrated two volumes about the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI), published in England by the author’s family’s firm Hodder and Stoughton; in 1925, Robert C. Fetherstonhaugh’s volume on the 13th Battalion Royal Highlanders; and in 1925, Sir Andrew Macphail’s history of the Canadian Army Medical Services. The next year brought Captain S.G. Bennett’s account of the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles and Fetherstonhaugh’s of the 14th (Royal Montreal) Battalion.

As thorough and beautifully produced as Hodder-William’s PPCLI volumes was Lieutenant-Colonel H.M. Urquhart’s The History of the 16th Battalion in the Great War 1914–1919 (1932). That same year, Kim Beattie’s 48th Highlanders of Canada, 1891–1928 covered the regiment’s beginnings and its history through the Great War, during which it raised and supplied soldiers for the 15th, 92nd, and 134th Battalions overseas. Major D.J. Corrigall released his history of the 20th Battalion in 1935. These histories and others from the period covered events and personalities in great detail, illuminating these units’ experiences in the Great War.

The one glaring omission was an official history of the Canadian Corps. In 1921, Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid, director of the army’s historical section, began the project, planning eight volumes; however, by 1938 he had produced but one, on the first year of the war, with a separate book of documents. The outbreak of European war the following year shelved the project for the duration. In the mid-1950s, official war historian Colonel Gerald Nicholson took on the task of completing Duguid’s work in one volume, which arrived in 1962. Duguid and Nicholson’s volumes provide an excellent overview of the Canadian army’s history in the conflict.

In the post-1945 era, publishers showed little interest in studies of the 1914–18 conflict. Signaller Victor Wheeler from the 50th (Calgary) Battalion began writing in 1960, using the extensive notes he had illicitly kept during the Great War. Responses to more than 2,000 letters he had sent to former 50th soldiers procured him a wealth of information, which he spent fifteen years writing up, but The 50th Battalion in No Man’s Land appeared only posthumously, in 1980. It is widely regarded as a masterpiece.

The idea of writing a history of the 75th emerged on the train from Halifax to Toronto in June 1919, as its commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Harbottle, was writing his final orders after three years of overseas service. He envisioned a regimental association to keep the officers and men in touch and to help them transition to civilian life, and he wanted a history. What emerged first was a capsule account in a newsmagazine, Six Bits (‘two bits’ = 25 cents; six bits = 75). With few contributors, it lasted only through 1919 and 1920. As the unit became The Mississauga Regiment in 1920 and The Toronto Scottish Regiment in 1921, nothing more happened on the history front.

Three decades later, Major Donald Grant’s CARRY ON (1949) covered the regiment’s experience in the Second World War, with a focus on C Company and a synopsis of its Great War and interwar history by Lieutenant-Colonel W.H. Watson.

Major the Reverend Dr. Donald McKillican, an RCAF veteran and regimental padre for over twenty years, produced short, pocket histories for new recruits in 1961 and 1972 and again in 1998. In the early 1990s the regimental senate (consisting of senior, retired officers) asked him to tackle the history from 1915 to 1995. After age and health prevented him continuing in 2001, he had a handful of copies of his 171-page history bound for interested persons, with a brief foreword by Major Geoffrey M.C. Dale, adjutant in the Second World War.

As I had undertaken extensive archival research for the padre and written for many years for the regimental association’s newsletter, the senate asked me if I would continue this project. I accepted readily, but indicated that, being a full-time high-school history teacher with a young family, I would have to do the bulk of the writing and research in the summers. We also trimmed back the scope and scale of the project, from a comprehensive history to the story of the 75th Battalion in the Great War. The centennials of that conflict were approaching, and it was time to act.

I spent several weeks over a few summers (late 1990s) in Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the Directorate of History/Heritage (DHH, or DHist), Ottawa, studying primary source materials: the war diaries (now online) of the 75th Battalion of the 11th Brigade, and of that brigade’s other battalions – the 54th, the 87th (Canadian Grenadier Guards, Montreal), and the 102nd – as well as operation orders, after-action reports, and the correspondence of Brigadier Victor Odlum, commanding the 11th Brigade. Each summer toward the end of my Ottawa stays, my family would travel by train to visit; the water slide at the hotel is one of my daughter’s favourite memories of these stays.

The families of three veterans of the 75th had published the overseas diaries of John Harold Becker (Silhouettes of the Great War, 2001), Bert Cooke (We’re Not Dead Yet, 2004), and Stanley Lemmex (One Soldier’s Story, 1989). The diary of a fourth – Laurence B. Ramsay – was available through the family. I had a chance to speak with two veterans – George Robertson (Ottawa, April 1990) and Geoffrey McCulloch (Toronto, December 1993). Other information came through personal letters, newspaper articles and stories, and a plethora of secondary sources, including the works of some of Canada’s premier military historians and popular authors, past and present, including Pierre Berton, Norm Christie, Daniel Dancocks, Jack Granatstein, Desmond Morton, Bill Rawling, John Swettenham, and Jonathan Vance. I benefited immensely from Tim Cook’s superb articles and books.

As curator of The Toronto Scottish Regiment’s museum at Captain Bellenden S. Hutcheson VC Armoury in West Toronto, I was always on the lookout for materials relating to the unit and its predecessor, the 75th, especially medals, badges, uniforms, trench maps, trench art, and general ephemera. At a military auction in Toronto some years back, I was able to purchase the uniform and medals of Lieutenant Ernest Jeffrey for the museum. Further research revealed that Jeffrey had been recommended for the Victoria Cross for his valour at Dury Ridge, France, on 2 September 1918; but, because of the surfeit of VCs that day, the authorities had downgraded him to the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

This history of the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion is very traditional in its scope. It tells the story of a Great War fighting battalion, its major personalities, and the battles in which it fought, all in the context of the 11th Brigade, the 4th Division, and the Canadian Corps. I have tried to convey the carnage of battle, the soldiers’ struggles to survive, the circumstances around the deaths of those who did not, and how they spent their leisure time and sought to restore, refit, and reorganize themselves before trudging back up the line. Also weaving its way through the text is the bigger picture – the grand strategies of the ministers and generals, the ebb and flow of the Allies’ and the enemy’s fortunes, the emergence of a distinctive Canadian force, even the disputes over the Ross versus the Lee-Enfield rifle and the mystery of the undestroyed enemy trench at Vimy. And underlying and embracing everything is the tug of home on the soldiers: Toronto, and the families that raised and nurtured them, whether poor, perhaps unlettered, or comfortable, perhaps university-educated. From a distance, they held dear their sons, or brothers, or husbands and followed eagerly their individual, extraordinary struggles, to whatever the final outcome.

The book has four parts: Part I covers up to mid-1915; Part II, up to Vimy; Part III, the rest of the war; and Part IV, the aftermath. Part I covers the pre-history (1901–15) of the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion. Chapter 1 examines recruiting and training officers and men, and facilities, uniforms, and supplies as the Toronto Mounted Rifles morphed into the 9th Toronto Light Horse and then into the 9th Mississauga Horse. In Chapter 2, as the Great Powers stumbled into a world war in summer 1914, we see Canada preparing to join Britain’s effort in France and Militia Minister Sam Hughes raising 25,000 Canadian soldiers, some of whom left for Britain in October 1914. As Ottawa (in Chapter 3) was rethinking the cavalry’s role in this highly mechanized conflict, the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion emerged by June 1915, under the dynamic leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Beckett, who began recruiting in July.

Part II takes our Toronto lads through training in Canada (beginning in late summer 1915) and in England to the Western Front by August 1916: to St-Éloi, the muddy, bloody Somme, and seemingly unconquerable Vimy Ridge in late 1916. Three months of training at Camp Niagara, starting in August 1915, began to transform these raw recruits into soldiers, and the balance of Chapter 4 sees more of the same back in the city, sometimes under the fascinated eyes of Toronto’s civilians, until Mayor Tommy Church presented them with their new regimental colours before they sailed for England on 1 April 1916. At Bramshott Camp in Hampshire (Chapter 5), the nascent soldiers prepared rigorously for France, intensifying and focusing their training more tightly in July, while headquarters launched a new, 4th Canadian Division, at one stage leaving the 75th’s fate uncertain. The 75th arrived in Le Havre in mid-August 1916 (Chapter 6) and headed toward St-Éloi, where the soldiers shed their blood for the first time, before moving on to the horror that was the Somme. Chapter 7 outlines the background to the massive and supremely costly Somme offensive and then follows the officers and men of the 75th into action there at the legendary Regina and Desire trenches in mid-autumn 1916. Christmas found them at Vimy (Chapter 8), whose daunting heights would occupy them obsessively for many months, until the great battle of Easter Monday 1917.

Part III takes the 75th, under its new commanding officer, Colin Harbottle, from Vimy’s aftermath to the end of the war nineteen months later. The unit’s principal engagements during the rest of 1917 (Chapter 9) were at La Coulotte in early June, Lens and Hill 70 in August, and Passchendaele, from mid-October to mid-November. The 75th was at Vimy again at the start of 1918. The spring of that year would bring one last, desperate German offensive (Chapter 10) before American forces joined the Allies en masse. As the Germans wore down, the Allies prepared for what became the Last Hundred Days, during which the 75th saw intense action in August at Le Quesnel, near Amiens (Chapter 11); helped in September to smash the previously invincible Hindenburg Line, attacking at Dury Ridge, Canal du Nord, and Bourlon Wood (Chapter 12); and, in the final push, advanced on Valenciennes (Chapter 13).

Part IV describes how, with peace at last, the 75th spent four months in La Hulpe, Belgium, in early 1919 (Chapter 14), waiting for their trip home, which brought them back to Toronto, where Lieutenant-Colonel Harbottle returned the regimental colours for safekeeping to (still-)Mayor Tommy Church. Harbottle set up the regimental association, supervised the unit’s transition in 1921 to The Toronto Scottish Regiment, sought affiliation with The London Scottish Regiment, and continued until 1928 to lead the unit, whose interwar history is the subject of Chapter 15.

This book could have been far more comprehensive and richer in personal detail if someone had written it decades ago, as Lieutenant-Colonel Harbottle had originally wanted. When I started, my intended audience was the regimental family, but as the work progressed I began to realize that other readers, curious about Toronto’s military past and Canada’s military history, might enjoy and learn from it as well. I hope I have done justice to the officers and men of the 75th in telling their story. I hope readers will feel that I have, at least in some measure, succeeded.

Acknowledgements

Many individuals have been strong supporters of this history and of this author. Colonels Donald Vance and Hugh Stewart, both former commanding officers of The Toronto Scottish Regiment, successor to the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion, were always ready to assist me in any way, although sadly they did not live to see our book in print. Over two March school breaks, Colonel Vance, his son Eric, and I together scoured the battlefields of the Western Front. Colonel Vance’s father had served there with the 44th (Manitoba) Battalion, he himself had read extensively on the Great War, and he reminded me often that it was far more interesting to study than the Second World War. He wanted to pass his knowledge on to me and walk me over the ground for which the 75th and the Canadian Corps had fought. Our guide, Major (ret’d) Gordon Corrigan, formerly of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, is a noted British military historian, author, and battlefield guide, who later helped me enormously with his comments on the Battle of the Somme.

Colonel Hugh Stewart, at one time chair of The Toronto Scottish Regiment’s historical committee and of the regimental senate, treasurer of the Hodden Grey Foundation, and editor of the annual Officers’ Association News Magazine, was a rock for me on every level, from the start almost until we reached the finished product. One telling example: he was unyielding in his support within the senate when my research revealed that our legendary wartime leader Colonel Colin Harbottle, CMG, DSO, had spent time in a federal prison for embezzlement. When Colonel Stewart explained clearly and forcefully why we had to include this unhappy but revealing piece of information, the senate relented, and the way Harbottle (who never hid the fact) and the regiment handled it at the time redounds to the credit of both.

During the fifteen years I was researching and writing this book – evenings, weekends, and school summer holidays – Colonel Stewart and I, in conjunction with the senate, worked on four other major projects honouring the Toronto Scottish in the Second World War: a commemorative plaque in Dieppe and a regimental monument at Point 67 in Normandy, France, both unveiled in 2000; a commemorative plaque in the Pier 21 museum in Halifax in 2006; and another monument in Meppel, The Netherlands, in 2010. I wish to extend my profound gratitude to the late Colonels Vance and Stewart for their continuous encouragement and kindness.

Major Michael Boire, assistant professor at Royal Military College, Kingston, kindly read and made suggestions on several of my early chapters; Major (ret’d) Paul Lansey, from the Directorate of History and Heritage, Canada, provided archival materials over many years; and former chaplain of the regiment and of 32 Brigade, Major Gillian Federico, translated French sources – to all three, my sincerest thanks. With great pleasure, I visited the late Colonel John Page, the late Major Rev. Dr. Donald McKillican, and Major Geoffrey Dale, all Second World War veterans, who frequently and generously shared with me their intimate knowledge of the regiment’s history through both wars – my heartfelt appreciation to these three men.

I owe a great debt to military historian Norm Christie, publisher of CEF Books, who always took the time to clarify or explain matters when I called him with a question. He worked from 1990 to 1996 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in England and in France, three of those years as chief records officer. In 2011, I had the privilege of joining one of his mesmerizing battlefield tours.

Many thanks to Arthur Manvell and the late Ann Melvin, former librarians at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto, who allowed me access to its collection of pre-1914 Militia Council files, Sessional Reports for the Department of Militia and Defence, and Canadian Military Gazettes, and who generously accommodated my research requests and answered my many questions.

I want to thank our former regimental sergeant major, Chief Warrant Officer (ret’d) Brian Barker, who took hundreds of photos of museum artifacts, some of which appear here; Regimental Association president Tony Partington, who obtained photographs from Library/Archives, the Canadian War Museum, and the Toronto Reference Library; and Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Duncan of the Governor General’s Horse Guards for allowing us access to his regiment’s photo archives.

A special thank-you to the late Captain Stephen Roberts, regiment and 32 Brigade public affairs officer, for his boundless energy and technical expertise over the many years that we worked together on projects, especially Proud to Be Your Colonel-in-Chief (2003), a tribute album to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother following her passing in 2002.

I extend my gratitude to Mike Bechthold for executing the maps in this volume and for his guidance in preparing material for publication. My uncle, Robert Verrall, retired animator and producer at the National Film Board, and my cousin, Paul Verrall, freelance graphic designer, made the map of the gas raid at Vimy on 1 March 1917, for which I thank them.

For fifteen years my editor, John Parry, offered me his sound advice, expertise, and, above all, patience as he broke in a green author. He was a tremendous support throughout and was always only a phone call or email away. We became good friends over these many years. I remember reading that editors make authors look good, and if I pass muster here, that’s his doing.

My mother, Dorothy Stewart, has been a wonderful inspiration and an advocate for all of my military history interests. In 1992, she accompanied me to Dieppe for the 50th anniversary of the disastrous raid of 1942 and was anxious, as was I, as I played a piper’s lament during one of the official ceremonies. My brother and I grew up hearing the Second World War stories of our late father, Arnold W. Stewart (Canadian Armoured Corps and Headquarters First Canadian Army), and talk of his brother – Robert A. Stewart (Irish Regiment of Canada), who died of wounds in Italy in 1944, and of his uncle Arnold Stewart (20th Canadian Machine Gun Battalion), who had served in Siberia in the Great War – and we loved going through his box of precious war mementos. He, his stories, and his souvenirs are what started me on the road to a career teaching history.

My wife and best friend, Donna, has been there from the beginning of my collecting, piping, history, travel with the band, museum displays, and writing. She always provided a listening ear no matter the circumstance and has become well versed in regimental history, having gone overseas numerous times with regimental contingents and walked many battlefields. To my adult children, Caitlyn and Robert, who have grown up in a house full of artifacts, I hope I have passed on to them a love of history, like my father did to me.

To the regimental senate which trusted me with this fascinating and moving project my deepest thanks. It has taken me fifteen years to complete, but I enjoyed doing the research and writing the story of a fighting battalion that Toronto had forgotten for far too long. Any mistakes within are wholly mine.

Timothy J. Stewart

July 2016

Introduction

The Road Through Vimy

Visible from a distance of forty miles, the two massive, irregular pylons stretching toward the sky, like white bone needles or remarkable stalagmites – even the skeleton of the memorial had become a feature of the French landscape.¹

On Monday, 9 April 2007, thirteen of my high-school students and I were standing at Vimy Ridge, exactly ninety years after that historic battle, surrounded by thousands of other students and war veterans from across Canada. We were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Queen, who was going to rededicate the massive and exquisitely restored monument. A beautiful, sunny, and warm day it was, quite unlike the conditions in 1917: freezing rain, turning to sleet, and very cold.

How can one describe such a moment? Having myself visited and explored Vimy several times when no one else was present, I found it a little disconcerting to see thousands of people wandering this sacred ground. Yet what a moment! To be walking a battlefield with enthralled teenagers is a moving experience. I asked myself when this might ever happen again.

A brilliant fanfare heralded the sovereign’s arrival, which generated rapturous applause. When she rose to speak, a great hush fell over the vast site. Her uncle, King Edward VIII (later the Duke of Windsor), had unveiled Walter Allward’s masterpiece in July 1936, his only official engagement outside Britain during his eleven months on the throne. Seventy-one years later, the Queen was there to rededicate it and to inspire us, and TV audiences in Canada, as her uncle had done the Vimy pilgrims of 1936 and Canadians listening on radio. She informed us:

Walter Allward’s Vimy Memorial photographed from the west, the route of attack of the Canadian Corps on 9 Apr. 1917. In 1922, the French government granted 100 hectares at the highest point of the ridge to the people of Canada to build a memorial. Its base contains 11,000 tonnes of reinforced concrete and its twin 30 metre spires, one representing Canada, the other France, and twenty sculpted figures that adorn the monument were made from nearly 6,000 tons of limestone from an ancient Roman quarry in Croatia. It took Allward and his team 11 years to complete. (Brandon Owen)

No fewer than four Canadians were awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery during the battle, though it could be easily said that every soldier in the battle demonstrated conspicuous bravery, such was the verve of the Canadian attack. It was a stunning victory. More, in capturing this formidable objective, the Canadian Corps transformed Vimy Ridge from a symbol of despair, into a source of inspiration. After two and a half years of deadly stalemate, it now seemed possible that the Allies would prevail and peace might one day be restored. To their eternal remembrance, to those who have so recently lost their lives in Afghanistan, to Canada and to all who would serve the cause of freedom, I re-dedicate this magnificently restored memorial.²

After the Great War, the government of Canada, following the British lead, erected memorials in Europe, with Vimy serving as its great national monument. The House of Commons created the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission in 1920 to oversee the funding and building of monuments at eight sites in northeastern France and western Belgium. The monument at Vimy graces the ridge’s highest point, Hill 145 (i.e., 145 metres above sea level), towering over the Douai Plain to the east. It commemorates all of Canada’s fallen soldiers of the Great War, and its soaring, majestic surfaces bear the names of 11,285 Canadians whose final resting place remains known only to God. Prime Minister Arthur Meighen told the House of Commons, The site of Vimy is beyond comparison, of the various battlefields of the war, the most closely associated in the hearts of the Canadian people with all that the war involved, in story and in sacrifice.³

Canadian sculptor Walter Allward won the design competition with a concept he saw initially in a dream. Work commenced at the still-devastated Vimy in the early 1920s: filling mine craters, draining mud and water from deep dugouts and trenches, and destroying unexploded ordnance. To this day, fences block off areas on the top of the ridge, bearing signs that warn No Entry, Undetonated Explosives. During excavation and later construction, workers unearthed numerous bodies and body parts, human and animal, friend and foe, treating each discovery with the utmost dignity and respect. They reburied the remains in several nearby war cemeteries.

Sculptor Allward sought the right stone for the memorial. Jane Urquhart observes in her superb The Stone Carvers (2001):

Nothing pleased him, not the warm stone used by medieval architects for the great cathedrals, not the cold stone used centuries later for great public buildings. He visited quarries in France, Spain, Italy and England: he investigated the possibilities of Canadian quarries, American quarries; he sent his emissaries off to distant corners of the world, rejecting their suggestions over and over until they quit his employment in despair. Two years passed, a sizeable portion of the money had been spent on the quest. Eventually news came to him of a vast quarry near Split in Yugoslavia. It was opened for the first time in centuries, so that Allward could inspect. Exhausted after months of travel, and after a full day of scrutinizing the face of the stone, a day in which he spoke not a word, Allward placed his hand and then his forehead against the quarry wall and wept. At last, he is said to have whispered, at last.⁴

The seget limestone in Croatia had the right colour and texture, was hard enough to keep edges, and was perfect for carving; it was durable, too: the Romans, 2,000 years earlier, had used the same stone from the same quarry. But how to get it to Vimy! With colossal difficulty, an army of workers moved 6,000 tonnes of limestone from the Croatian mountainside, across the Adriatic Sea, through Italy to the south of France, and then north by truck and train to Vimy. It took them over a year.

Mother Canada, head bowed, mourning her fallen sons and daughters, faces east toward the Douai Plain with the town of Lens in the distance. (Mike Bechthold)

Painstaking research sought to reconstruct the outlines of what Canada had lost at Vimy, as Urquhart penned:

The Italian carvers were beginning to work on the figures Allward had cast in plaster in his London studio. The names of the eleven thousand missing men were being collected and the complicated mathematics necessary to fit these names into the space available on the base was being undertaken. The most recent set of figures had suggested that it would likely take four stone carvers two years to chisel the hundreds of thousands of characters into the stone. All that remained of torn faces, crushed bone, scattered limbs.⁵

Twenty carved figures adorn the monument. The most imposing and most solemn is the figure of Mother Canada, mourning her fallen sons and daughters, veiled head bowed, standing alone above a now peaceful countryside. Allward did not want to portray Victory, in his mind there was none. There was to be no glorious proclamation of the defeat of an enemy, nor was the memorial meant to be a celebration of war. He decided on the following inscription: To the Valour of their countrymen in the Great War and in memory of their 60,000 dead, this monument is raised by the people of Canada.⁶

The monument stands at the spot where the 75th Battalion* attacked on 1 March 1917 and again on 9 April. The unit lost 208 men and 13 officers, including its commanding officer; 406 men and 16 officers sustained wounds; others died later or were presumed missing. The Vimy memorial enshrines the names of 251 men and officers from the 75th whose remains were never found. Two were Lieutenant Murray Winchester, nineteen, and Private Brenton Haynes, twenty-four.

Vimy was the first time the four Canadian divisions fought together; their taking of the crucial ridge in less than two days after previous Allied failures helped cement their growing reputation as the British Empire and the Allies’ shock troops. It also rather elegantly, if sadly, demarcates two distinct phases of the 75th Battalion’s war story, for it led to the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Beckett, who had created the unit and commanded it through the war, and to his replacement by Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Harbottle, who would lead it through the rest of the war and beyond, transforming it into The Toronto Scottish Regiment.

Among the legendary battles in which the 75th Battalion fought were five of the eight that, along with Vimy, Canada’s Great War memorials grace. In autumn 1916, it had served in the Somme (commemorated at Courcelette). It would see post-Vimy action in October–November 1917 at Passchendaele in Belgium; in August 1918 in the Battle of Amiens at Le Quesnel; and in September 1918 in the great assault on the Hindenburg Line at Dury and Bourlon Wood.⁷ This book in effect connects these and many other dots over the few hundred kilometres of the 75th’s thirty-two-month odyssey in France and Belgium as it moved – one unit among many, from Britain and its empire, France, and finally the United States – and fought with great tenacity, suffering terrible losses.

Eleven thousand two hundred and eight-five names of Canadian soldiers are carved into the monument’s surfaces, names of soldiers who went missing and whose remains were never found. (Mike Bechthold)

I hope this book shows clearly that the officers and men of the old 75th Battalion – nicknamed variously the Jolly 75th, Six Bits, and the Hard Luck battalion – served Canada and the empire faithfully in the Great War, at great cost. It’s a remarkable, harrowing, heroic Toronto story, well worth telling.

Recently one of the students from our ninetieth-anniversary pilgrimage of April 2007** wrote to me: Our trip to Vimy Ridge continues to stand out as one of the cornerstone experiences of my high school career.⁸ To all these young people, so full of hope and promise, To you, from failing hands, we throw the torch (In Flanders Fields) – not of quarrel, as John McRae suggests (those two-time mortal foes are our close and democratic allies now), but of memory. Let us not break faith with those who died.

*     Throughout the text, the terms battalion, regiment, and the generic unit and formation are used synonymously.

**   The author travelled with students to Vimy once again for the 100th anniversary of the battle, 9 April 2017.

Part I

Toronto and Mississauga Horsemen

(1901–1914)

Chapter 1

Toronto and Mississauga Horsemen

(1901–1914)

Carefree Days No More

It was 1 September 1917 near Lens, France, and Padre William L. Baynes-Reed, chaplain attached to the 75th (Mississauga) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), was drafting yet another condolence letter to send to Canada. (Mississauga in the unit’s name referred to the vast territory of the eponymous First Nation and included what is now Toronto). This time, he was sending Mrs. Pearl Hamilton confirmation of her husband’s death and expressions of his sadness. In the early morning of 15 August, Private Alymer Hamilton was struck in the back of the head by shrapnel and died instantly. In all your sorrow, it will be a satisfaction to remember that your husband gave his life and thereby made the Supreme Sacrifice, while discharging his duty to the full,¹ wrote the padre. By this stage in the war, Baynes-Reed had written hundreds of such letters home. He, like all army chaplains, had become a skilful technician with the pen.

One can only wonder what went through his mind as he wrote. Did he reflect on letters he had already sent and think about the ones still to craft? Perhaps his mind wandered back to happier times – to his family, his congregation at St. John The Baptist Anglican Church in the small Toronto suburb of Norway. Or to the carefree days of summer camp with the cavalrymen of the 9th Mississauga Horse, when there was no thought of war, certainly not one on such a scale of misery. Baynes-Reed had served in the 75th Battalion since its founding and, before that, with Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Beckett and the 9th Mississauga Horse. He had seen it all – he had been there from the beginning – and he would become an embodiment of the sorrow and suffering throughout the conflict. For many of the soldiers to whom he ministered, their military lives had commenced with horses, with cavalry. The unit that became The Toronto Scottish Regiment in 1921 had five incarnations before that date:

Reverend William Leonard Baynes-Reed relaxing at Niagara Camp, summer of 1909 or 1910. (GGHG Archives)

•   Toronto Mounted Rifles (1901–3)

•   9th Toronto Light Horse (1903–7)

•   9th Mississauga Horse (1907–20) – the militia unit that raised the 75th Battalion

•   75th (Mississauga) Battalion (1915–19)

•   Mississauga Regiment (1920–21)

This chapter looks in turn at the first three iterations up to 1914 – the Toronto Mounted Rifles, the 9th Toronto Light Horse, and the 9th Mississauga Horse – in terms of recruiting and training, officers and men, and facilities, uniforms, and supplies.

Cavalry Doctrine – 1900 Onwards

After Queen Victoria’s death in January 1901 and as the war in South Africa (Boer War) wound down, the Militia Department in Ottawa formed the Canadian Mounted Rifles. Mounted units’ flexibility of movement and dashing style in South Africa had made them effective as well as glamorous. In response to technological advances on the modern battlefield, a new cavalry doctrine was evolving, one that involved greater firepower. The cavalry’s traditional role – shock actions and/or full-out charges with sabres – would become minimal. The choice of principal weapon moving forward – sabre, rifle, or both – would shape doctrine and tactics and determine the cavalry’s role. Mounted riflemen, unlike their sabre-wielding cavalry cousins, could ride to a location, dismount, and fight on foot, as well as carry out detailed reconnaissance and, if necessary, support traditional cavalry formations. They were far more versatile and able to work in conjunction with artillery and machine guns.

Major the Reverend Baynes-Reed in Toronto before leaving for overseas in 1916. (TSR Archives)

This new doctrine followed trends in tactics that had emerged during the American Civil War (1861–65), in which armies equipped cavalrymen with sabre, rifle, and revolver – weapons for both roles – and trained them to fight both mounted and dismounted. Many experienced British cavalry officers, such as John French and Douglas Haig (both would rise to field marshal), wanted to keep traditional formations and maintain that strong cavalry spirit, but they also recognized a newer role for cavalry. They espoused the two-role doctrine, whereby a hybrid cavalry would fight both mounted with sabres and dismounted with rifles; others, including Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, considered cavalrymen less proficient on foot and rejected their dismounting. In Canada, Lieutenant-Colonel George Taylor Denison III, former commanding officer (1876–98) of the Governor General’s Body Guard, pushed for a hybrid force, with traditional cavalry using sabres and mounted rifles employed in a reconnaissance role or fighting dismounted. The traditional segment, however, would be just one-quarter of the total mounted force because of its diminished tactical value.

In response to these discussions, Canada’s Militia Department decided to keep traditional formations but added mounted-rifle squadrons, which became regiments, with the rifle as their main weapon. Implementation of the new doctrine was problematic, however, because training had not kept pace, and there was a need for new manuals and qualified instructors. Canada’s cavalrymen and mounted rifles would have to be trained from the ground up, and there was little time to do it.²

Toronto Mounted Rifles (1901–3)

The Militia Department created independent squadrons of Mounted Rifles across the country and gave them a letter designation, in order of formation. Squadrons had an upper establishment of about 160 officers and men. Winnipeg’s A Squadron became part of the Permanent Active Militia (PAM). By 1909 Ottawa had renamed it Strathcona’s Horse after the Boer War unit of the same name, and, in 1911, Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians).³ Ottawa decided that the other squadrons would form part of the Non-Permanent Active Militia (NPAM) – for example, Toronto’s J became the Toronto Mounted Rifles.⁴ Its first two officers, in April 1901, were Major George Peters and Captain Hume Blake. At Niagara-on-the-Lake in June, Major Peters brought five officers, ninety-two non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and men, and ninety-seven horses to their first camp.⁵ Following camp, the Militia Department authorized a second, K Squadron.⁶ Other squadrons of the Canadian Mounted Rifles emerged in Alberta, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island and over time strengthened larger formations or became regiments.⁷

J and K Squadron officers of the Toronto Mounted Rifles were keen to obtain space for their men and horses at the city’s premier military site – the University Avenue Armoury – but had to make do with an old, drafty, ramshackle barn nearby. The Armoury, on Toronto’s major ceremonial boulevard, was already severely overcrowded, and its planned cavalry wing had yet to be built.⁸ While the barn was near enough to the Armoury for messing (eating and socializing) and general stores, the men felt themselves outcasts, with inferior surroundings and lodgings.

Only the boundless energy and enthusiasm of Major George Peters, officer commanding, and his officers kept the unit soldiering on – indeed flourishing. Like his counterparts in charge of other growing militia formations, Peters, a distinguished surgeon, wanted to bring in more horses and take on more men. He had served for nine years in Toronto’s Governor General’s Body Guard, moving up from 2nd lieutenant to captain and adjutant in 1898. He had his Royal School of Cavalry Certificate, First Class, and had the qualifications and experience to command J and K.

The Militia Department made it very clear in 1901 what it expected from officers and men. An officer was to instruct and lead; furthermore, he required zeal, good temper, common sense, and a thorough professional education. He must show himself superior to the soldier in knowledge, experience and strength of character, and he must be competent to carry out his duty in any situation whatsoever, without shrinking from responsibility, or, when thrown on his own resources, without waiting for orders. Training of the men focused on development of individual intelligence and self-reliance, coupled with the maintenance of discipline and esprit de corps.⁹

Peters had four days of drill and rehearsal, 8–11 October 1901, to prepare his squadrons for the Royal Review in honour of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (soon to be the Prince and Princess of Wales, later King George V and Queen Mary) at the Exhibition Grounds in Toronto. His well-drilled new unit formed part of the largest concentration of Canadian troops that the Dominion had ever seen.¹⁰

Annual camp took place for twelve days in June 1902, and Peters opted for Toronto – along the western waterfront at Long Branch – instead of the usual Niagara. For any training, the Militia Department required at least one qualified officer on the strength of each unit. Training included general horsemanship, musketry drill, range work, and signalling. Unfortunately, Captain Blake, an original officer of J Squadron, resigned from the unit that summer.

9th Toronto Light Horse (1903–7)

Major Peters’s professionalism and dedication brought him promotion in 1903 to lieutenant-colonel and command of the new Toronto Light Horse regiment, which amalgamated J and K with two new squadrons. Later that year, it became the 9th Toronto Light Horse.¹¹ The uniform acquired new bits and pieces. A khaki-coloured felt hat turned up on the left side sported a myrtle-green pugaree – a light scarf wound around the hat, like a turban. The new cap or pugaree badge consisted of a unicorn rampant with a coronet gorging it; surrounding it, maple leaves and the words Toronto Light Horse, and, at the base, a scroll with the motto In Malus Cornu (Beware of the Horn). For centuries, the unicorn of folklore, a proud animal, had been a symbol of Scotland, and on union with England in 1707 it was adopted into the Royal Coat of Arms. Given its history from antiquity and its imperial connection, the unicorn with its horn was a strong representation for the regiment’s role in defending the realm.

Lieutenant-Colonel George Peters, commanding officer of The Toronto Light Horse, 1903–6. (TSR Archives)

A cavalry unit was a place for camaraderie, recreation, and exercise, for ceremony, and for showing patriotism and love of country – virtues so prominent in that long-ago time – and plenty of young men yearned to join. Horses were commonplace in Toronto and on outlying farms. Farmboys – some of them with little schooling – learned to ride almost from infancy, and there was prestige attached to joining the cavalry. To join a good unit was a mark of distinction. There were three types of recruits: young gentlemen of some wealth and status, who would become officers; less fortunate urban men, a few perhaps illiterate, who yearned to ride horses and wear uniforms; and farmboys. Affluent recruits could afford magnificent animals and wanted the prestige of joining the horsy set in a mounted unit.

Some of the poorer recruits depended on government-issue steeds, if they were fortunate, or hired horses for summer camp. But many of them were young sprouts from local farms – boys who knew horses, mucked out stables every day, and had learned to ride in farm fields and back-country roads, trying to impress their girlfriends. These lads came with their own horses and did not need riding schools, equine centres, and posh living quarters. As long as they had a horse stall at home, an acceptable stallion or gelding, and a place to ride, joining a good cavalry unit was a bonus.

Competition for Recruits

For the 9th Toronto Light Horse, maintaining four up-to-strength squadrons in the city was becoming nearly impossible. Its space was inadequate, it lacked trained and qualified officers, and it experienced high turnover of city youths in the ranks. It even played with forming and attaching a troop of Old Country men.¹² As well, Toronto had nine squadrons of cavalry, including B Squadron of the Royal Canadian Dragoons of the PAM and four squadrons (including one in Aurora and one in Brampton) of the Governor General’s Body Guard, NPAM. All of these units were drawing from the same source for (part-time) officers and men.

The 9th Toronto Light Horse, like other local units, made do with what space it had. Then in February 1905, Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government voted $40,000 to double the size of the Toronto Armoury and extend it lengthwise toward the east.¹³ However, Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was sick, and by the spring of 1906 he had received a leave of absence. Major D.L. (Lally) McCarthy, an original officer in J Squadron, dating back to 1901, took over.

The University Avenue Armoury before the war, from a postcard. (TSR Archives)

Major Frank Burton served in the 9th Mississauga Horse and raised and commanded the 216th (Toronto Bantam) Battalion during the war. (TSR Archives)

To ease pressure in Toronto, in 1906 the regiment moved A Squadron north to Simcoe County – that jurisdiction’s first cavalry unit – with headquarters in Barrie, where it could tap into better stabling facilities and a larger pool of potential officers and men. Major Frank Burton, formerly of the 35th Regiment, Simcoe Foresters, was in command. The Northern Advance carried a notice: There will be four troops, two of which will have their headquarters in Barrie … The remaining troops will be stationed at Collingwood and Orillia and the entire strength of the squadron is placed at 75. Dr. W.D. MacLaren will be second-in-command with the rank of captain. It is understood that A.P. Wilkes will be in charge of No. l troop and Dr. V.A. Hart of No. 2 troop in Barrie.¹⁴ Regular mounted drill commences tonight (Thursday) at Market square and will continue on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of each week at 7:30 PM, until Niagara Camp … The Government allows one dollar per day for each horse while in camp. Recruiting is progressing beyond the most sanguine expectations of Major Burton and those associated with him.¹⁵

Command Uncertainty (1906–7)

Major McCarthy remained in command until he resigned in December 1906 and transferred to the Reserve List, owing chiefly … to the increasing pressure of professional duties.¹⁶ In January 1907, Major J.H. Moss, an original J Squadron officer (June 1901), also resigned.¹⁷

On 4 January the Toronto Star reported that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters himself had resigned owing to ill health.¹⁸ The following day, Gossip of the Military Column (a weekly Star news brief) reported: It is not improbable that the retirement of Colonel Peters and Major McCarthy will be followed by a reorganization and rearrangement of the regiment. Perhaps the strength will be reduced.¹⁹ Two weeks later: To be or not to be is the question … For the sake of retaining a lot of good material for the already weakened militia of Toronto garrison the authorities should make some immediate pronouncement regarding the situation in the Toronto Light Horse.²⁰

The future of the remaining Toronto squadrons was uncertain. Talk in the soldiers’ mess was still of disbandment. While headquarters and the remaining officers were squabbling over responsibility for stores and equipment, the enthusiastic cavalrymen were in a funk. They wanted to know – and soon – where they stood, or else they would start looking to other units. In the absence of a new commanding officer, the recently retired Peters called in all stores, arms, and clothing – a further blow to morale.²¹

A war of words erupted between the Toronto Star’s military correspondent and the editor of the NPAM officers’ biweekly Canadian Military Gazette in Ottawa. The Star writer queried the lack of officers, especially a commanding officer, and raised the question of re-officering the unit or permitting it to disband itself. The Gazette editor responded, No corps can disband itself, it must be disbanded by order of the Governor General – of course through the Minister of Militia.²² The Gazette’s editor called the Star’s earlier statement about Toronto’s weakened militia absurd, worse than absurd.²³

However, the Governor General’s Body Guard and particularly the 9th Toronto Light Horse were recruiting few potential cavalry officers. Although infantry officers could qualify in annual summer camps, their cavalry counterparts, given the shortness of time at camp, could not. The Royal School of Cavalry at Toronto’s Stanley Barracks – one of three such facilities in the country – offered winter qualifying courses. The officers and non-commissioned officers of the permanent squadron stationed there – the Royal Canadian Dragoons – offered special courses lasting from seven days to three months and short courses of three months or more. But many prospective candidates could not take so much time from work. In January 1907, the 9th Toronto Light Horse had fifteen lieutenants on strength, of whom only three were qualified.

The unit’s fate remained in flux until 5 March 1907, when Major William Craven (W.C.) Vaux Chadwick, from the 36th Peel Regiment, an architect, received its temporary command instead of becoming brigade major of the 3rd Infantry Brigade.²⁴ Eight days later, the regiment learned that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters had died. Despite his failing health with angina, his death at age 47 shocked his family and his former corps. He had been a very proficient horseman and had earned great respect in military circles. A graduate of the University of Toronto and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS), he had served on the faculty at the university while consulting at Toronto General and the Hospital for Sick Children. He left his wife, Constance, daughter of Ontario Chief Justice Sir William Meredith, and two daughters.²⁵

Left: William C. Vaux Chadwick, commanding officer 9th Mississauga Horse, 1907–13. He later commanded the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles. (GGHG Archives) Right: Samuel G. Beckett, commanding officer D Squadron, Toronto Light Horse, raised the 75th Battalion and became its first commanding officer. (TSR Archives)

Meanwhile, Major Vaux Chadwick needed to find more officers, and five men assisted him. Major H.D. Lockhart Gordon, an 1894 graduate of the Royal Military College in Kingston and originally an officer in K Squadron of the Toronto Mounted Rifles (March 1902), became second-in-command. Captain Samuel Beckett became major in April 1907 and took command of D Squadron.²⁶ Captain G.H. Riches, late of the 12th York Rangers, became officer commanding C (Halton County) Squadron in Oakville.²⁷ One of his troop commanders – Captain E.S. Ryerson, an officer in the unit since 1904 – replaced him in late 1907. John Ussher became captain that autumn and then major and next took over the new (as of December) B Squadron at Eglinton (a Toronto suburb north on Yonge Street). Ussher had battle experience in South Africa with C Company of the 2nd Special Service Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, and had been severely wounded at Paardeburg in February 1900.²⁸

John F.H. Ussher commanded the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles in France. (GGHG Archives)

Samuel Beckett and his wife were presented with this handcrafted scroll by his squadron in May 1906. Beckett was not confirmed in the rank of major until the following year. (TSR Archives)

9th Mississauga Horse (1907–14)

The Mississauga First Nation

Shifts in locale to Oakville and Eglinton and the earlier relocation of A Squadron to Barrie spread the regiment out of Toronto and deeper into traditional Mississauga territory, so the 9th Toronto Light Horse gave way to the 9th Mississauga Horse.²⁹ The territory of the Mississauga (an Ojibwa people) had included Toronto and Toronto Township (today’s city