Petrolia
and War
These are all the
Military photos that I have , however I will be
installing more later. As always
if you know any
of the names please let me know. Most of the pics
below are of Petrolia's men that went to war in
WW1
and show some of the men at training camp in
London Ontario.
" This is Petrolia's contribution to
the 1st World War.
The 18th and 34th Battalion. A fine
body of lads."
Probably
some of the 18th or 34th Battalion
WW1 Recruits
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Ned McRobie |
Don Gibson collection
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Some of these
men sport their Boer War medals
Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson collection
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Don
Gibson collection
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Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson
collection |
Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson collection
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editor's
collection
From a group of pics marked Johnson
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Click on this pic of Major George
Stirrett to see an amazing work by
Petrolia's Gene
Smith, president of PEACEKEEPER PARK,
A Living Memorial
http://www.peacekeeperpark.com/
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Don Gibson collection
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Don Gibson
collection
CO. Fairbank
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Don Gibson
collection
A march wtitten
for Lambton's 49th
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Don Gibson collection
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The Zimmerman
clown band of Petrolia
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This
was the scene in every town everywhere on
May 8 1945 when World War 2 was finally
over.
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WW1
recruiting office downtown Petrolia
editor's
collection
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Young
Cadets
editor's
collection
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H.M.C.S
Petrolia
An interesting WW2 parade
passing by Victoria Hall.
editor's
collection
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This
is
the badge worn by the men that sailed the
H.M.C.S PETROLIA
editor's collection
A pin for the
60th anniversary of the HMCS Petrolia's
service
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Petrolia military
historian Don Gibson
just brought over this officer's comision for
William Bryant and his cap
right. His commision for captain is above.
He was in the 27th Lambton Battalion of
Infantry ca.1897.
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William Bryant's 27th
Battalion cap.
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This is a
picture of my
dad's plane that was taken from the plane above
that had dropped his bombs early, now this
is just 16mm. film that is run each time the
bombbay doors open. This picture was hanging in
the London England war museum in
the 1960's. out of rotation now. His
story for that night follows.... I'm
quoting from his RCAF records
F/L George W Gardiner was part of 429 Bison
Squadron in Leeming,Yorks, England. On his 23rd
mission they left July18.1944 at
0331 hours in there Halifax III-LW.127.
Their destination was Monderville, France..
While over the target bombs were seen to
fall from another plane and strike the tail
assembly and the rear fuselage.
( witness:A.F.Childs in Halifax MZ824. flying in
the same formation ) My Dad gave the
order to "jump" but only 4 men got out of
the plane.
Gardiner;Brunet;and McNiffe were POW's till wars
end. McGregor made it
back to England. Ellis; Cunningham and
Gillespie were all killed
by " Friendly Fire" Growing up my Dad didn't
talk much about the
war but he did talk of the love &
respect for his crew.
Greg Gardiner
Editor's
note:
This is an amazing story of a Queen
street Petrolia veteran who heroically
sacrificed 4 years of his life for us. His
son 'Greg'
has sent me these photos and documents.
Please click on the thumbnails
and read the interesting debrief documents
thanks to the freedom of information
act.
The above pic shows F/L George W
Gardiner back home in full uniform.
The plane pic shows his plane after taking a
hit and the tail section is gone.
If you have or
know of a veteran's story from Petrolia please
send it here and we will be proud and honored to
post it.
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Here is the
Petrolia Cenotaph in Victoria Park
. It has been designated. The granite
soldier was designed by Toronto sculptor,
Emmanuel Hahn. It has symbolic details
such as the cross the
figure holds, the flag draped behind him
and the poppies and chain at his
feet. The names of 88 area men are
inscribed on the monument from WW1.
OUR HONORED DEAD
WILLIAM G. ANDIRON
J. START BELL
ARTHUR J. BERNARD
SIDNEY BROWN
JAMES CRAIG
GEORGE CLOTURE
EARNEST CLOTURE
JOSEPH DOWELING
JAMES DOUGLAS
ROY DUNCE
WILLIAM FRAMER
EUGENE FISHER
WILLIAM FERNS
BERT FISHER
JAMES GLIMPSE
THOMAS GLEES
LEO GLEES
DAN GALLIVANT
NEWELL HASTINESS
GEORGE HENDERSON
GEORGE HOMSON
E.G. HARRIS
ALBERT HOUSTON
EDGAR JACKSON
HOWARD KNIGHT
WILFRED KEENE
FREDERICK KEENE
HENRY KARR
JOHN MANN
CLARENCE MAITLAND
JOHN MILLER
VERNE MANDEVILLE
HENRY MCDONALD
STUART MCPHERSON
REGINALD METCALFE
HECTOR MORRISON
CLINTON MALTON
JOSEPH MORTON
ROBERT MONTGOMERY
MURRAY MCQUEEN
CHARLES W. MCLEAN
ELDON PORTSMOUTH
NEIL RACHER
ARTHUR RAWSON
GEORGE REID
CLARENCE RUSSELL
THOMAS SCOTT
GEORGE E. F. STONE
GEORGE SEYMOUR
THOMAS STAUFFER
GEORGE E. TERRY
JOHN VANSICKLE
JOSEPH VOLWAY
JAMES W. WADE
HOWARD WARD
Emmanuel Hahn
info as submitted by Linda Smith,
Chairperson of the 2005 'Year of the Veteran
Committee'
1881 born in Germany
1888 immigrated with family (incl 2
bros) to Toronto
1899-1903 studied at Toronto Technical
School & Ont College of Art
1903-06 studied in Germany
1910 started teaching at OCA
1912-51 head of sculpture dept at OCA
till retirement
Professional
CV:
. 1901 McIntosh Marble &
Granite Co making bronze reliefs
. 1902 Robert Burns monument in
Allan Gardens, Toronto
. 1903 worked for Canadian Foundry
Co.
. 1906 Thomson monument
. 1908 - 1912 Assistant to Walter
Allward, Toronto
. 1913 Indian Scout - sold
to National Gallery in
1917, Ottawa
. 1926 Edward Hanlan
monument at CNE, Toronto
. 1926 married Elizabeth Wyn Wood,
sculptor from Orillia
. 1927 elected into Royal Academy
of Canadian Art
(RCA)
. 1928 co-founded Sculptors
Society of Canada with E.Wyn Wood, Henri
Hébert, Alfred Laliberté, Frances Loring,
Florence Wyle
. 1929 Sir Adam Beck
monument on University Ave, Toronto
(assisted by
Sing Hoo his protegé - no credit due to
Chinese heritage)
. 1937 Bluenose for dime
(10cents) - still used today
. 1937 Cariboo for the
quarter (25cents)- still used today
. 1939 Voyageur (Indian paddling
canoe) for the silver dollar
. 1939 Parliament Buildings - also
a silver dollar to commemorate the
visit
of King
George VI & Queen Elizabeth
.
1946 Stephen Leacock Medal
. 1948
Spirit of the Provinces - wood relief
sculpture for Ban k of
Montreal - worked
with E.W.Wood, Jacobine Jones, Donald
Stuart, Florence
Wyle, & Frances
Loring)
Exhibitions:
1907 onwards
exhibited with the Ontario Society of
Artists (OSA) & RCA
at
Art Gallery of
Toronto (AGO today) & at the
National Gallery of Canada
. included in
private & public collections
Other points of interest:
. 1926 EH
winner of competition to produce a war
memorial in Winnipeg;
did not proceed due
to being born in Germany; but was paid $500.
. 1927
E.W.Wood won in the second competition for
the same memorial;
again it did not
proceed because she was married to a person
born in
Germany; but
again was paid $500.
(it was eventually
awarded to Gilbert Parfitt who was British
born)
. 1965 Sing Hoo
produced the full rendering of King George
VI for
Elizabeth Wyn Wood
(during her terminal illness) but never
received
credit; located
in Niagara Falls
Emmanuel Hahn
1881-1957
Paul
Hahn 1875-1962: cellist, sold
music & pianos, extinct & vanishing
bird
expert (brother)
Gustav
Hahn 1866-1962: painter, also mem of
OSA, RCA (brother)
Elizabeth
Wyn Wood 1903-1966
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Hugh & Clair Sharkey by Mary Hortos
When I was researching my family tree I decided I
would try to learn as much about my father and his
brother as my information gathering would take
me. Through their Canadian war
records , the War Memorial cemetery and
library and the
Petrolia Advisor I pieced together this
interesting episode of their life.
My father Hugh Sharkey although born in London,
Ontario was raised in Petrolia. Hugh and Clair
were from the era when a “White Feather” was sent
for cowardice. Considering the list of
killed and wounded from Petrolia I doubt if many
received a feather.
Hugh and Clair, just teenagers, were allowed to
enlist together in the 58 Battalion. My
grandmother was a recent widow and it must have
been traumatic for her.
They were sent overseas on the ship Lapland to
England in 1915. One month later they were
sent to France.
My Father fought at Ypres, Somme and suffered
mustard gas exposure at Passchendaele. I can
remember by father saying “We walked Ypres to the
Somme”. When I was old enough to look it up
I discovered that
is over 100 miles.
Both Hugh and Clair were wounded. My uncle
was hospitalized until 1920. He had a steel
plate in his head and suffered terrible
headaches. Claire died in 1934. Hugh
died 9 Oct. 1969. That was 51 years and one
day from the day he was gravely wounded.
Hugh and Clair went off to war young and happy
teenagers. They came home wounded in spirit
and body. Hugh’s favourite saying was –
“Old soldiers never die they just fade
away”.
A box
for the generations
Princess Mary's gift to all the solgiers in WW1
Murry
McQueen
Hugh Sharkey
Murray was killed in action (WW 1 ) but
Hugh survived the war. Enlisted in the 70th &
transferred to the 58th Batallion overseas.
The Sharkey family owned and operated the
Normandy Hotel in Petrolia for 11 years in the
early 1900's The Normandy was destroyed by
fire in ca. 1915.
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Princess’ gift is a bit of history and a
treasured keepsake
If I had given it any thought when I first wrote
about it last month, it might have occurred to me
that there are others around here who still have
the same kind of little brass box my grandfather
had carried home
from World War I.
In an August column, I told the story of how my
grandfather, a member of an Irish regiment in the
British army, was given the box Christmas 1914,
along with other British soldiers serving in
France.
I explained that shortly after it came into our
possession in the late 1940’s my youngest brother,
Bill, traded the brass box to a boyhood friend in
exchange for a pocketknife.
When that boyhood friend, Gil Groehn, married and
had a family, one
of his daughters, Deanna, more commonly know as
Dede, met and married one
of my sons, Jim, who was named, as fate would have
it, James Conlon Shine, after his
great-grandfather, the original owner of the box.
After about 35 years in the Groehn family, the box
came back to the
Shines when Gil Groehn sent it to Dede and Jim’s
first son, Colin, on the
first Christmas after he was born in 1983.
In the week or so after the column appeared, I got
several calls from people who had identical boxes,
each passed on from a relative who had
served with the British forces in World War
I. Most of them reminded
me that the box contained cigarettes, not candy,
as I had written.
By mail I hear from several others, each with
their own story of the box.
Mary Hortos of New Baltimore said it was passed
down from her father, Hugh Sharkey, who served in
France with the Canadian army.
She said he carried it with him through the
battles of Passchendaele, Ypres and the Somme. “He
told me it saved his life on one occasion,” she
wrote, “but he did sustain injuries to he left arm
(and) shoulder…” She credits the box with
“giving him life for another 51 years and one
day”.
Margaret Lotemoser’s father was also in the
Canadian army in World War I, and brought the box
home with him.
“My father passed away in 1935 from injuries
resulting from the war,” she wrote. “As I
was only 7 years old at the time, so many things
were not talked about. My mother just tucked
those articles away.
“I had always wondered how he had come to have
such a box. Now I have a little history to
pass on to my children and grandchildren.”
William Fagan, an antiques dealer in Clinton
Township, wrote to tell me that the brass box is
called the Princess Mary gift tin, and that he
sees these in his business from time to time.
Information on how the box came to be named after
Princess Mary came in a letter from Mary Graham of
Grosse Pointe Farms who has a box that was her
father’s.
She sent along a 1984 magazine article that traced
the history of the box.
Princess Mary was the only daughter of King George
V (two of her brothers later ascended to the
throne, known as Edward VIII and George VI), and
was known as the Princess Royal.
The war was in its first year when Mary, then 17,
told her father she wanted to send a Christmas
gift to every soldier in France. She also
said she wanted to pay for it from her own income.
She was persuaded that the cost would be far
greater than her means, and she should make a
public appeal for funds to support her project.
The first appeal was made Nov. 16, 1914. She
told the British
public that she wanted to send to “the soldiers
and sailors who are so
gallantly fighting our battles by land and sea,” a
present from the entire
nation.
“On Christmas Eve, when, like the shepherds of
old, they keep their
watch, doubtless their thoughts will turn to home
and loved ones left behind,
and perhaps, too, they will recall the days when,
as children themselves,
they were wont to hang out their stockings,
wondering what the morrow had
in store.
“I am sure,” her letter continued, “that we should
all be the happier to feel that we had helped to
send our little token of love and sympathy on
Christmas morning…Could there be anything more
likely to hearten them
in their struggle than a present received straight
from home on Christmas
Day? Please will you help me? Mary.”
The public responded and very quickly the target
figure of 100,000 pounds was exceeded.
The gift that Mary already had selected was a
brass box that would contain cigarettes and
tobacco; a pipe was sent separately. Since
the Indian troops did not use tobacco, their boxes
contained candy, as did those of nurses and
non-smokers. Mary suggested that the head of
the King appear on the box but her father said
that since it was her idea and her project, the
boxes should carry her likeness.
So the profile of the Princess Royal appeared on
each box inside a garlanded circle. In
addition to tobacco or candy, each box also
contained
a Christmas card inscribed “From Princess Mary and
Friends at home with
her best wishes for a happy Christmas and a
victorious New Year.”
What she probably never dreamed of that dark
winter in 1914 was how
many soldiers would carry those little boxes with
them for the next four
years, bringing them home after the war to
families that would treasure
them for generations.
Editors note
Thanx Marg
for typing items from letters to Etext for me
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COJacquesCFO
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I am enclosing a photo
of Pvt Les Morley. This photo was
taken in front of the Morley home on
Wingfield Street. One of my early
memories of WWII was my mother taking
food over to the Morleys when news came of
his death on August 19, 1942 at
Dieppe. My father was also in the 2nd
division, but he was not involved in the
raid. We lived at the end of
Blanche St. on the west side of the street.
L Simpson.
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This is a very nice military
print that I purchased locally. It is entitled
'Canada's Tribute to the Great War 1914-1919'.
From the painting by E.M.B. Warren. It was
donated to the Petrolia High School, Jubilee
of Confederation- July 1st 1927. It was
presented to Miss M.A. Higginson. I looked her
up in the 1926 Petrolia High School yearbook
and there she is. We will need to do
more research on this item but here it is with
the description that is included
on the back of the print in it's frame.The
description is included here at
right in 2 pieces. A very cool item but the
significance to Petrolia history
remains to be seen.
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The Pirate General Morreau in
Petrolia????
This is from a ca.1838 Boston newspaper
"the Boston
Daily Advertiser" July 9/1838. {VOL
XLII}. I purchased the whole edition. It seemed
to me that the account of the pirate General
Morreau written at a time when the distances may
have obscured the proper details. I had heard of
a pirate story similar to this in and around the
Sarnia Petrolia area. According to my research
this was a more accurate site of the skirmish. I
have included this story because it is quite
amazing and interesting. Hopefully there will be
more detail soon.
editor's
collection
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Thank you so much to those that keep sending me
Petrolia
Military pics and text It is an honour to post it!!!!!!
Email Martin at martyd@ebtech.net
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