From War To War

Throughout the War Museum, individual panels focus on people, from the enlisted ranks to officers. Such is the case with Lieutenant Samuel Honey, a winner of the Victoria Cross who would die in battle.

This haunting painting is called The Conquerors. Painted by Eric Kennington in 1920, it depicts both the living and the dead; Canadian soldiers on the march during the Hundred Days that would end the war. Those with pale faces and gaunt eyes are the ghosts alongside their still living counterparts.

Who was the last man killed in the war? Canadian private George Price is deemed to be the last of the Commonwealth forces.

The First World War section ends with memorial displays- a typical Commonwealth war gravestone, a stained glass window, and a cenotaph statue.

But of course the First World War only set into motion events that would lead to the Second World War. The next section opens with an examination of the rise of dictatorships that would become the Axis powers and the outbreak of war. Canadians would swiftly answer the call as part of the Allied effort.

Canada was a natural location for Allied air training, and panels and artifacts look at the BCATF program.

The Women's Royal Canadian Service was established during the war, and seven thousand women enlisted. One of them wore this uniform. Joan Thompson-Voller was one of the group called Wrens, and she was a regular fixture here at the Museum on Remembrance Day. I chatted with her on a number of such occasions. It's been some years though since I last saw her here, so I assume she's since passed away.

While Canada might have been far from the battlefields of Europe, it didn't mean dangers didn't find their way across the ocean. This map shows multiple attacks by German subs on merchant or military ships off the coast, some of them quite inland along the St. Lawrence River.