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A Cape Bretoner at War: Letters from the Front 1914-1919

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A Cape Bretoner at War: Letters from the Front 1914-1919 Canadian Military History Volume 11 Issue 1 Article 4 2002 A Cape Bretoner at War: Letters from the Front 1914-1919 Brian Tennyson Cape Breton University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Recommended Citation Tennyson, Brian "A Cape Bretoner at War: Letters from the Front 1914-1919." Canadian Military History 11, 1 (2002) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tennyson: A Cape Bretoner at War A Cape Bretoner At War Letters From the Front 1914-1919 Brian Douglas Tennyson Introduction England, emigrated to Canada, and settled on the island, albeit at an early age. This fact, he production of books, journal and however, made him very typical of many Cape Tmagazine articles and films on the First Bretoners, particularly those living in the Sydney World War has become a veritable industry in area at the time of the war. Until the end of the recent years, reflecting society's belated nineteenth century, the Sydney area, like much realization that it marked a profoundly of Maritime Canada, was essentially a rural important milestone if not turning point in the community which earned its livelihood from history of the modern world. Prominent among farming, fishing, shipbuilding and the carrying the books that began to appear as early as the trade. What distinguished it from other areas 1920s and are still being published today are was the presence of vast coal deposits which had the memoirs, diaries and letters of men who been worked since the middle of the eighteenth served in the war. The Canadian contribution to century but took on enormous economic and that literature remains relatively thin. Indeed, strategic significance in the second half of the this is the first known collection of letters written nineteenth century because of the invention of by a Cape Bretoner. It will, therefore, be of steam power and its application to railways, particular interest to readers who know that ships, and factories. The 1890s saw the unique island and especially Sydney, because of amalgamation of the various coal mines around the many references to people and places and Sydney harbour into one international the memories the letters evoke of life there in corporation, followed by the formation of the the early years of the twentieth century. This Dominion Iron and Steel Company at Sydney essay offers brief extracts from those letters, in and the Nova Scotia Steel Company at Sydney the context of a biographical profile of their Mines. Sydney harbour at the beginning of the author, as an introduction to the collection, twentieth century had become the industrial which it is hoped will one day be published in centre of the Maritime provinces, with the result full, with explanatory notes and background that many of the European immigrants flooding information. into Canada in the 15 years preceding the war settled there. In a very real sense, then, Willmot Percy Charles Willmot went overseas in the was not only a typical Canadian in being a recent spring of 1915 with Nova Scotia's famed 25th immigrant from England; he was also typical of Battalion and served throughout the war, Cape Bretoners in the Sydney area because he returning as an invalid to Camp Hill Hospital in had moved there during this very dramatic and Halifax in August 1919. His letters tell us much exhilarating period when it was one of the most about the wartime experiences of a very typical dynamic and rapidly growing communities in Cape Bretoner and Canadian of his time. They the country. reveal much about the progress of the war, the daily experiences of the men, the bizarre contrast Born near Birmingham, England, on 13 between the beauties of nature and the horrors April 1887, Percy was the son of Edward and of the trenches, and the inevitable transition Alice Willmot. How or when he arrived in Nova from naive idealism to bitter cynicism. Scotia, or indeed Canada, remains unknown. According to family tradition, he and his brother Some may suggest that Willmot was not Arthur were brought out by their grandmother, really a Cape Bretoner because he was born in Frances Elizabeth Willmot, following the death © Canadian Military History, Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 2002, pp.37-48. 37 Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2002 1 Canadian Military History, Vol. 11 [2002], Iss. 1, Art. 4 of their father in 1895, with a view to placing board at the post office till midnight" as the them with their Uncle Percy, who had emigrated Sydney Daily Post issued the latest news "hot to Montana in the 1880s, but there is no real from the wires," and Percy and Dorothy were evidence to support this story. Certainly, his probably among them. War fever was "sweeping grandmother and his Aunt Frances emigrated over Sydney"5 and when the Post issued the to Canada at some point, apparently after 1905, bulletin on the 4th announcing Britain's living initially in Toronto before moving to Ottawa declaration of war, "there was an enthusiastic where they were living by 1909. When Percy outburst of cheering" from the crowd "and a visited them there in October of that year he number of people sang the Canadian anthem and observed in his diary that it was "fifteen years 'O Canada' with enthusiasm."6 since I saw my Grandma,"1 which suggests that he emigrated in 1894 at the age of seven years. Although Halifax was the most important Atlantic coastal port and home to the nascent What is known is that Percy attended school Royal Canadian Navy, Sydney harbour was at in St. Peters, Cape Breton, earning his Grade least as important, if not more so. North Sydney 10 diploma in August 1900.2 He then worked was the fourth busiest port in Canada for ocean on farms in Cape Breton and near Truro,3 before ships, surpassed only by Quebec, Halifax and attending Truro Academy in 1903-04 in an Montreal in gross tonnage. The successful unsuccessful attempt to earn his Grade 11 completion of the transatlantic cable in 1866 and diploma.4 In the summer of 1904, he moved to the establishment of the Western Union cable Sydney, attracted like so many others to the office at North Sydney in 1875 also contributed rapidly growing industrial centre, and began to the commercial and strategic importance of working at Crowell's department store on 3 the harbour, and the completion of the national August. He remained there, managing the men's railway system at the turn of the century made wear department, until he joined the army in North Sydney the main entry point in Canada November 1914, except for a brief period in 1909 for European mail destined for North American when he returned home to England to visit his addresses. Finally, the several coal mines along family and lived briefly in Ottawa with his the harbour's shores - the only coal mines on grandmother and Aunt Frances. North America's Atlantic coast - were the major source of fuel in eastern Canada, both for Like other young men, Percy soon developed industrial and home heating purposes and for a circle of friends, both male and female, and ships of the British and French navies, and the enjoyed an active social life in the small but steel plants at Sydney and Sydney Mines dynamic community. Together, he and some produced approximately one-third of the others jointly purchased a 'camp' - a property country's steel. In short, Sydney harbour was of with a little cottage - in Westmount, and a motor enormous economic and strategic importance launch, to which they gave the enigmatic name in 1914 and would inevitably experience more Squke, for running about Sydney harbour. In military activity than most other Canadian 7 1911 he brought his sister Dorothy, then 16 communities. years of age, out from England to join him in Sydney. Dorothy also joined the staff of Crowell's People in the area were well aware of this, of and eventually became the store's window course, with the result that martial enthusiasm dresser. For whatever reasons, Percy felt closer was exceptionally strong there, and when units to Dorothy - or 'Doll,' as he called her - than to of the Royal Canadian Regiment arrived on 31 his other siblings, and she became his primary July, even before the declaration of war, between correspondent during the war years. two and three thousand people thronged the Intercolonial Railway station in Sydney to welcome them.8 By 3 August there were The outbreak of war approximately one hundred troops in the Sydney - Louisbourg area and during the night of 3/4 hen war broke out in August 1914, Cape August a naval brigade of 43 personnel from the WBretoners, at least in Sydney, shared in the Halifax dockyard with two 12-pounder field guns general enthusiasm. Early on the afternoon of 1 and two machine guns also entrained for Cape August "hundreds crowded about the bulletin Breton.9 The local militia, the 94th Regiment, 38 https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol11/iss1/4 2 Tennyson: A Cape Bretoner at War Dorothy Willmot Private Percy Charles Willmot Percy's sister August 1914 Argyll Highlanders, was mobilized on the are being used to insure a fair representation morning of 5 August and by the 10th had 707 from Cape Breton, as it is reported from upper men stationed on Sydney harbour, and at [sic] Canada that volunteers are offering in great Louisbourg and Canso.10 Meanwhile, artillery numbers."11 was brought in to guard North Sydney and Canso as well.10 In the days leading up to their departure, a number of enthusiastic patriotic events took Clearly, then, the outbreak of war had a very place.
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