1991 Camp Niagara Remembered A history of the Canadian military training camp at Niagara-on-the-lake Camp Niagara was a happy camp remembered fondly by most of those who were there. This is the oral history of those who trained and served there over the years. This is their Camp Niagara Remembered. Page | J. Trevor Hawkins;Lynne Richard-Onn;Robert G. Mayer 5/1/1991 Contents Editor’s Note ................................................................................................................................................. ii Preface ......................................................................................................................................................... iii CHAPTER I - Camp Niagara to 1914 .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER II - The Great War ........................................................................................................................ 21 The Polish Army ...................................................................................................................................... 42 CHAPTER III - The Post-War Years ............................................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER IV - The Second World War ....................................................................................................... 105 CHAPTER V - Post-War Years Again .......................................................................................................... 147 CHAPTER VI - Today .................................................................................................................................. 211 Photograph and Figure Captions .............................................................................................................. 212 Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 212 Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 213 Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................................... 252 Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................................... 297 Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................................................... 309 Chapter 5 ............................................................................................................................................... 344 Page | i Editor’s Note This edition is presented as a digitized version of an unpublished, marked up, manuscript held in the library of the Niagara Historical Society Museum. Handwritten, edits that were written into the margins of the existing copy have been included in this edited version. Where obvious typographical errors have been made, they have been corrected. Page | ii Preface This book began as an Oral History. Two years ago we were given the names of six people who had responded to a notice in the Legion, the magazine of the Royal Canadian Legion. At that time we knew of no others who had been at Camp Niagara. Over the past two years we were able to expand this list to some hundreds of names. We were able to interview some sixty or seventy of these people and spoke with perhaps two hundred more. The people we interviewed represented every rank from Private to Lieutenant General. The youngest person interviewed was in his thirties. The most senior has just celebrated his one hundredth birthday. It is very largely the recollections of these people that are represented here. While we have augmented the story by referring to written documents and official records, the story is largely one of spoken anecdotes. It is necessarily incomplete and some of the recollections might have become a little fuzzy over the decades. But if the small inaccuracies inherent in the oral history approach can be forgiven, the ambience of the times described is real. Camp Niagara was a happy camp remembered fondly by most of those who were there. This is their Camp Niagara Remembered. Page | iii CHAPTER I - Camp Niagara to 1914 REVEILLE1 It is 0600 hours and the Common at Camp Niagara, almost invisible in the early summer morning mist is Quiet. The solitude is broken only by the sound of the fire picquet's pacing and the whinnying of the horses tethered in the cavalry lines. Then the sunrise silence is pierced by the Duty Bugler playing Reveille followed by the 1 In the Canadian army, reveille is pronounced in the Imperial manner as reh-valley rather than reh-velley as is done in the American army . Page | 1 bugler or trumpeter of each regiment and piper of each Highland Regiment, sounding in turn, his own regimental call and then Reveille. And from across the river, from a country that was once an adversary drifts the muted sound of Reveille at Fort Niagara. So begins another day of militia training at the Brigade Camp at Camp Niagara. We used to get up half an hour before everybody else and blow Reveille. That's why they used to like us! Six o'clock in the morning. RSM John W. Finnimore Governor General's Horse Guard Toronto, Ontario Camp Niagara has been home over the past one and a quarter centuries, to tens of thousands of Canadian men and women of the Canadian Army, both Militia /Reserve and Expeditionary/Active Service Forces. Indeed, throughout most of Canada' s history there has been a military presence at Niagara-an-the-Lake. The land at Niagara was secured by a treaty negotiated by Sir William Johnson with the Seneca Indians in 1764. The land was a narrow strip which began at Fort Niagara, extended south to the creek above Fort Schlosser (Little Niagara), with land on both sides of the strait, extending approximately four miles in width and fourteen miles in length. In addition to settlement and timbering the acquisition of this land was for defence. Page | 2 In 1792 Niagara became the capital of the new province of Upper Canada. Shortly after, Niagara was incorporated as a town. In 1795, a site was selected on the high ground commanding a view of the river mouth for the erection of various buildings, with approval for the construction of Fort George being received in 1799. A reconstruction of this fort stands beside the Camp Niagara Common today. Navy Hall, which today sits overlooking the river, has been restored and sheathed in stone. Built to serve the Provincial Marine on lake Ontario, it was originally wood sheathed, and was, in fact, a collection of four buildings. All these buildings were destroyed in the War of 1812. The current building which stands today is one of the replacement buildings erected after the war. The town was variously called Niagara, then Newark in 1792, when Governor Simcoe chose it as the capital of the new province of Upper Canada, again Niagara when Simcoe left, and subsequently, to prevent confusing it with Niagara Falls, it was designated by the Canadian Post Office as Niagara-on-the-Lake, a name that has persisted to this present-day. Page | 3 Much of the early fighting to defend Canada as a nation occurred in the Niagara area, with such well known battles as those of Ridgeway and Queenston Heights. At the dedication of Brock's monument in 1853, there was a protest by one significant group, the First Nation’s, which felt its efforts in the many battles in which they fought were unrecognized by the ceremony. My grandmother used to tell a story about her grandmother who attended a celebration in Niagara-on-the-Lake, specifically Queenston, but camping, staying along the Niagara River in the area on the occasion of the unveiling of Brock's Monument. And the reason they went to Niagara was really quite Interesting. They walked, all the women and wives walked, from Mohawk Village and from Six Nations to Niagara. They actually went in a sort of protest. I guess they were a little bit disappointed in the Brock's Monument not paying homage to the role the Six Nations played in the war of 1812. The Mohawk women who had lost their husbands and sons in that war were particularly concerned. The people that went to this celebration went In a kind of very subtle protest. They walked dressed in black. They went in mourning. Tom Hill, Director Woodland Cultural Centre Brantford, Ontario Page | 4 From the date of the earliest organization of Upper Canada's militia, the town of Niagara had been the headquarters of the No. 1 Company Niagara Volunteers, and in earlier days, the First Regiment of the Lincoln Militia, This regiment assembled annually, as did most militia regiments, for muster and enrolment on June 4, honouring the birthday of King George III. This continued until 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne when the date of the annual muster was changed to the 24th of May. Not until 1871, four years after Canada's confederation, and the year in which the last of the British regiments left Canada except for those defending such British crown property as sea ports) was the Niagara Common selected as a training ground for large bodies of troops , The Report of the State of the Militia for 1871 comment on the selection of the site and on the preparation of the camp at Niagara "as a point of strategic