Who Goes There? A collection with a connection?
Last month a local auction house featured a lot containing a large collection of photographs and some military postcards. Unfortunately I was not the successful bidder however a couple of weeks […]
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Jakealoo
Royal BC Museum invites you to help Transcribe WW1 Docs
In April the Royal BC Museum launched Transcribe, a crowd-sourcing website that provides citizen historians with an opportunity to transcribe historical documents from the Provincial Archives. The museum’s first transcription project […]
Remembering Pte Harry Bassett, 3rd Battalion CEF
Inspiring future generations to remember the men and women who endured the most traumatic period in our country’s history must surely be one of the most important aims of the First World War […]
Who Goes There? 158th Battalion Regimental Band
This impressive panoramic photograph was donated to the Vernon Museum and Archives by Louise Karlsson, the granddaughter of Private John Grears. “Jack” Grears was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland in 1881 and […]
Camp Petawawa
I recently met Stephanie Ann Warner at an event at the BC Archives. She’s created a great blog featuring photographs of her grandfather Harold Monks who, at age 21, emigrated […]
100 Years Ago Today: In Flanders Fields
On May 3, 1915 newly promoted Lt-Col. John McCrae penned “In Flanders Fields“, inspired by the death of his good friend Lt. Alexis Helmer. To commemorate the centenary of this […]
Remembering Pte. Wilfred Harrison, 8th Battalion CEF
Wilfred Harrison, a Private in the 8th Battalion (90th Winnipeg Rifles) CEF died at the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley 100 years ago today. Wilfred was my first cousin (3x removed), […]
Remembering Captain John Geddes, 16th Battalion CEF
Captain John Geddes died on April 22, 1915 leading his men in the midnight attack on Kitchener’s Wood. His final moments were captured in Mark Zuehlke’s fine book ‘Brave Battalion‘: “Captain Geddes had been […]
Kitchener’s Wood: Pte Denholm’s Curious Keepsake
Private John Denholm‘s First World War scrapbook contains an unusual piece of ephemera, a postcard written to a German soldier named Robert Kirchner. Denholm went to the trouble of having […]
Kitchener’s Wood: the letters of Sgt. Charles Herbert Peck
“The hardest thing that I have saw is a young fellow from Annapolis valley. I took a liking to him in Valcartier and keep him with me up to the […]
Doing Our Bit 