Kenora Great War Project

 

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The People

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These are the stories of Kenora participants in the First World War.

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Lalonde, Frank

Private Frank Lalonde was a widower with four young children when he enlisted in December 1915 at age 42. He served for three years in Canada, the UK and France. Frank was born on 24 January 1873 on Allumette Island in Pontiac County, Quebec. He was baptized two months later in the mission church at… Read More »

Wait, Frank

Francis (Frank) Wait was born on 29 November 1885 in Rat Portage (later renamed Kenora) in northwestern Ontario. His parents Isaac Wait, a bricklayer, and Jane McGuigan were both from the Ottawa area, marrying on 9 August 1875 in Ottawa. Children born to the couple in Ottawa were Arthur John (1876), Mary Agnes Maud (1877),… Read More »

Seaman, Kenneth Parker

Kenneth Parker Seaman was born on 27 July 1896 in Norman, Ontario, a small community just west of Kenora in northwestern Ontario. His parents Joshua Seaman and Isabelle Parker were both from Leslie, Pontiac, Quebec, marrying on 1 July 1891 in Carleton Place, Lanark, Ontario. Farming in Leslie, their first child, daughter Leila Grace, was… Read More »

Baldwin, Clarence Walter

Walter Baldwin was born Clarence Walter Baldwin in Grenville, Ontario on 12 December 1883.  His parents were Eli and Minerva Ann Baldwin.  The 1901 Canadian Census shows his family living in Elizabethtown, Brockville, Ontario with his mother’s parents John and Sarah Mccready.  Father, Eli, is a farmer and Walter is listed as a farmer’s son…. Read More »

Cooke, Joseph

Joseph Cooke was born on 26 March 1887 in Sandwith, Cumberland, England. His father Samuel Cooke, a coal miner, and mother Sarah Bell married on 28 November 1874 in the parish of St Bees, Cumberland. It appears that Sarah already had a son at the time of the marriage, John Bell who was born in… Read More »

Ryan, James Anthony

Born on 18 May 1893 in Bromley, Osceola, Ontario, James Anthony (Jim) Ryan was the son of Michael and Bridget (née Gannon) Ryan, both of Irish descent. The family settled in the Renfrew area where they farmed. Jim was the eldest child in the family and had the following known siblings: Mary Frances, Michael L,… Read More »

Nicholson, Raymond Robert Nairn

Raymond Robert Nairn Nicholson, known as Robin, was one of four children  of Murdoch and Catherine (Kitty) Nicholson. The Nicholsons had come to Rat Portage in the 1880s from P.E.I. In Rat Portage Murdoch opened a shop as a merchant tailor. Their first son, Alfred Samuel, born in 1887, died of pneumonia in 1902. Daughter… Read More »

Mills, George William

George William Mills was born on 6 June 1898 in Rat Portage (Kenora), Ontario. His father, Peter Clarke Mills, had been born in Scotland and come to Canada in 1890. Peter joined the staff of G. Rioch in 1892 and worked in watch and jewelry repairs for the next 47 years. He married Ellen ‘Nellie’… Read More »

Belyea, Stanley Carleton

Stanley Carleton Belyea was born on 24 April 1894 in Rat Portage (later renamed Kenora), Ontario. His parents were Allan and Annie (née Bogle) Belyea who were from Greenwich, Kings County, New Brunswick. Allan’s occupation was given as wooden boat maker at the time of the marriage. Sometime after the birth of their first son… Read More »