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These are the stories of Kenora participants in the First World War.
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Acting Sergeant Thomas Francis Rance was the oldest son of Charles Carmichael Rance and Jennet Fair Jackson of Clinton, Huron County, Ontario. Charles was a merchant tailor and he and his wife were both born in Huron County, They were married in Clinton in 1887 and Thomas was born there on 18 September 1888. He… Read More »
Private Francis Lambert Tennant enlisted in December 1914 and served for one year in France and Belgium and two and a half years in Canada and the UK. Francis was the son of George Tennant and Catherine (Kate) Margaret Lambert. He was the second of at least six children: Herbert (1889), Francis (1892), Janet (1894),… Read More »
Private James William Grace was living in Kenora, Ontario when he enlisted in the fall of 1915. He was wounded at the Somme in October 1916 and invalided back to Canada the following spring. James was the oldest son of James Henry Grace and Matilda Ducharme of Kenora, Ontario. His parents were both born in… Read More »
Corporal Milne Christison joined the Canadian Army Service Corps in 1916 and served overseas for three years. He returned to Canada in May 1919. Milne was the youngest son of Thomas John Christison and Mary Jane Milne of Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Thomas was a farmer who had emigrated from Scotland and Mary was born… Read More »
Roland (Rollie) Bird came to the Kenora area with his parents Samuel and Margaret Bird and siblings Edna, Dorothy, Margaret and Henry during the decade before the war. His father, Samuel had come to Canada around 1890 from England and settled in the Victoriaville area of Quebec where he found work with the Grand Trunk… Read More »
Private Orville Leslie Belbeck enlisted with a field ambulance unit in the spring of 1915 and went overseas that summer. He served in Great Britain for four years, most of that time with the Canadian Army Service Corps. Orville was the only son of Albert Alexander Belbeck and Rebecca Theresa Wilson of Victoria, British Columbia…. Read More »
Ernest David Manning was born on 4 April 1891 in Plympton Township, Lambton County, Ontario. His father Sydney Manning was born in Harberton, Devonshire, England and immigrated to Canada as a child in 1867 according to various census documents. His mother Elizabeth Shillington was born in Lambton County. The couple had married in Plympton in… Read More »
According to his attestation papers, Severi Makinen was born on 2 May 1887 in ‘Wava, Alvo’, Finland. He had immigrated to Canada by the time of the 1911 census, found working as a railroad labourer at Linko (Raith) near Thunder Bay at the time. On 25 December 1917, in Fort William, Severi married Bernadette Langlois…. Read More »
William Hopkins was born on 29 March 1873 in the coastal community of Portrush in the county of Antrim in Northern Ireland. His parents were John Hopkins and Jane Dougherty (also spelled Doherty) who had married in December of 1867 in Londonderry. Known children born to the family were John (1869), Mary Eliza (1870), Ellen… Read More »
Ivan Birbeck was born on 26 April 1899 in Rat Portage (later renamed Kenora) in northwestern Ontario. According to William Shurtleff’s Shurtleff and Lawton Families: Genealogy and History and other sources, Ivan’s father Thomas Edson Birbeck was born in 1865 in Leeds, Yorkshire in England. At a young age he ran away from home and… Read More »
