09 October 2014

Find CEF and related records at Ancestry.ca

Ancestry.ca wrote reminding that they have thousands of historical records to help track down the stories of Canadians who went to Europe during WWI and faced the unknown. Included was this 
not untypical story of Herbert Thompson Walker.
"Every soldier has a story to tell. One such story is that of Herbert (Bert) Thompson Walker, whose life was flipped upside down when he left his homeland of England to immigrate to Canada with his family at the tender age of seven. At the time, Bert could not have known that his fate would be to return to England under the cloud of the Great War, only to find his true love as a result.
Born February 17, 1898, Bert was the second of eight children born to William Clifton Walker and Mary Jane Cheetham, in Lancashire, England. The family immigrated to Saskatoon in 1905.
Despite – or perhaps because of – the upheaval in his life as a young boy, Bert signed his attestation papers in December 1915, aged just 16, joining the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. Shortly after, on February 17, 1915 (his 17th birthday) he enlisted with the 65th Saskatoon Light Infantry.
Although Bert was not amongst the very first CEF soldiers to arrive, he saw a lot of action on the battle fields in Somme region of France and was badly injured in battle. He was removed from the frontline and hospitalized in the UK. There, as fate would have it, he met a young British girl named Ethel Silvester. The two were married in 1918 in Lancashire and after the war ended, Bert and Ethel returned to Saskatoon, where they had three daughters."
He was employed as a postal worker, can be found in Ancestry's 1921 census and voter's lists collections in Saskatoon, Bert passed away from pneumonia in Victoria BC at age 93 only a year after completing his memoirs."


No comments: