Reflections on a Canadian Shooting and on Canada itself.

I hesitate to post on this at all, for a variety of reasons.  First of all, because I tend to think these things get more attention that they should, and therefore I hesitate to be part of that.  Secondly because, as a person posting from the United States, such posts can come across as posted in the wrong spirit. Certainly I frankly find a lot of Canadian postings on American tragedies to nearly be in the nature of gloating and I don't want that to seem to be the case here. 

Downtown Toronto, January 2015.

But I am a Canadian, even if I'm one who never has lived in Canada, so maybe I have a right, and perhaps as a Canadian living outside of Canada, who has always lived outside of Canada, I have a different and unique prospective.  One that's both Canadian, of a sort, and sort of not, and frankly, one that's from the older, and I'd argue better in some ways, Canada rather than the contemporary one.

On all of that, I'm a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  My mother was from St. Lambert, Quebec (which as will be noted below, adds to what is perhaps a unique prospective).  Her family had roots in Quebec that go as far back as roots can go there and, while she ultimately became a dual citizen herself, I think she was in her 70s when she did that, so for most of her life she was a Canadian and always identified in that fashion.  So, she was not only a Canadian, but she was from Quebec which has a unique history, but she had also lived in Alberta, which also figures into this post below.

 

My mother, probably in the late 1940s or the early 1950s, Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre in Quebec in the background.

What's all of that have to do with this post? Well, let me put in a little history, as in the end, history always defines everything in some way.

Canada is one of the most urban countries in the world. It's much more urban than the United States.  Shoot, for that matter, its more urban than the United Kingdom.  Most Canadians live in cities.

But that wasn't always true. Indeed, it's only become true very, very recently.

Up until the 1950s, Canada was an incredibly rural country. It's undergone a process that has happened throughout much of the world following (and commencing well before) the Second World War of urbanization, but its transformation has been more dramatic and frankly, in my view, almost wholly negative.*  Canada, going into the Second World War, certainly had some large and indeed, at least in Quebec, some very European cities, but the mass of its population was not city centered.  Even Quebec, which had a Euro-Canadian population dating back to the 1600s, was principally rural in character.**  Almost no nation that undergoes this transformation rapidly, and Canada did, does it really well, and Canada is no exception.***

This does not mean that its population was uniform in character, although it was much more uniform than that of the United States.  Quebec certainly varied in that it had a large French population that was distinct in nearly every fashion from the rest of Canada.****  The country also had significant populations from the remainder of the British Isles, and then starting in the early 1900s it acquired, in some (but only some) locations a significant Ukrainian and Russian population. All the while it retained a significant Indian population.  Having said that, however, the Dominion was distinctly British in character even while being distinctly Canadian.

Canada up until the mid 1950s was a nation that looked at itself and the rest of the world through distinctly different, quite British (and sometimes French), rural eyes.  Like a lot of areas the English had been, in some ways, it was "more English than the English", although using that phrase to attempt to define Canada at any one point would be highly unfair.^  Nonetheless it was a nation that, in spite of its small population, was steadfast in support of nearly every English overseas enterprise up to the end of World War Two.  Canada was left alone, for the most part, for most of the War of 1812 and had to fight against American invasion largely on its own, which it did very well.  It nonetheless rose to the occasions of the Boer War, World War One and World War Two, although in each instance it was largely its English speaking population that did so.  The French population opted to sit out, to the extent possible, all such English enterprises.

Memorial in Toronto to "Our Glorious Dead".

It's been almost forgotten by Canadians that this was the case.  Canadian troops served under overall English command in three wars of fairly close succession in impressive numbers and with impressive valor.  Other than internal wars against native populations, of which there were some, Canada's first war during which it was not part of an English army was the Korean War.  Since that time Canada, which has served more overseas than people care to admit, has never again served as part of a British overall army.

That 1945 departure date, i.e., the end of World War Two, would prove to be significant in more ways than just a coincidental separation from the United Kingdom in a military sense.  It proved to be a real bright line.  People who are familiar with the history of Quebec like to speak of the "Quiet Revolution", but in truth the entire country went through the same process and it was simply Quebec that entered it last and with a different character, as it was different.  Going into the war, Canada remained highly English in many ways.  Coming out if it, much of that Englishness was yielding to a type of Canadianism, but in a form that was different from that which exists today. That conservative Canadianism dominated from 1945 into about 1960, when it began to crack and yielded the liberal Canada that we have today. . . which isn't as liberal as it imagines.

This same process played out in different forms in different former English dominions and colonies, and the entire process seems fairly closely related to it.  Countries that had a distinctive separation from the United Kingdom prior to that time, such as Australia, were impacted much less.  Countries that were very closely tied to British Empire England, however, even if they resented it (or not) were much more heavily impacted by their separation from the UK and that story still plays out today.  The two most dramatic examples may be the Canada of today and the Ireland of today, both of which would regard themselves as now being long separated from the United Kingdom but which in fact, culturally, defined themselves with and against the British Empire so strongly that they continued to do so for some time after the Empire had actually fallen and they still are reacting to that today.

In both instances the countries were very conservative at first abut then began to experiment with a liberalism that in some fashions reminds a person of the occasional teenager that seeks to establish his or her self by being in total reaction to the values of his parents.  In this case, however, ironically, the parent had so many problems and became such an entity back into itself that the reaction was hardly noticed much at all.  In Canada, conservative political values yielded and are still yielding to increasingly liberal ones, as is the case with Ireland.  Ironically, at the same time, much of the population remains deeply personal conservative even while not wishing to publicly acknowledge it.  The entire thing is sort of a cultural house of cards that won't last.

Typical early 20th Century poster from Canada urging immigration for those who wanted to be farmers.  Canada remains an agricultural giant today even if Canadians tend not to think of the country that way and interestingly enough it still draws European immigrant farmers, frequently Dutch, who sell their European farms to purchase larger Canadian ones.

At the same time a very British Canada was turning its back on being British, it was also urbanizing at a blistering rate.  Canada had largely been settled as an agricultural enterprise in the first place, and it continued to focus on that for a time after World War Two. But soon after the war this changed and the country became highly urban. Canada is still an agricultural giant, but the overwhelming majority of Canadians live in urban areas and the country became both high urbanized and highly cosmopolitan.  As it did t his it developed a new sense of itself, largely centered on the Canadian concept of Canadianess based on the urban Canadian's view. At the same time, however, rural Canada, while depleted, did not disappear and an urban/rural, east/west divide developed.  All of this is true of the Untied States as well, but in the Canadian context the rural and Western divide is, if anything, stronger than it is in the US as its more extreme in nature.

Romanticized image of farmer in Canada in front of the first Canadian flag.

And that circles us back to this topic.

One of the features of the East/West and Urban/Rural device in Canada is that urban areas have become very powerful in terms of federal legislation and they have in turn proven to be extremely liberal post 1960.  Indeed, Canada in some ways defines the Jeffersonian view about what concentrations of populations mean.  Urban Canadians are not "liberal" in the classic Lockean libertarian sense but "liberal", or perhaps, "progressive" in the Social Democrat sense. Completely contrary to Americans, Canadians as a whole are much more accepting and even embracing of statism and government sponsored social control, although that will inevitably crack and retreat under the strain of the extreme lengths to which it has now been put.  Typically liberals claim to espouse the ideals of liberty within democracy but Canadians have accepted real controls of speech and expression that nearly any sector of the American public would regard as absolutely abhorrent.

And urban Canadians, in the same spirit, have embraced very extensive gun control.

Rural Canadians have not and indeed much of what I have noted above has not been embraced by Western Canadians or rural Canadians.  Canadian rejection, in rural areas, of gun control measures is known to be widespread even while at the same time urban Canadians are so ignorant of rural Canadian firearm us that urban Canadians will frequently claim that guns can't be owned in Canada.  This citation is made by urban Canadians often in accusation against the United States, with it being claimed that there is no violence in Canada, more or less, because Canadians are not allowed to own firearms.  In fact, this is completely false on both scores and shows a real lack of understanding on the part of people making the statement about actual laws and cultures (plural) in Canada itself.

Firearms most definitely can be owned in Canada and, like rural Mexico, simply ignoring more recent gun control measures is a widespread Canadian thing.  Indeed, while Canadians have somewhat sneered at the United States for its lack of extensive gun control, at least the press is now reporting things honestly in Canada in regards to criminal firearms usage an not blaming it on the United States.  It's known that most illegally used and owned firearms in Canada come into illegal usage through other Canadians, and indeed an entire lucrative black market has sprung up in which those who acquire firearms legally pass them into illegal hands at great profit. That same market once existed in a lot of American big cities but it has passed away over the years as restrictions on firearms ownership which fostered the black market, as all such restrictions on material ownership always do, went away.  And there are lots of firearms in Canada, which up until very recently had firearms that were considerably more lax than those of the United States.

And what this has shown, as the Australian example also did, is that gun control really doesn't achieve anything.  Indeed, Toronto just had another mass killing, with a van, just before this.  As with the Western World in general, violence in Canada has continued to decline, overall, at about the same rate as it otherwise was.  Horrific acts, however, still occur.  The real impact of gun control has been to make life difficult for rural Canadians.  In spite of this, the likely Canadian reaction, or at least that in Ontario, will be to boost the already existing calls for even stricter gun control.

And as with the United States, Canada is occasionally plagued with acts by those who are mentally impaired, as was apparently the case here. That does not, as far as I'm aware, happen with the seeming same frequency as it does in the US, but Canadian rates of violence were always lower than those of the United States, and no doubt for a variety of reasons.  Toronto's rate of violence, for what its worth, has been climbing in recent years, which says something but its not clear what.  The Canadian economy is in good shape so whatever is spiking it has nothing to do with that, nothing to do with gun access, and nothing to do with the United States.  Something else is going on.

So what all can we learn from this?  Well, whatever it is, we're probably not going to.  But if we were to, it perhaps should give those from one country pause about lecturing another about following its own example, as all the examples are pretty flawed.  Another is that restricting implements at the end of the day doesn't really accomplish much other than to burden people who are very unlikely to ever burden you.

What we might learn, however, if we learn anything, is that people can be violent and the mentally disturbed are more likely to be violent than others.  People can imagine that they can legislate that away, but they really can't, or at least not by "you can't own" type of laws.  That requires some other focus.

Well, there's been no "we're all Torontonians" movement.  A random act of senseless violence just doesn't draw them like ones that can seemingly be politicized.  But perhaps they should be, as those might say more than anything else.

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*In fairness, this process started with the Industrial Revolution, of which the Electronic or Computer or Information Revolution is a mere part.

**Quebec City was founded in 1608.

***The United States underwent the same transformation, it should be noted, but much more slowly and indeed much less completely.

****Except. perhaps, that it too was largely rural.  Indeed, it was the French Canadians rural character, not the couple of large cities in Quebec, that allowed it to remain distinct over the centuries.  Being primarily rurual in character, and supported by the Catholic church in every fashion including culturally, it withstood the solvent of English culture and administration. The same is true of Ireland.  In both instances the culture would not even exist but for the  Catholic Church.

^It's more fairly used to described New Zealand and what was Rhodesia.

Poster Saturday, L'Emprunt de la Victoire

The Easter Riots Commence in Quebec City, March 28, 1918.

Several days of rioting, which would run through April 1, commenced on this day in Quebec City in 1918.

 

An example of a Canadian recruiting poster directed at the residents of Montreal (with which my family has a connection). Such efforts were not entirely successful.  This unit sought to recruit members of the fairly large Irish Canadian community of Quebec.

The underlying cause of the riots was conscription, which was deeply unpopular in Canada in general and hugely unpopular in Quebec, which saw the war as a European affair that they had very little stake or interest in.  404,385 Canadian men became liable for military service under the Military Service Act, which became law on January 1. 385,510 sought exemption and, given the vague nature of the statute, most succeeded.

The immediate cause of the rioting was the arrest of a French Canadian man who failed to present his exemption papers.  He was released, but things soon were totally out of control.  Soldiers had to be called into the city under the War Measures Act of 1914.  The deeply unpopular act and the riots lead to the proposed Francœur Motion under which Quebec was proposed to declare that it would be happy to leave the Canadian union if the rest of the then very English country found Quebec to be "an obstacle to the union, progress and development of Canada".  The motion was not introduced in the end out of a fear of what it would lead to.

In some ways the rioting strongly recalls the reaction that the Irish had to conscription which lead to the Easter Rebellion of 1916. England itself had no tradition of conscription for land service (it did for sea service) and conscription was actually more strongly established in the United States which had required militia service by state in all states up until after the Civil War, with there being outright conscription during the Civil War.  The English accepted it however.  None of the Dominions took well to it and Ireland, part of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, was massively opposed to it.  Originally the Irish were exempted from English conscription but when that was repealed in 1916 it lead to the Easter Rebellion and ultimately to the Anglo Irish War and Irish independence.  Australia rejected attempts to impose conscription in that Dominion in a national plebiscite, while New Zealand on the other hand adopted it.  Canada too adopted it after a prior failed attempt, but as can be seen, it was not a success and it fueled early thoughts of Quebec separation.

The irony of this is that while this was occurring, Ireland, Australia and Canada all contributed large bodies of men to the war voluntarily.  So,in the end, efforts to impose conscription in those localities were at best a waste of time and effort and at worst a cause of net manpower loss.

It's worth noting that conscription remained unpopular in Australia and Canada during World War Two and while both nations imposed it, only late in the war were conscripts required to serve overseas.  In Australia's case disgruntled conscripts were a source of poor units that otherwise stand apart from the really notable fighting qualities of the Australian Army.  Canadian conscripts seem to have accepted their late war fate and generally have worked out well when they were finally required to go overseas.  Ireland was of course independent , although a dominion, by World War Two, and it refused to declare war but once again supplied a large number of troops to the British forces.  Surprisingly Australia twice imposed conscription post World War Two, once during the Korean War and again during the Vietnam War.  Canada briefly followed the British example of Cold War conscription but phased it out very quickly and has never resumed it.

Conscription in the English Speaking World. Passing an Anniversary

We've been posting some on conscription and today is a World War One conscription anniversary.

 

The Irish Canadian Rangers, a unit raised, but not fully filled, in Quebec, drawing from Irish Canadians.  It had to be filled out by Irish recruits from Ireland, and then was folded into another Canadian unit.  In some ways, its story is emblematic of the situation in Quebec during the Great War.

Not in the United States, however. Rather, its the centennial of the Military Service Act which, ineffectively, ushered in conscription in Canada for the Great War.

Canada was a country with a population of only 8,000,000 people during the great war.  It's almost a shock to realize how small the population really was.  23% of that population was made up of the Quebecois.  During the war 400,000 Canadians, more than a few of whom were English immigrants, although the majority were not, volunteered to serve in Canadian army.  Full mobilization, for countries with universal conscription, is usually regarded as 10% of the population, all male in the traditional form of conscription.  So Canada mustered men at the rate of 5% of the population.  Pretty darned impressive really for an all volunteer force. And that doesn't include those contributions from Prince Newfoundland, and Labrador, which were not part of Canada at the time.

Royal Newfoundland Regiment crossing the Rhine, 1918. This is not the Canadian army.

By 1917 the well had somewhat run dry in Canada. And in these regards it was facing the difficult choice that other English speaking countries had already faced.

Conscription was not a strong land army tradition in any of them.  The English had never had conscription for ground troops in modern times, although it did have it for sailors in the 18th and early 19th Century.  Indeed, conscription of sailors gave rise to the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom as the Royal Navy felt free to remove Englishmen from American ships to serve in the ongoing war with Napoleonic France.  There's more to that to be said, but given as this isn't an entry on the War of 1812 of the Napoleonic Wars I'll forgo telling it.  Anyhow, that did mean that England had a bit of a tradition of conscription, but not for land armies. That came to an end with the British Military Service Act of 1916 which made men from age 18 to 40 liable for service in the English Army.

The application of that act, of course, gave rise to the Easter Rebellion in Ireland which ultimately lead to the Anglo Irish War and an independent Ireland.  Conscription in Ireland was pointless, really, as the Irish were already serving in such high numbers.  In the end, conscription was likely necessary for the British in the war, but the cost proved to be great in terms of permanently severing the UK's political ties with Ireland.  Perhaps an added element of irony in regards to that is present however as the UK would resort to conscription very early in World War Two and the Irish, now citizens of the "Free State", once again volunteered to serve in the British Army in high numbers.  Very unusually, and in recognition of the Cold War, the UK would reinstate conscription in peacetime in 1948 but would phase it back out a decade latter and official end it in 1960.

Australia put conscription up for vote twice during the Great War, and both times it was defeated, although narrowly.  Australia would contribute 416,809 men to the Australian army during World War One, a massive contribution given its also small population.

An Australian pro conscription poster.  The Australians weren't persuaded and while plenty of Australians went to help, they were all volunteers.

Australia's conscription story was more complicated for World War Two during which it first made all unmarried men of 21 years of age liable for military training.  In 1942 it introduced conscription, but it wasn't until the end of the war that Australia deployed conscripts overseas.  Australian soldiers who were conscripts stand apart ab bit, during World War Two, as they did not measure up to the same aggressive quality, at first, that Australian volunteers did.  Australia twice reintroduced conscription after the World War Two, once for the Korean War and once for the Vietnam War, but unlike other nations that kept prolonged peacetime drafts, they kept them tied to the wars themselves.

New Zealand had a friendlier view towards compulsory military training than Australia, having had a militia history that is somewhat analogous to that of the United States. While almost every English Commonwealth nation had been looking at compulsory military training prior to World War One, that movement was fairly well received in New Zealand. New Zealand, therefore, had started compulsory military training for teenagers in 1909, exempting conscientious objectors.  Conscientious objectors, however, were not well regarded.  Having already established compulsory military training and having effectively created an army reserve prior to the war, it is not surprising that New Zealand followed the UK by enacting conscription in 1916.

That brings us back to Canada.

Canada had a vigorous militia system prior to the Great War and readily adapted that enthusiastically to its army that went overseas in World War One.  It was an all volunteer system, however.  Noticeably absent amongst the volunteers were the Quebecois.

There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons for this but chief amongst them were that the Quebecois, a sizable minority of the Canadian population at 23% of that population, but concentrated in Quebec where they were a majority, did not regard the United Kingdom as the mother country and had a distance and separate history from France, having been severed from Imperial France during France's royal Bourbon period.  They did not see the war in Europe as their war and were not keen in serving in it.  Their view cannot be regarded, quite frankly, as unreasonable.  By 1917 the Canadian government was ready to attempt to force the issue which was largely unsuccessful. There was large scale opposition to conscription in Canada and in the end only 24,132 conscripts were sent to France.  The word "only" has to be used with some caution, of course, as that's over a division of men and 124,000 men were drafted and therefore added to the army.  Not everyone in a North American army in any war has made it overseas, so perhaps this contribution was more significant than supposed.

Canada would repeat this history during World War Two. Canada enacted conscription at the start of the war but it was overwhelmingly opposed in  Quebec.  As a compromise Canadian conscripts were not liable for overseas service at first but by late 1944 this was changed.  During World War Two only 12,908, contemptuously called "zombies" were sent by order overseas, although quite a few draftees volunteered for overseas service.  The repeat of conscription during World War Two, however, served to worsen relations between the Quebecois and English speaking Canadians which would have an impact after the war.  Canada has not attempted to enact conscription since the war.

Other Commonwealth nations had other experiences with conscription.  I do not believe that it was attempted in the Union of South Africa during World War One or Two, no doubt because of lingering resentment against the British amongst the Afrikaans population during that period.  In 1967 the country started to conscript white men over the age of 16, a young age for conscription by that time, and then phased it back out in 1993 after the collapse of apartheid. The country has toyed with reintroducing it in recent years.  It's neighbor to the north, Rhodesia, enacted conscription following its declaration of independence from the UK modeling it on the British system.  I don't know if Zimbabwe retains it today.

Which leaves us with the US.

We've explored that a bit in recent posts.  Conscription was not a popular concept going into World War One by any means, having only strictly existed during the Civil War.  The Wilson Administration was so concerned it would be poorly received that it attempted to camouflage its nature by calling it "Selective Service", a name it still officially retains in the United States, under the theory that the country would be fooled that the country was simply selecting volunteers, more or less.  Nobody was fooled.

 Selecting the first U.S. draftee during World War One.

Generally, Americans volunteered enthusiastically, and enthusiastically accepted the draft, during the Great War.  Nonetheless that well known story isn't as simple as it is often related to be. There were two uprising amongst southern yeoman populations against conscription during the war, one of which we've already discussed.  These were serious armed uprisings, not mere protests.  And hard left organizations, which were in some ways at the peak of their popularity in the country, were dead set against conscription.  Organizations like the IWW actively campaigned against it.

The US did have compulsory militia duty on the part of military aged males from the colonial period up until after the Civil War, and that's a type of conscription, so this story isn't quite as clear as it might at first seem.  That had passed away by the late 1800s, however, and the memory of it seems to have been largely forgotten.  So the World War One draft was an unusual event.  After the war conscription was halted, only to be reintroduced just prior to World War Two, but with very narrow support.  It went away again after World War Two but, just as in the UK, it came back in 1948 with the need to form a large Cold War Army.  It was retained in the US up until 1975, although nobody was conscripted after 1973.

Jeffrey Mellinger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1972 and who remained in the Army until he retired in 2011, making him the last American serving who entered the military as a conscript.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Off Topic: Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec

Churches of the West: Off Topic: Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec

My mother, with the Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre in Quebec, behind her.

Ireland

 

Ireland was not converted but created by Christianity, as a stone church is created; and all its elements were gathered as under a garment, under the genius of St. Patrick. It was the more individual because the religion was mere religion, without the secular conveniences. Ireland was never Roman, and it was always Romanist.

G.K. Chesterton: A Short History of England, and brought here due to the G. K. Chesterton Blog.

A statement that remains true.  Ireland, without the church, is a mere European state, and nothing more.   One of many.  Its remained Ireland because of the Church, and the Irish are the Irish for the same reason.  The same could be said, we should note, for Quebec and the Quebecois, which are distinct only because of the church, and without it is nothing more than a geographic expression with interesting ethnicity.

England's Ireland troubles shakes up the Irish Canadian Rangers: Henry Judah "Flip" Trihey resigns as commander of the Irish Canadian Rangers

On this day in 1917, Col. Henry Judah "Flip" Trihey resigned as commanding officer of the Irish Canadian Rangers, the 199th Canadian Expeditionary Force, in protest of rumored British plans to break the unit up and use its mean as reinforcements rather than commit them to action under his command as a single unit and in frustration with the general situation involving the Irish in the British Empire in general.  

 

 This recruiting poster had an image on it that was almost certainly Trihey's who was well known from his hockey days.

The resignation wasn't a mere "I quit". Trihey accused the Canadian government of deception in his resignation on the basis that he understood the 199th was to be deployed as a unit, not piecemeal.  Indeed the Irish Canadian patriot had seen his unit shipped overseas under the Latin motto Quis Separabit?, who can separate us, in an appeal to drawing Catholic and Protestant Irish to the unit, although most of Quebec's Irish were Catholic.

While it would seem fairly obvious now, somehow some of the Ranger's recruiting platforms also began to apparently have a sour taste in Trihey's mouth when the unit arrived in Ireland.  As noted in the earlier post on this unit, it was sent there to flesh out it ranks as it was not able to draw sufficient numbers of Canadians prior to going overseas.  The unit had adopted as a recruiting platform the motto "Small nations must be free" and the irony of that impacted Trihey upon his arrival in Ireland which, of course, was still in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rebellion.  While Ireland itself had contributed thousands of soldiers to the British Army, recruiting on the basis of small nation independence was obviously rather off the mark.

A Rangers recruiting poster that probably would have made more sense for the Irish Republican Army than the Irish Canadian Rangers.

While he was reacting to rumors, rather than fact, in part, the impact of them must have been severe as the unit had only barely arrived in Ireland.  The result was, however, that he went home by his own choice.  Mere weeks after having arrived in Ireland.

 Trihey as a hockey star, before his days a mustachioed colonel and lawyer.

His hasty departure was noted and not appreciated.  The unit was not immediately disbanded or absorbed into any others but instead was sent around Ireland in a recruiting drive with the hope of fleshing out hte Irish Canadian ranks with Irishmen from Ireland.  At one point this had achieved sufficient success that it was felt that the unit could be assigned to the Canadian 5th Division which started being formed in February 1917 in Britain.  When that occurred Canadian Minister of Justice Charles Doherty appealed for Trihey's reinstatement, but Canadian High Commissioner George Perley rejected the proposal and in fact termed Trihey's departure a “desertion” and condemned Trihey for his departure on the basis that he “left without consulting or saying goodbye to his officers.”  Doherty continued to campaign for Trihey but by that time Trihey was calling for Irish independence from the United Kingdom and he went on to oppose conscription in Quebec.  His experiences had clearly converted him from an Irish Canadian Empire patriot to a Canadian opponent of English rule in Ireland,if not the Empire itself, which would have probably reflected the views of the common Irish in Canada and the United States, the exception being that he was a public figure and now very vocal. Suffice it to say he was not restored to command, and indeed, in the context of the era, he wouldn't have been a suitable commander at that point, and may well not have been from the very first instance.

He wasn't the only one to resign, at the time he did, it should be noted.  Major W. P. O’Brien, his second in command, likewise did.

The unit itself would not actually be absorbed into another until May.  His position was assumed by Col. James Vincent Patrick O’Donahoe who would die in action, in command of a different unit, that following May.  The Canadian 5th Division suffered a similar fate and even though it was formed, it was not deployed as a unit, and its constituents were used as replacements for other units.

Trihey had been instrumental in raising the regiment for which he had taken leave from his law practice.  Prior to that he had been a legendary hockey player and he was inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame posthumously.  Following his resignation from the service he returned to practicing law in Montreal.  He died in 1942 at age 64.  He's an interesting example of conflicting Irish views within Canada, all within a single individual.

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Note:  Some of the above is based upon the excellent entry here, at:

Patriots, Crooks and Safety-Firsters

Colonels of the Canadian Expeditionary Force

Very interesting website!

Royal Bank of Canada merges with the Quebec bank.

On this day, in 1917.

I don't have much  more than this, on this one, other than to note that the Royal Bank of Canada is still very much around and that it's Canada's largest bank.  The merger was a business combination of two very large, and even then old, banks, with the Royal Bank of Canada being the survivor of the merger.

The Irish Canadian Rangers sail for Europe.

The Irish Canadian Rangers set sail from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on this day in 1916.

 

 

The unit had been formed from and sponsored by Montreal's Irish Canadian community (of which my ancestors were part).  It was centered around the Montreal Polo Club to some extent.  In spite of diligent efforts it was never up to strength and additional recruiting efforts would take place in Ireland itself to attempt to bring it up to its full allotment.

 

The unit would note end up being deployed in France as a unit, but instead would ultimately be used to provide replacements to other units.

The Laramie Republican for September 11, 1916

The Quebec bridge disaster was also reported the day it occurred in Laramie, testament to how quickly news was now able to be reported.

Also in that news was a report of the ongoing failure to capture or corral Pancho Villa.

And the founding of what would become Tie Siding, outside of Laramie, a tie treatment plant and later a major environmental clean up location, was also in the news.  And the crisis in Greece over World War One made front page news in the Gem City.

The Wyoming Tribune for September 11, 1916

The bridge disaster in Quebec managed to make the front page the very day it happened, which is truly remarkable.  The big news for Wyoming, however, was the failure of the Stock Raising Homestead Act to pass to pass on its first attempt.  The act, a modification of the series of Homestead Acts dating back to the 1860s, was important for those in Wyoming agriculture and therefore extremely big news.  Particularly as the entire West was in the midst of a homesteading boom at this time.

Something was also going on with a "border patrol", which wouldn't mean the agency we think of when we hear those terms, as it did not yet exist.

The Quebec Bridge Collapse. September 11, 1916

LOC Caption:  Photograph shows the Quebec Bridge across the lower St. Lawrence River. After a collapse of the original design a second design was constructed the center span of the second design collapsed as it was being raised into position on September 11, 1916 killing eighteen workers. (Source: Flickr Commons project,

Caring for the dying

 My mother, as a young woman.

My mother, age 90, is dying.

This isn't a sudden thing.  She was remarkably physically good health up until her mid 80s, when things began to fall apart.  It impacted her mind first, and not kindly.  She had always been a very physically active person, riding a bike and swimming daily, up until she was about 85 years old, when she suddenly quit. That's when I knew that I couldn't ignore things anymore.

Not that it wasn't obvious before that. 

It's a long story I care not to repeat, but her mind had been deteriorating for some time, but she was still able to live on her own and she loved doing so.

Now, on that, perhaps a bit of that is a rationalization on my part.  My father and I were very, very close, and I miss my father dearly to this day.  He died when he was 62 years old after becoming suddenly ill.  The anniversary of that death, in fact, is coming right up.  I'm 52 years old now.  My father's father died when he was in his late 40s, and they were very close as well.  I think that weighted heavily on his mind, particularly as he came up to and then passed that age.  I know that as I begin to see 62 on the horizon its on my mind, but then I didn't expect to make it out of here alive anyhow.

And I'm seeing that advanced old age has not been kind to my mother.  Nor has it been kind to most of her siblings.  It hasn't been the same for all of her siblings, all but one of whom have lived into advanced old age.  Some, including one of my uncles, have remained very mentally sharp.  But others have endured what my mother has.  Seeing it, I hope that I'm spared that, and frankly if Providence should provide it, while I'd like to live long enough to see my children well established as adults and enjoy their adult company, I don't know that I'd like to endure the ravages of extreme old age.  I know that its been horrible to watch.

 My mother, center, as a little girl.

And given this, I've thought a lot about how I've generally handled it and frankly sometimes considered how things like this were handled in prior times.  Frankly, I don't know that they were handled all that much differently, to some degree, in our fluid North American society.

 My mother, far left, with her sister and her oldest brother, Terry, in his Canadian Army uniform prior to his going to Europe in World War Two.  Of those depicted, Terry and Brenda (second from right), in addition to my mother, are still living.

My mother is originally from St. Lambert, Quebec.  She was born there and grew up there with her extended family of siblings.  Born in 1925, the family hit very hard times during the Great Depression.  Indeed, it's generally not realized that the Great Depression hit harder in Canada than it did in the United States, but it did. The percentage of Canadians out of work exceeded that of Americans. Having said that, that Quebec, which is now a thing of the past, had a huge rural, French speaking, agrarian population.  My mother's family was an Irish-French urban family, and therefore not part of the agrarian population, although they shared the common faith that it had.  They principally spoke English, although everyone could speak French. Anyhow, she went to work in her mid teens as the family was in such desperate straights, working at first for the Canadian Pacific Railway.  In her 20s she moved out to Calgary and worked as an oil and gas secretary, before leaving that job, as the urging of her mother, in order to be bridesmaid for her youngest sister, who married in Denver Colorado.  Returning north after that she stopped here as we were having an oil boom and she thought it likely should could find work, which she did.  All in all, she was pretty adventuresome when young.

I'd be hard pressed to know who is who is this photograph of my mother's siblings, and I'm not even sure if she is in it.

She met my father at St. Anthony's Church and they were married in 1958.  My mother would have been 33 years old at the time.  When I was born she was 38, fairly late, particularly in those years, to have a child.  I'm my parents only one.

 My mother, right, riding.  This photograph was likely taken in Alberta when she was in her twenties, but I'm not really certain and now there's nobody I ask.

We were a pretty active family. Indeed, I feel that I compare unfavorably as an adult to my parents.  But my mother started sliding into illness when I was in my teens and by the time I was 20 she was very ill.  And that illness expressed itself as a severe example of dementia.  It was scary, and during the process it strained our relationship severely.  My father admirably stayed very loyal to her the entire time, in spite of all the embarrassment that accompanies such an affliction before old age.  Ultimately she arrived at death's door.

During that time, I prayed that she'd recover, and she did.  There's no explanation for it other than a miracle.  No doctor has ever been able to explain it. The recovery wasn't full, but it was large, and when on death's door she began a recovery over a period of months that ultimately allowed her to return home from a brief hospitalization and a brief stay in a nursing home.  Her mind cleared up to a large extent, if not fully, and she was amazingly physically fit.  She bicycled and swam everyday, and in her 80s was so fit that I was often quite stunned that others were not equally fit.

 My mother with a bicycle while in her teens.  She rode a bicycle daily up into her mid 80s.

My father died at age 62 after a sudden illness afflicted him. He struggled for a period of months before passing away.  It was a horrific experience for both of us.  By that time, I'd gone down to the University of Wyoming twice and had graduated from law school.   When I returned to town I'd planned on only being at my parents house briefly but first my father grew ill and then he died, so I stayed on there, first to help him and then to try to help my mother.  Two years after he died I met my wife and we married, and with my mother doing well I moved out.

She did well after that for a long time.  Indeed, twenty or so years.  However, slowly, anyone could see things were changing.  About six years ago it was too much to ignore, although I tried to.  I couldn't bring myself to contemplate her moving from her house to which she was so attached, so I did nothing.  The last winter we debated what to do.  It was a nightmare as she panicked over snow, or forgot how common things worked. Finally, unbeknownst to me, she quite being careful about the food she was eating, which started making her ill.  Ultimately she fell very ill and at that point received the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.  But a diagnosis wasn't probably really necessary, it was pretty clear what was going on.

That lead to the nursing home, which we had no choice but to arrange for.  She couldn't return home, and with a will that was incredibly strong, we could not take care of her.  Over time her condition advanced much less slowly than anticipated and we were able to move her, when her wing of the nursing home closed, to a new facility that had a memory care unit that was newer and nicer, with more freedom, seemingly.

Now the end has arrived.  She's been in the hospital twice in less than a month and her physical condition has declined.  Her memory is now almost completely gone.  She can't remember things day to day, and I doubt from morning to afternoon.  She once, prior to her first illness, and again after recovering from it, had a very active mind.  Now, none of the old interests are there.

I don't know how well I've handled any of this.  Not very well, I think.  From time to time I've looked and thought that in prior ages this was handled better within families, at home, in times that were slower. But I don't think that's really that true.  We've always been so mobile.  I know that my father was there for his parents when they died, but then my grandfather was only in his 40s and my father a teenager when he died.  I can remember my father's mother dying when I was a small child, and all her children were there, and they all live here.  On my mother's side I can barely remember her mother, having met her I think only once when I was old enough too, and I don't know if my mother went out to see her as she was dying.  I dimly recall that it came too quickly.  And I think that was the same for her father.

When I was young, I recall prayers for a good, or happy, death being common in the Middle Ages.   Then are not unknown now, but they are less common.  While young, I was always struck by that with a bit of horror.  A good death?  How could that be?  

But I understand it now.  All too often that isn't how things happen.  Or at least its now how those who observe it perceive it.  It makes sense to me now.

O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Anyway you look at it, this is one of those areas where I don't measure up to my father and his siblings.  I  simply don't.