Kenora Great War Project

 

Personal Details
Date of BirthDecember 4, 1897
Place of BirthCarnduff, Saskatchewan
CountryCanada
Marital StatusSingle
Next of KinRichard Carnduff, Carnduff, Saskatchewan
Trade / CallingStudent
ReligionMethodist
Service Details
Regimental Number2147456
Service Record Link to Service Record
Battalion34th Fort Garry Horse
ForceCanadian Expeditionary Force
BranchCanadian Cavalry
Enlisted / ConscriptedEnlisted
Address at Enlistment502 Warwick Apartments, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Date of EnlistmentJanuary 16, 1917
Age at Enlistment19
Theatre of ServiceEurope
Prisoner of WarNo
Survived WarYes
Death Details
Date of DeathSeptember 27, 1977
Age at Death80

Carnduff, Wesley Richard

Wesley Richard Carnduff was born on 4 December 1897 in Carnduff, Saskatchewan. His father Richard Carnduff immigrated to Canada from Ireland around 1880 and it appears that he and a brother settled in the Carnduff area where Richard farmed, the community named for the two fellows. On 31 December 1890 Richard married Henrietta Plews in Deloraine, Manitoba, a community about 100 kilometres east of Carnduff. The daughter of William Plews and Lucy Chrysler, Henrietta was born in 1871 in Victoria, Ontario where her family farmed. Richard and Henrietta gave birth to nine children, births registered in Carnduff: James A Victor (1891), Lucy Sarah (1893), Frances Maude (1894), William Edward (1896), Wesley Richard, George Clifford (1901), Norman (1903), Gladys Evelyn (1907), and Cecil (1909).

Wesley was attending school in Winnipeg, Manitoba when he signed his attestation papers on 16 January 1917. Blue-eyed with black hair, he gave his father Richard back in Carnduff as next of kin. As a Private with the 6th Draft of the 34th Fort Garry Horse, Wesley arrived in England on 8 May 1917 aboard the Olympic. Taken on strength with the Canadian Reserve Cavalry Regiment upon arrival, Wesley was later posted to the Fort Garry Horse in France.

By 30 September 1917 Wesley had joined the unit in the field where he was to serve for the duration of the war. He suffered a brief bout of influenza in July of 1918 and was granted a fourteen day leave to England that September. In January of 1919 he was awarded a Good Conduct Badge and after spending some time in a hospital in Abbeville that spring, Wesley returned to England, embarking for Canada aboard the Northland on 26 June 1919. He was discharged from service in Winnipeg on the 10th of July.

Although Wesley returned to Carnduff after the war, by the 1921 Canada census he was living and working as a bookkeeper in Fort Frances, Ontario along with his brother Norman. On 26 June 1924, in Fort Frances, Wesley married Mary Ethel Weldon. Born in 1902 in Grenville, Quebec, Mary was the daughter of David Frank and Catherine (née Campbell) Weldon. Wesley and Mary gave birth to their first son, Donald Wesley, the next year, and by the birth of their second son, Richard Weldon in 1934, the family was living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1941 Wesley joined the Kenora, Ontario branch of the Canadian Legion but at some point they moved to Saskatoon where he worked for a Ford dealership.

Predeceased by his father Richard in 1948 and his mother Henrietta in 1964, both in Carnduff, Wesley died on 27 September 1977 in Victoria, British Columbia. Disposition was by Royal Oak Crematorium. His wife Mary died on 20 October 1989, also in Victoria.

by Judy Stockham

Carnduff-Wesley-Richard-2


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