Kenora Great War Project

 

Personal Details
Date of BirthFebruary 8, 1893
Place of BirthKenora, Ontario
CountryCanada
Marital StatusMarried
Next of KinMartha Tweedie (wife), 1306 Bidwell Street, Vancouver, BC
Trade / CallingSalesman
ReligionPresbyterian
Service Details
Regimental Number2204997
Service RecordLink to Service Record
BattalionCanadian Railway Troops Depot
ForceCanadian Expeditionary Force
BranchCanadian Railway Troops
Enlisted / ConscriptedEnlisted
Place of EnlistmentWinnipeg, Manitoba
Address at Enlistment1306 Bidwell Street, Vancouver, BC
Date of EnlistmentAugust 20, 1918
Age at Enlistment25
Theatre of ServiceCanada
Prisoner of WarNo
Survived WarYes
Death Details
Date of DeathMay 17, 1970
Age at Death77
Buried AtCremation (Royal Oak Crematorium, Saanich, British Columbia)

Tweedie, Louis Herwald

Private Louis Herwald Tweedie was born in either Rat Portage or Norman, Ontario on 8 February 1893. He had an older brother Roswell Dawson and two younger sisters, Hazel and Olive, all born in Norman or Rat Portage (now called Kenora). His father, Eusebius Dawson Tweedie, was from Carlton Place, Ontario and his mother, Christina Jasper, was born in London, England. Eusebius and his wife had married in Winnipeg in 1889 and settled in the Rat Portage area, where he worked as a mill engineer. Sadly, their daughter Olive died in 1904, at age 7, and she’s buried in Lake of the Woods Cemetery. Sometime after that they moved west to Vancouver and Eusebius passed away there in 1908, suffering from tuberculosis. When the 1911 census was taken Louis was 18, working as a bookkeeper for a clothing firm and living in Vancouver with his widowed mother and sister Hazel.

Louis was married in Vancouver on 10 November 1915, at age 22. His wife, Martha Peard, was a stenographer and the daughter of Robert and Jean Peard. She was born in Winnipeg in 1894 and moved to Vancouver as a teenager. Louis and Martha had at least one son, Robert Louis, who was born in October 1917. Louis was employed as a bookkeeper for the Shell Gasoline Company in Vancouver in 1917. A year later when he enlisted he and his wife were living in Tacoma, Washington.

Louis returned to British Columbia and enlisted in Victoria on 20 August 1918, signing up with the Canadian Railway Troops Depot. On his attestation paper his occupation was salesman and next of kin was his wife Martha in Vancouver. By early November Louis had been sent to Hamilton, Ontario. His medical exam there classified him as B2, suitable for non-combatant work. The Armistice ended hostilities on 11 November and Louis was discharged in Hamilton on 29 November. He had served for three months with his character described as very good. His brother Roswell Tweedie was called up in March 1918 and he served in Canada for four months.

When the 1920 U.S. census was taken Louis and Martha were living in Portland, Oregon, where he worked as an assistant manager for Shell Oil. Martha developed tuberculosis and in the spring of 1932 she was sent to the sanatorium in Tranquille, British Columbia. She passed away there on 16 September 1932, a month before her 38th birthday. Louis married again in Vancouver the following summer, on 3 June 1933. His second wife, Marjorie Doris Sinclair Watson, was a stenographer, 38 years old and born in Victoria, British Columbia. In the 1940s and 50s Louis was proprietor of Scenic View Lodge in the town of Malahat, northwest of Victoria. In the late 1950s he operated a garage in Malahat and by 1962 he was retired and living in Victoria. He passed away in Royal Jubilee Hospital on 17 May 1970, at age 77, and Marjorie died six years later.

By Becky Johnson


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