Dusang, Everett Sutherland

Private Everett Sutherland Dusang was called up for service in February 1918. He trained in Canada for almost a year then served for four months in Russia with the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, returning home in May 1919.

Everett was the oldest son of Albert James Dusang and Caroline Laura Gill of Kenora, Ontario. Albert and Caroline were both born in Ontario and they were married in 1894 in Fesserton, a small village on the eastern tip of Georgian Bay. Albert worked as a lumberman and they had at least twelve children, seven sons and five daughters. Everett, their second child, was born in Fesserton on 2 September 1895. Around 1910 the Dusang family moved to the town of Kenora in northwestern Ontario where Albert continued to work in the lumber industry. When the 1911 census was taken Everett was 15 years old, living at home and working in a sawmill like his father.

The war started in August 1914 and Everett’s younger brother Hilliard Dusang nlisted with a local battalion in the fall of 1915. A year later he was sent to France and he died at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917. Conscription started in Canada in 1917 and single men age 20 to 34 were required to register that fall. Everett reported immediately and his medical exam on 6 October found him fit for overseas service. In February 1918 he was called up and assigned to the 1st Depot Battalion, Manitoba Regiment, which trained in Manitoba and Port Arthur. In April he was transferred to A Company of the Manitoba Special Service Unit and by July he was serving on garrison duty in Quebec.

The Armistice was signed in November 1918, ending hostilities on the Western Front, but Canadian troops were still needed for operations in Siberia and north Russia. Plans were already in place to assemble an international force at Vladivostok in Siberia. The goals included support and training for anti-Bolshevik forces and protecting stockpiles of Russian weapons and supplies to keep them from falling into the hands of the Bolsheviks. The Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia) was made up of two infantry battalions, the 259th and 260th, as well as artillery, cavalry, machine gun and support units, for a total of just over 4,000 men.

The 259th Battalion was organized in September 1918 and mobilized in British Columbia, with recruits coming from Ontario and Quebec. Everett was transferred to the 259th on 31 October 1918 and he embarked with them from Vancouver on 26 December on the SS Protesilaus. They arrived at Vladivostok in mid-January. The Canadians were not involved in any combat operations in Siberia but there were casualties from accidents, illness and disease, including several men buried at sea. In March 1919 it was decided to disband the CEFS and send the troops home over the next few months. Everett left Vladivostok on 19 May on the Empress of Russia and arrived in Vancouver on 29 May. He was discharged on 9 June in Winnipeg.

Everett returned to Kenora and when the 1921 census was taken he was living with his parents on Fourth Street North, employed as a fire ranger. In 1926 he moved to Buffalo, New York and found work in a rayon mill. He was married around that time and he and his wife Vera had one child, their daughter Ethel Lillian who was born in New York in 1929. By 1932 they had returned to Canada and they spent several years living in Quebec, in the Shawinigan area north of Trois-Rivières. Early in the 1940s they moved to Kingston, Ontario where Everett worked for the Nylon Company (Dupont). He was retired by 1957 and he passed away on 22 June 1959, at age 63. Vera died in 1977 and their daughter Ethel (Mrs. Leslie Jonathan Holmes) in 2005. They are all buried at Glenhaven Memorial Gardens in Kingston.

By Becky Johnson

Grave marker photograph by Barbara G37,  ID #50046378, findagrave.com.

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