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These are the stories of Kenora participants in the First World War.
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Wallace McDonald was born on 30 August 1887 in Rat Portage (later renamed Kenora) in northwestern Ontario. Both of his parents, James McDonald and Margaret Connell, were from Canada but likely married in 1882 in the States. Their first child, daughter Mabel, was born in 1884 in Jamestown, North Dakota. From there the family moved… Read More »
Robert John (Bobby) Benson was born on 18 May 1894 in Davidson, Saskatchewan. His parents Hans Benedikt Johannesson and Rosa Gudmundsdottir were from Iceland, marrying on 22 July 1876 in Grenadarstadur, Sudur-Thingeyjarsysea. The couple gave birth to two children in Iceland, Egill (George) in 1875 and Vestium (Weston) in 1879. At some point after Weston’s… Read More »
Private Joseph Harding Rideout enlisted in September 1915 and served overseas for three years, about half that time with the Royal Canadian Regiment. He was wounded at the Somme but he survived the war and returned home in March 1919. Joseph was the only son of Harding Rideout and his first wife Lydia Dolen. Harding… Read More »
Thomas Malcolm Young was the youngest son of William Thomas and May Young of 9545 – 106th Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta. Thomas was born October 16, 1896 in Rat Portage, now known as Kenora, Ontario. His parents William and May (née Simmons) were married in Rat Portage in 1891 and he had two older brothers, William… Read More »
Barney (Baring) Viborg was born in Reykjavik, Iceland on June 24, 1892. At some point he immigrated to Canada and settled in Keewatin, Ontario. Barney was a cooper (barrel maker) at the Keewatin flour mill in 1914 when war was declared. Among the first group of 45 Kenora volunteers, he was rejected for service at… Read More »
Sergeant Frederick Harwood enlisted with the Canadian Army Service Corps in February 1916 and served in France and Belgium for three years. He returned to Canada in July 1919. Fred was the only son of William Harwood and Sarah Harlow of Boston, Lincolnshire, England. William was a butcher and he and his wife were both… Read More »
In October 1917 the Canadian Corps moved to the Ypres Salient in Belgium for the assault on Passchendaele. Artillery shells and heavy rains had turned the battlefield into a wasteland of mud, swamp and water-filled shell holes. The Canadians suffered 15,000 casualties in the operation with over 3,000 men killed and 1,000 missing and presumed… Read More »
Kenora’s David George Sinclair and his wife Eliza Ann Bock had four sons that served in WW1 – Leslie Foster John (born 1887), Levi Wilmot (born 1893), Roy Frederick (born 1895) and Benjamin Elton (born 1899). The family arrived in Rat Portage (Kenora) in 1903 and settled north of town in the rural area of… Read More »
Private Robert Edmund Bunting was the youngest son of Robert James Bunting and Alice Agar Fitzgerald. James was born in New Brunswick and Alice in Ontario. They both moved to northwestern Ontario with their families around 1880. They were married in Rat Portage (later renamed Kenora) in 1882 and they had a daughter Violetta in… Read More »
James George Reeves was born to Jonathan and Sarah Ann Reeves on April 13, 1880 in Tadworth, Surrey, England. In the 1891 U.K. census, his mother was 59, father 54 and there were several siblings: Frances Elizabeth (30), William Jonathan (21), Ada (20), Thomas (15), James George himself (12), and Herbert Edgar (9). In the… Read More »
