The Jeannie Johnston Educational Foundation’s latest newsletter contains two articles that will interest genealogists researching Canadian military history.
In the first article, Foundation chairman Leo Delaney writes about The French Canadians in World War I.
“In excess of 76,000 French Canadians enlisted in the Great War of 1914 -1918. Previously it was thought that the participation was only 32,000 to 35,000 but recent studies have confirmed the higher of these figures. The casualties killed were 3,500 but it is not known at this time how many were wounded.”
Irish Canadian Rangers recruitment poster, World War I, Montreal Litho Co., Montreal, Quebec. Source: McGill Rare Books and Special Collections, WP1.R13.F3.
Journalist and author Alan Hustak’s article about The Irish Canadian Rangers looks at how Irish Canadians, not too keen join forces with the British, were recruited.
The opening paragraph begins with, “For obvious historic reasons there was no love lost between Canadians of Irish descent and the British when the First World War began.”
Also note the links in the newsletter to several online resources.
The Jeanie Johnston Educational Foundation is a registered Canadian charity that was founded in 2004 to promote the study of Canadian history and immigration. The foundation is named in honour of the ship Jeanie Johnston that carried Irish immigrants to Canada in the 1850s and made 14 passages without loss of life. A recreated version of the ship visited Montreal in 2003.
To see McGill University’s online Canadian War Poster Collection, visit McGill Rare Books and Special Collections.
