Calling all history buffs! Get your free digital download to our new e-book The Great Response: Canada and the First World War, written by Tom MacGregor.
An excerpt from The Great Response: Canada and the First World War …
The National War Memorial in Ottawa is appropriately themed “The Great Response of Canada.” Built to commemorate Canada’s sacrifice in the Great War of 1914-18, it features 22 figures representing the men and women who heeded the call when Canada went to war.
At the front is a soldier with a Lewis gun beside a kilted infantryman with a Vickers machine gun. A pilot, an air mechanic and a sailor follow them. Behind them are two infantrymen with rifles. Beside them are two mounted figures, a member of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade and a dispatch rider. At the back are two nurses from the Militia Army Medical Corps, a stretcher-bearer, and a member each from the Royal Canadian Engineers, the Canadian Forestry Corps, the Canadian Army Service Corps, the Canadian Signals Corps, the Corps of Canadian Railway Troops, the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery and the Motor Machine Gun Corps.
Three additional infantrymen complete the group. They represent the tremendous response from Canada, a country with barely eight million people, which put 619,636 men and women in uniform in the war.
