Harry Ralph was raised in Ottawa although he spent most of his life in London at 1061 Patricia St. Harry's summer job? Sorting the mail into bags aboard the post office coach car on the trains that ran for the various communities between Toronto and Ottawa.
He is 22 when the Great War starts. Harry serves in the 10th ( a sort of holding group) and 12th battalions of the (Royal) Lincolnshire Regiment of the British Army*. As an Officer Training Candidate at U of T student as WWI, Harry's military ranks is as a Captain, a junior rank, probably commanding a platoon group of 200 men. By the end of his service, he earns the rank of 2nd Lieutenant.
On October 31st of 1917, Harry is in a "Depot" in Shoreham, England. According to War Office records of the British Army, he is injured and "unfit" for three months, with additional "light duty" for six weeks. A month later, November 20th, Harry is given leave to go to Canada. A clerk notes on his service record after the fact that the leave has to be calculated from the original date in October, not November. By February 26, yet another clerk wonders if anyone knows if Harry is coming back. Eventually, the Militia Council of Eastern Canada - who are officially responsible for Harry's apparent "overstay" admit thay they gave him an extra month from February 28th to be admitted to hospital in Canada "for tonsilectomy." On his 26th birthday, a message "despatched in code" asks Canada how Harry is "medically situated." The answer is that a medical board has put him in the hospital for six more months. He is on leave - with pay- to October 1918. Thw War will be over on November 11th. During the time from February(?) '17 to November '18 , Harry is a patient at a pavillion of the Toronto General for soldiers. Here he is nursed by Sylvia Stockton, a nurse four years his senior from New Brunswick. They marry on the 3rd of August, 1920. My Dad is born five and a half years later.
Following the Great War, my grandfather earned his BA at U of T in January 1919. He lived at 87 Glen Road in Rosedale which was his Aunt Agnes' house. (wife of Andrew Carrick) his Dad having died in 1907. and was called to the Bar on October 21, 1920. In 1921, he is living at 142 Bloor West and working at the Post Office. According to Law Society of Upper Canada archives, Harry's war injuries brought him to Toronto After returning to U of T in 1919 and Osgoode Hall, Harry is persuaded to accept a position as credit officer at Huron & Erie Mortgage - later: Canada Trust- which was apparantly owned by the father of a fellow law student's father in London, Ontario. Then, in 1929, the company is bought out and Harry briefly considers re-starting a career in law. He registers as a "Barrister-at-Law", but instead gets a new job as the Manager of a loan company. 13 years pass. Then in May of 1943, he applies for full reinstatement by the Law Society. A local member of the London Bar, Eric Moorhouse, recommends him and two London lawyers, a Mr. W.D. Smith and Mr. E.H. Braund "attest to his fitness." Interestingly, as part of his Law Society re-application, Harry reports that he did not work "for a lengthy period in 1932, in 1936 and 1937 because of a "disability due to war service." But an advisor to the Secretary of the LS wants to find out if Harry was paid for his services to administer the estate of a family friend (which technically he couldn't perform if he had claimed to be a lawyer). In the end, Harry gets his status back and even the tough-minded advisor admits that Mr. Clewes appears to be a "decent fellow." By January of 1944, Harry's practising law and his 18 year-old son Dick is running legal errands at the land Registry, etc. Dad remembers that Harry was amember of the local miltia, the City of London Fusiliers.Harry's self-employment continues until his unexpected death in December of 1946. He is 53.
*( The 12th were known as the Grimsby Chums, because so many men from that seaside town enlisted en masse.)
The regiment, nicknamed the Poachers (and the Springers), started in 1685 as the Earl of Bath, Colonel Sir John Granville's Regiment of Foot; becoming the 10th Regiment of Foot from 1751 to 1782 and the 10th (North Lincoln) Regiment of Foot from 1782 to 1881. The regiment fought Napoleon in Egypt in 1801, and was in India for most of the last fifty years of the 19th century. Also Africa. In the Great War the regiment fought in Mons, Marne,1914; Messines, 1914/17/18; Ypres 1914/15/17; Neuve Chapelle; Loos; Somme, 1915/18; Lys; Hindenburg Line; Suvla. From 1881 until 1946, this regiment was without the Royal prefix. The regiment survived without anymore changes until 1960 when it merged with the Northhamptonshire Regiment and finally lost the County affiliation in 1968, redesignated as the 2nd Batallion The Royal Anglican Regiment.
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