marc@home
A few things that interest me - Canada in World War 1
My interest in the Canadian involvement in the First World War grew from my interest in genealogy, and a desire to know a little more about my grandfather, Thomas O’Connor. I knew that he had been in the First World War – as kids we used to play in the attic at “The Farm”, and there was a picture of him in uniform, along with his helmet, gas mask and bayonet, possibly other artifacts long lost now. I asked my mother about it, my grandfather had died in 1967 when I was too young to talk to him about it, but my mother knew little more than I did. She said that it was something that he never talked about with the family, although she said that he would talk to my uncle Bruce Anderson – he had served with the American forces in Korea, and he could “understand things”. In 2003 I came across his attestation papers online at Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
In those days you had to order the service records from LAC – for a (not inconsequential) fee employees at LAC would find the records, copy the material, and mail it to you, so several moths later I had his record. I tentatively dove into it, realized how much I didn’t know, and began researching. My objective was to have a short writeup of it ready for my mother’s birthday in February. What started as a 2 or3 page writeup evolved into a 62-page narrative I called “For $1.10 a Day” after the overseas pay rate for Privates in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. I printed it and gave my mother a copy for her “39th birthday” – she refused to say she was older than that until the year I turned 40 – as well as copies for my aunts and uncles.
This exercise started me thinking more about the “Great War” as it was known at the time. I had passed by the memorial in Huntingdon, Quebec, but had never really thought about it much, so one day when I was visiting (I was living in Columbus, Ohio at the time) I stopped and looked at it. I knew that a lot of men had died in the war but seeing the names of those that had made me think a lot harder about it. I photographed the memorial and started to research the background of the men, getting the data from many different sources. As I did this, I realized the need to organize it, and due to my professional background, I created a small database for the information. I mentioned this while asking questions in some World War 1 forums, and others asked if I could make it available to them as well.
The Honourable Laurence MacAuley presenting Marc Leroux with the Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation for work on the Canadian Great War Project. Link to the commendation.
In 2004 I launched the Canadian Great War Project (CGWP) as an online database containing information about Canadian soldiers of the first world war. Initially it was quite small, with only a couple of people working on it, but it quickly grew to be a premiere resource for Canadians in the First World War. The site pulled together information from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, multiple databases at Library and Archives Canada, and other sources – and it made them fully searchable. I also intentionally made it a crowd-sourced initiative, at its peak there were about a hundred people adding information monthly, and several thousand entering periodic information. It became recognized as a valued resource for both people interested in their relatives that served, and researchers in general. In 2019 I was honored with the Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation for the work on the Canadian Great War Project.
As the CGWP grew, so did the effort in maintaining it. At the same time, my responsibilities in my professional career took a massive step forward, and I had little time to do anything more than deal with critical issues. Others recognized this, and in 2015 I received a call from Colonel James Kempling (Retired), former Commanding Officer of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Jim was at the University of Victoria, writing his thesis on the P.P.C.L.I. in the First World War. He had contacted me, and I had been able to provide some information to help his research and he was impressed with the volume of data that was in the CGWP and with the community of people that had developed it, all without external funding. Jim convinced me that it was better to have this maintained by an organization with the financial resources to maintain it, rather than a single person. His comment “Marc, what would happen if you were hit by a bus – we’d lose all of this.” Resonated with me, and in November 2016 I signed an agreement to move the Canadian Great War Project to the University of Victoria. Part of the agreement was that it would always be a freely available resource, and that the material that we had generated would be preserved. It took almost 5 years to move the site to the University and it is now hosted there, with a modern interface and many more entries and supplemental information than I was able to support. There are still aspects that I would like to see – there still is not, and I’m not sure there ever will be, an active community around it, and progress is slow on adding to it. There are also parts of the original CGWP that the University has not yet implemented, and I’ve decided to resurrect them (and add to them) on this site, until such time as the University desires to take them over. These will reflect areas that I have had a specific interest in, notably Canadian Prisoners of War and Canadian Memorials.