thebravestcanadian

by Sam McBride

It is 107 years since my maternal grandparents Mary Helen Peters and E.E.L. “Ted” Dewdney married June 19, 1912 at St. Paul`s Anglican Church in Esquimalt, the municipality immediately north of Victoria, British Columbia.

The reception following the wedding was held at the Peters’ residence on Lampson Street known as “The Firs”.  The Victoria Times and Colonist newspapers each ran articles on the wedding based on information provided by the family, but with different leads and commentary.

Ted Dewdney and Helen Peters, shortly before their wedding in June 1912.  Family photo.

According to the newspaper reports, the best man was Jack Cambie (who, like Ted, worked for the Bank of Montreal); the bridesmaids were teen-agers Sylvia Luxton, Marjorie Stirling and Helen Stretfield, as well as toddler Rosemary Johnston; and young Geoffrey Morgan served as page.

Studio photo of Helen wearing her wedding dress.  Family photo.

Among the guests was Ted`s famous uncle, the Hon. Edgar Dewdney, 77, builder of the Dewdney Trail through the British Columbia interior, and later as a senior minister in the cabinets of Sir John A. Macdonald.  He has the distinction of being the only Canadian to serve as Lieutenant Governor in two separate jurisdictions: Northwest Territories in the 1880s and B.C. in the 1890s.  After both of Ted’s parents had died when he was age 11, he was legally adopted by his uncle Edgar Dewdney, and lived for several years in the lieutenant governor’s residence in Victoria known as Cary Castle.

Ted’s maternal grandfather William Leigh was Victoria’s city clerk, serving from 1864 until his death in 1884.

Helen and Ted and the wedding party.  Family photo.

Helen`s father Frederick Peters (former premier of PEI) was working in Prince Rupert as city solicitor and could not make it to the wedding due to a civic emergency, so the role of father of the bride in the ceremony was taken by his second cousin, Colonel James Peters, who had lived in Victoria off and on since arriving in 1887 in command of the first West Coast defence force. In 1912 Col. Peters had retired from his position as district officer commanding for BC, and was serving as alderman in the new municipality of Esquimalt.

Frederick Peters served as premier of Prince Edward Island from 1891 to 1897, when he resigned to move west.  His brother Arthur Peters served as premier from 1901 until his death in 1908.  Both men were Liberals and also served as attorney-general.

Helen’s mother Bertha Hamilton Gray was a daughter of Col. John Hamilton Gray and Susan Bartley-Pennefather.  Col. Gray was head of the PEI colonial government (equivalent to premier) from 1863 to 1865, and served as host and chairman of the historic Charlottetown Conference of September 1864 that got the ball rolling towards Canada becoming a self-governing nation in 1867.

cutting the wedding cake.  Family photo.

Helen was born in Charlottetown in 1887 and came west with her family to Oak Bay in 1898, when her father Fred joined Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper in a law partnership based in Victoria that served clients there as well as Vancouver and Dawson City in the gold-rush Yukon. Fred and Tupper parted ways in about 1902, and the Peters family moved to Esquimalt in 1909 before moving to Prince Rupert a couple of years later. Ted and Helen began their marriage in Vernon, and then moved on to Greenwood, New Denver, Rossland, Trail and finally to Nelson as the bank transferred him from place to place as an accountant and later as branch manager.

Hon. Edgar Dewdney (with his distinctive mutton chop facial hair) with the bride Helen, and his nephew Ted is partially obscured behind him.   Family photo.

Ted was born in Victoria in 1880, son of Walter Dewdney and Carrie Leigh. After he became an orphan at age 11, he was legally adopted by his uncle Edgar. I never knew Ted because he died in 1952 when I was a baby, but Helen was an extremely close grandmother because after Ted`s death she came to live with my family in Nelson and was like a second mother to me. She often talked of the old days and wrote down some of her memories in notes and letters, but I wish I had thought to do a tape-recorded interview with her before she died in 1976.

report of the wedding in June 20, 1912 Victoria Times newspaper.

This is the 75th anniversary of the attack of Canadian forces on the Hitler Line southeast of Rome. Sylvia Crooks, author of “Homefront and Battlefront: Nelson, BC in World War 2”, wrote that May 23, 1944 was “Nelson’s Black Day of World War 2”, as two Nelson boys were killed and two others went missing in action, including my dad Leigh.

Ray Hall and Jack Wilson died, and Leigh McBride and Joe Dyck were seriously injured and taken prisoner. The news was a huge hit on the remote community of 7,000 in southeastern British Columbia.

The Dyck family did not learn that Joe was alive and a POW until July 1944, and my McBride grandparents did not find out Leigh was alive and a POW until September 1944.

Leigh was the only survivor of a forward unit, and had suffered shrapnel wounds to his legs, arms and face, causing the loss of his left eye.

He was discovered unconscious by German soldiers and taken to a hospital in Rome. Leigh came back to Canada in a prisoner exchange in February 1945, and Joe came back in July 1945. In 1968 Leigh wrote of the fateful day he was captured in notes for Professor Roy who wrote the Seaforth regimental history. Mark Zuehlke later referenced his comments in his Liri Valley book.

In her 2017 memoirs “Children of the Kootenays”, Shirley Hall Stainton described how the telegraph messenger boy came to their home on Latimer Street in Nelson with the tragic news of her brother’s death, and she watched him go on to the Wilson house just two houses away with similar news. She thought he may have just come down from the McBride house on Hoover Street a couple of blocks away with the telegram that Leigh was missing. The Dyck house was a few blocks up the hill on Delbruck.

All four of them were with the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada regiment. Leigh was 26, and the others about 5 years younger. The announcements were in the Nelson Daily News of June 2nd and 3rd of 1944.

One of Ray Hall`s last letters mentioned that he was serving under Captain Leigh McBride from Nelson.  That would have been after Leigh was promoted to Captain in March 1944.  At the time of the attack on the Hitler Line on May 23, 1944 Leigh was in command of D Company (aka Dog Company) but it is not clear in the records I have seen if Ray Hall was still in that company or had moved.

Leigh`s parents (my paternal grandparents) R.L. and Winnie McBride were thrilled to hear by telegram on Sept. 20, 1944 that Leigh was alive and recovering from wounds at a prisoner of war camp in Germany.   Tragically, after two days of celebrating and receiving congratulatory calls and letters from friends, they received a subsequent  telegram on Sept. 22, 1944 advising that their other son, Capt. Kenneth Gilbert McBride, had been killed in action near Rimini, Italy on Sept. 16, 1944.

Ray was the only brother of Shirley Hall Stainton, who described their experiences growing up in the Slocan Valley when their father was a cook at mining camps, in her book “Children of the Kootenays“

One of four clippings in the Nelson Daily News of either June 2, 1944 or June 3, 1944, as it took about a week for war news to get back to Nelson from Italy.

Leigh was able to contact Bud Dyck while they were in different POW camps in Germany­.  When I was living in Edmonton in 2005 I saw his name mentioned in a Royal Canadian Legion story in an Edmonton newspaper, and contacted him through the Legion.  He told me he had served in a unit commanded by my uncle Ken McBride, who regularly gave him the “honour`of being picked for dangerous night raids.

by Sam McBride

In 2006 Margaret “Bunty” Peterson Camozzi of Trail contacted my uncle Peter Dewdney with recollections of working in the 1930s for his father E.E.L. “Ted” Dewdney as a bank clerk at the Bank of Montreal in Nelson, and also of working as a stenographer for the Wood Vallance Hardware Company in the 1940s, when my other grandfather, Roland Leigh McBride (1881-1959), was manager.  My Dewdney cousins recently passed on the fascinating letter to me, knowing of my interest in discovering, and sharing, the family history.

Bunty noted that Ted Dewdney (1880-1952) was a very special person to her, perhaps because she was the first female bank clerk in Nelson, and he appreciated her work.

Her story about a remarkable day at the Wood Vallance store in early February 1945 during World War Two may be a bit of an exaggeration as to driving time between Trail and Nelson, but it illustrates the great sense of excitement about a father getting a long-distance phone call from his son Leigh in Switzerland after his release from a German prison camp in a prisoner exchange.

The last time R.L. McBride saw son Leigh was when he was on leave in his hometown of Nelson in December 1942 before travelling to Britain to join his Seaforth Highlander regiment in training in preparation for war action.  Leigh was a 25-year-old lieutenant when he landed on the beaches of the Allied invasion force that attacked Sicily in July 1943.  He led troops in battles across the island of Sicily and then through mainland Italy, including the famous Battle of Ortona in Christmas 1943.  He was promoted to captain and then major.  On May 23, 1944 Leigh was the only survivor of his unit that received a direct shell blasts from German defenders during the attack by Canadian forces on the Hitler Line at Cassino.  He was discovered unconscious by German soldiers, who took him to a hospital in Rome and later to Oflag 7B and other prison camps in Germany.  He had wounds to his arms, legs and face and initially could not see at all, but eventually recovered sight in one eye but his left eye was lost forever.

As the company headquarters did not know what happened to him, Leigh was listed as “missing in action” for four months until word came back through the Red Cross on Sept. 20, 1944 that he was in a German POW camp.  His parents were ecstatic to hear that he was alive and recovering.  Tragically, just two days later, on Sept. 22, 1944 they received a telegram from Ottawa that their other son, Capt. Kenneth Gilbert McBride, also with the Seaforths, was killed in action near Rimini, Italy.

The only good news they received in the next few days was that Leigh’s injuries were extensive enough that he might qualify for a prisoner exchange.  In early February 1945 he was sent to Constance, Switzerland for the prisoner exchange, and came home via the port of Marseilles on the Swedish repatriation ship Gripsholm, which landed in New York City, where he transferred to train service that took him to Vancouver, where he was greeted by his mother, Win Foote McBride.  They returned to Nelson on the Kettle Valley Railway

Some time soon after he was free, arrangements were made that allowed him to phone his father in Nelson.  Bunty recalled that word came from authorities on a Thursday at about 9:55 am that the call would come through at 10:30 am at the Wood Vallance store.  The problem was that R.L. McBride was about 50 miles away in Trail meeting with his biggest client, the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada Ltd., which he did every Thursday.

scan of memories of Bunty Camozzi written in 2006

R.L. told his driver, Les McEachern, to drive as fast as he could, and somehow they made it to Nelson in time to take the call.   Bunty noted that the joy in the office was such that there was not much work accomplished in the store that day.  She said it was a rare example of “good news” during the war years when bad news tended to dominate the lives of residents and their loved ones in the military.

As someone who has driven from Trail to Nelson many times over the years, I find it hard to believe the drive could have been done in just 35 minutes.  Even today, with major improvements to the highway over that last 75 years, someone would have to have a high-power car and substantially exceed every speed limit to come close to that travel time.  But it was obviously a dramatic feat of driving which could easily have ended tragically in a crash, particularly as there was a problem with the car’s brakes.

Bunty Camozzi died in Trail in 2012 at age 94.  I am so pleased that she took the time to record her memories of my two grandfathers, Ted Dewdney and R.L. McBride.