Edward ("Ted") Brock served overseas with the 48th Highlanders and fought in the Italian campaign and later in Holland. As a Lieut. Platoon Commander is was Brock's duty to write letters to the families of men killed or missing from his platoon. The collection consists of a letter of condolence, reponses from families to whom he wrote, and a short memoir.

Earl Bolton was born in Ingersoll, Ontario, in 1889 and then later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he was employed as a grinder. He returned to Canada and enlisted in London, Ontario, in February 1918. Bolton saw service in France beginning in August 1918. He was wounded and died October 9, 1918. The collection currently consists of three letters.

John Pritchard Sudbury was born in London, England, in 1894. He immigrated to Montreal where he worked for the Montreal Gazette before enlisting in Montreal in July 1915. He was sent to Belgium in February 1916. He served throughout the Front including the Ypres Salient in 1916, the Somme in September 1916, Vimy Ridge in April 1917, and at Passchaendaele in October 1917, where he was wounded. The collection consists of more than sixty letters written to his family, photographs, a poem, a pay book, a Christmas card, and two magazines.

Robert John Galloway was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in March 1898. He later moved to Cabri, Saskatchewan and enlisted in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in April, 1916. Galloway served with the 102nd Bn until his death at Vimy Ridge, April 9, 1917.

Kenneth Walter Foster was born in London, England, in 1897 and immigrated to Canada sometime prior to World War I. He enlisted in Vernon, British Columbia, in July 1915 and served overseas until the end of the war. The collection consists of four photographs and one extended memoir written sometime after the war detailing his service. Foster died in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1947.

Spanish-American War & World War I Collection
Alexander Matier was born in 1880 and raised in New York City where in May, 1898, he enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. He saw service in Cuba and returned to New York. In 1915 Matier enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force and saw service overseas, where he was wounded in Belgium in the spring of 1916.

He spent more than two years in convalescent hospitals in England and Canada before he was discharged in September 1918. He died in Winnipeg in 1920. More information about this time period is available in his service file, which is unusually detailed about his medical history, including time spent at the Tuxedo Military Hospital in Winnipeg, receiving treatments such as galvanism, faradism, electric current baths and ionization (radiation).

The collection consists of two letters written home from Cuba in 1898 and an extended eighteen page letter written in 1918 detailing his wounding and convalescence. 

Please note: Because of the way files are organized on the website, letters written by one author but across multiple wars may not always be visible together (the pages will look very similar, only the headings above the name and the # of letters in the "Collection Contents" list below will be different. If needed, the following links can be used to move between the two time periods of the Matier collection:

Click here to go to the Spanish-American War letters from 1898.

Click here to go to the WWI letter from 1918.

[collection has moved, please see: William Roy Gullen Collection]

This collection contains over 250 letters from World War One published in the Cobourg World, a local newspaper published in Cobourg, Ontario. Newspapers across Canada regularly printed letters home from overseas, either letters written directly to the newspaper by the soldiers, or first written to the family and then contributed to the paper by the family. Collections such as those from the Cobourg World provide a fascinating look at the relationship of community and war as played out in the pages of the local newspaper. All letters in the collection have been previously published in the newspaper and were also later collected by local historian Percy Climo in a book entitled Let Us Remember: Lively Letters from World War One. The dates for which the letters are listed represent the dates on which they were published, as the original dates of the letters are not always indicated. Where the original date of writing is known it will be part of the letter text. Introductions to the letters and editorial comments as they appeared in the newspaper have been left as published. All transcriptions have been taken from copies on microfilm and as such there are no scans for this collection.

Jules Julien DeCruyenaere was born in 1894 in Rollegham, Belgium. In 1912 he immigrated to Canada to join his brother Alfred, with the rest of his family arriving in 1914. He enlisted in 1916 with the Winnipeg 100th Grenadiers. He survived the war and returned to Winnipeg, where he died in 1980. The collection consists of four letters written home between 1916 and 1918, and five photographs.

Lieutenant Coningsby William Dawson, Canadian Expeditionary Force, was the author of the 1917 book Carry On: Letters in War-Time. The book's letters, along with more information on Lt. Dawson, can be found in the Special Items Collections section of the website.

Raymond Ellsworth Ives enlisted in 1916 and served overseas in France, including Vimy Ridge. The collection consists of four letters, ten photographs, and a short personal memoir from enlistment to Vimy.