The Men Behind the Names: Remembering the men of the First World War

Among the names on the cenotaph on St. Anne Street, there are ten which honour the men from St. Albert who fought and died in the First World War. These men died over a century ago, and as a natural result of the passage of time, there is no one left in our city who had the honour of knowing them personally. As a mark of respect for their great sacrifice, their names have been memorialized on our city’s cenotaph, and will be remembered for centuries to come. But names mean nothing without context, so this Remembrance Day let’s take a moment to remember not just the names, but the men that belong to them.

One hundred years ago today, Canadian forces found themselves in Northern France, fighting to hold a stretch of land that surrounded a river known as the Somme. Well over a million men died fighting in this conflict, including 24,029 Canadians, including six men from the small town of St. Albert, Alberta. Their names are Harry Maloney, Moise Beausoleil, Donald Kennedy, William Laurence, Clarence Maloney and Daniel Flynn.

The Battle of the Somme is remembered as one of the most brutal conflicts in human history. Soldiers had to live for weeks at a time at the bottom of muddy trenches, crouching as they walked lest they become a target for enemy fire. Soldiers who stood for weeks in the ankle-deep water would often become afflicted with “trench foot,” a condition that caused their skin to start rotting away from their feet. Sleep was no relief, either, as soldiers had to be ready to fend off trench rats, aggressive rodents that would grow to the size of cats after feeding on the numerous dead. Mustard gas meant that the very air was too dangerous to breathe without a mask. But of course, this life in the trenches was far preferable to going over the top to assault the enemy camp.

The men in those trenches were not warriors, action heroes or survival experts. They were average young men from a small town in Alberta. Harry and Clarence were the youngest, 21 and 22 respectively. They, along with Donald, were farm boys who lived just outside of town. William was the oldest of the bunch at age 36. He and Moise both drove horse-teams for a living, making deliveries all over the region. Daniel worked in St. Albert’s butcher shop.

The Battle of the Somme was not a major turning point in the war, and even 100 years later, historians are hesitant to declare a victor. It was a messy business all around. But it is said that the Somme was the first time where Canadian forces started to out-perform their European allies. All of the battalions, which included the men from St. Albert, performed with such distinction that the Commonwealth commanders began to place them in key roles, many of which would come to decide the outcome of the war. Harry, Moise, Donald, William, Clarence and Daniel never made it out of the Somme. But we owe our victory to them and to all of the other Canadians who fought and died along that vicious river. Be sure to give them a moment of silence this Friday as we remember all those who died in service to our country.

Special thanks to Roy Toomy, Joanne White, Vino Vipulanantharajah and all of the researchers and archivists of Musée Héritage Museum for keeping these stories alive.