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In 1849, Samuel Benfield Steele was born in Purbrook, Ontario, the son of a retired Royal Navy Captain.  Following family, military tradition, he enlisted in the Simcoe Militia during the Fenian Raids of 1866.  He preferred to serve in the ranks to gain experience.  As a private, he accompanied Wolseley on his expedition to the […]

The second son of a Scottish officer, Thomas Bland Strange, was born in Meerut, India, on 15 September 1831, and educated at Edinburgh Academy.  Unable, for financial reasons, to follow his brother to Sandhurst, young Tom attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.  Here talent and performance were more important than good breeding.  He graduated at

Brigadier-General William Wiglesworth Turner was born in Winnipeg on 17 September 1921. His father, the late Colonel M.W. Turner, OBE, CD was badly wounded on the Somme in the First World War and repatriated to Canada where he would go on to serve 35 years as an officer in the Canadian Army. Brigadier-General Turner’s military

A native of Ottawa, Brigadier Percy Arthur Stanley Todd, graduated from the Ottawa Collegiate Institute.  In 1915, he was one of 200 eager young men who undertook a seven-day examination to compete for one of the fifty-three positions at the Royal Military College.  After winning a place, he completed the intensive wartime one-year course.  In

Leo Joseph Vallee was born in Carleton Place, Ontario, on 15 December 1923.  His father worked in a spinning mill and raised Leo and his younger brother after his wife’s death in 1928.  As a youth, Leo excelled in sport and outdoor activities.  He attended school in Carleton Place and Renfrew. In February 1940, at