I got an eMail from Mike Norton the other day. He was letting me know that, using information from the embarkation roll, the Libraries and Archive Canada site,  and the Nova Scotia vital statistics site, he had completed entering all the men that served with the 112th Battalion.

The 112th was formed in Nova Scotia between November 1915 and April 1916. They trained near Windsor, Nova Scotia, then departed for England on 23 July, 1916.

In England, the 112th was broken up with the men providing reinforcements for other combat battalions.

Thanks to the information that Mike has entered, we get a good profile of the men who formed the unit. They were largely Canadian born (91%),  and native to Nova Scotia.  They were of average height (5 foot, 7 inches) and ranged in age from 14 to 57 (average 23). The average age of the 189 men from the unit who died was 24 (oldest 46, youngest 16). The majority were Baptists (38%).

In total, thanks to Mike’s work, there are 1,207 men that are associated with the 112th Battalion that are in the Canadian Great War Project database.

Next up, he’s going to tackle the 25th Battalion.

Thanks Mike. We appreciate all this work!

Dion Loach has completed another Nominal Roll, this time for the 159th Battalion.

The 159th, also known as the 1st Algonquin's,  was based in Haileybury, Ontario, in the Temiskaming region of Northern Ontario. The unit began recruiting in late 1915 in the districts of Nipissing and Sudbury. After sailing to England in November 1916, the battalion was absorbed into the 8th Reserve Battalion.

Thanks to Dion for providing yet another Nominal Roll.

I spent some time over the past few days updating the list of nursing sisters, adding in the links to their individual records. This is a manual exercise, and really not a lot of fun. I’ll have to look at a better way of keeping this list updated.

But what I found as I was doing this astounded me. Duguid, in his Official History of the Canadian Forces in The Great War put the number of Nursing Sisters that served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps at 2,854. As of this morning, there are 2,616 that have been entered into the Canadian Great War Project.

Dion Loach entered 190 Nursing Sisters as he was transcribing Nominal Rolls, and Marika Pirie entered an astounding 2,164. Many thanks to two for this incredible task.

This allows us to paint a picture of the women who served. They were predominantly Canadian born (82%), typically 5 foot 5 inches in height and the average age was 30, with some of the Matrons as old as 56 and Minnie Lisk being only 15 years old! They were largely protestant, 63% being either Church of England or Presbyterian. Approximately 60 of them died as a result of the war, the youngest being Eden Lyal Pringle who died in May 1918 at the age of 23.

Thanks again to Marika and Dion for their work in entering the details of all of these women.

Dion Loach has been a very busy man. In the past couple of months he has transcribed the nominal rolls for the Railway Supply Detachment (1915), Borden's Armoured Battery and the 1914 and 1915 Nursing Sister embarkation rolls. Each of these contains a link to the completed entry in the Canadian Great War Project, the Library and Archives Canada attestation papers page, and the Canadian Virtual War Memorial. These provide a great, easily searchable reference. I’m guessing, but perhaps we may see the Canadian Overseas Railway Construction Corps sometime in the future.

Several weeks back, Ryan Shepard finished the embarkation roll for the 19th Battalion. Ryan started this as a way of honouring his grandfather, and I don’t think he realized the amount of work that was involved, but he persevered over the course of 18 months, and finished it. I asked Ryan if he was willing to take on another. He said that “He’d get back to me” on that.

I’m becoming quite a bottleneck for certain rolls. Chris Henzler has been plugging away at the men from the 31st Battalion. Chris started working on the Canadian Great War Project several years ago, trying to find the men on the Hedley, British Columbia monument. Chris isn’t from BC, in fact he is U.K. born and bred. He had seen the memorial once, got interested, and started to transcribe attestation papers. Chris has also taken photographs of a number of U.K. cemeteries. I need to update the links on the 31st Battalion nominal roll with all the entries that Chris has put in.

Marika Pirie has been quietly entering information on the Canadian Nurses. The Canadian Great War Project has the largest searchable list of the Canadian Nursing Sisters that served during World War 1. I have a lot of work to do to update the links based on the entries that Dion, Marika and others have put in.

And there are others that are working their way down some of the awards lists. Again, these are being entered faster than I can keep up with.

Gary Silliker, when not on active duty with the Canadian Forces, has been entering the men from the Miramichi, New Brunswick Memorial, and is starting on the Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia men. Gary is going to be overseas this summer/fall, and we all wish him safe travels.

And there are many others that I haven’t mentioned, that are busy working on their own projects. I don’t hear much from them, they just plug away. The result is that we are compiling a truly valuable resource for both researchers and the folks that want to know a bit about their past.

As with any posting like this, I run the risk of missing important contributers. Obviously this isn't my intention, there just are a lot of you out there.

Many thanks to all of you for your efforts. Please take a minute and add a comment to this post describing what you are working on.

And, if you haven’t been there lately, take a look at the Rolls and Awards page. I think you’ll be impressed.