There are days, as happened during the hack of the site, that I seriously question my resolve to keep this project going. And there are other days that make it all worthwhile.

Anne Park is creating a virtual memorial to the soldiers from Scotland that died during the Great War, and has come across a number of men that served in the CEF as part of that research. I noticed that she had entered a soldier that had died in 1918, and I was curious; most of the entries for soldiers that have died are already in the database, at least the basic information is. When I checked, I came across an entry that Marika Pirie had made a couple of years back, complete with obituary and photo of the gravestone.

We all put our (virtual) heads together in a series of eMail exchanges and came to the conclusion that despite the difference in age between the newspaper article, information from Aberdeen and the attestation papers, he was likely the same individual.

Since he wasn’t in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial database, or the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database, I sent a note off to Veterans Affairs Canada with all the information that we had collected. Mrs. Catherine Tremblay ordered the service record and on July 25th Private William Pope was commemorated in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial. Just over 90 years after his death, his name is being added to the Book of Remembrance in Ottawa.

Anne’s work on the Scottish War Memorials Project can be found here.
Marika’s “Canada & World War One - the First Contingent” site can be found here.