Alberta

Veterans Way was dedicated to all Canadian Veterans to commemorate their service and sacrifice by the Canada Lands Company on June 23, 2004, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).

Padre Foote Avenue was dedicated to Honorary Captain John Weir Foote by the Canada Lands Company on June 23, 2004, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).

John Weir Foote was born in Madoc, Ontario on 5 May 1904. A Presbyterian minister, he joined the Canadian Chaplain Service at the beginning of the Second World War.

On 19 August 1942, Honorary Captain Foote was attached to the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI), one of the battalions from the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division that participated in the raid on the French port of Dieppe on that day. After landing, Padre Foote assisted the RHLI’s medical officer in caring for the wounded at the regimental aid post. However, he frequently left the relative safety of that location for the open beach where he rendered first aid, and gave injections of morphine to alleviate the suffering of the many wounded who were there. Later, he carried wounded men from the regimental aid post to landing craft waiting to evacuate the survivors of the raiding force. Padre Foote declined the opportunity to embark, preferring to continue to minister to those left behind, and to share their fate as prisoners of war.

At the end of the war, Padre Foote received the Victoria Cross for his conduct at Dieppe, the first ever awarded to a Canadian chaplain. He died in Hamilton, Ontario on 2 May 1988.

Morrison Way was dedicated to Lieutenant Nursing Sister Jessie Morrison by the Canada Lands Company on August 15, 2007, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).

Morrison enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps in May 1941, where she served as a Lieutenant Nursing Sister in military hospitals in Halifax, Sydney and Shelburne before being posted to England and Normandy with the No. 10 Canadian General Hospital. She returned to Canada in 1945 for discharge and began working with the Veterans’ hospitals in Edmonton (Colonel Mewburn and the Wells Pavilions) and in Calgary (Colonel Belcher Hospital) under Veterans Affairs Canada. Morrison went to Montreal to assist in setting up the program at the School for Nursing Aides for Veterans Affairs Canada. In 1949, she became Matron/Director of Nursing at the Veterans’ Home located at Government House in Edmonton until she retired in 1967.

McCrae Avenue was dedicated to Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae by the Canada Lands Company on June 23, 2004, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario in 1872, he served with an artillery battery in the South African War and had a successful civilian medical career. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the patriotic 41-year-old enlisted again and would be appointed as a medical officer with the First Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery.

During the Second Battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915, McCrae was tending to the wounded in a part of Belgium traditionally called Flanders. On May 2, a close friend was killed in action and this painful loss inspired McCrae to write In Flanders Fields the next day. It would be published in Britain’s Punch magazine and quickly became one of the best-known poems of the war, helping make the poppy an international symbol of remembrance. Sadly, Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae would not survive the conflict, dying of illness in January 1918.

Martin Avenue was dedicated to Reverend Cyril Edward Martin by the Canada Lands Company on August 15, 2007, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).

During the First World War, after Cyril enlisted at barely 16, he landed in the trenches in Belgium, assigned to the 7^th Battalion, Canadian Railway Troops where he laid tracks for running supplies to the front line. He learned all about blood, mud and gas attacks. The war shook his faith, but it did not kill it.

After the war, he attended Toronto Bible College for several years then went to Saskatchewan to preach. He attended St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon and was ordained as a United Church minister in 1929. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Cyril re-enlisted in the army, this time as a chaplain assigned to the 7th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery stationed in England.

After the war, Cyril continued to work in a military hospital in England. Back in Canada, he ministered at several Edmonton churches. In his 90s, he visited Vimy and Passchendaele and received the Legion of Honour from the French people. When he passed away in November 2003 at 103, he was Alberta’s last surviving First World War Veteran.

Canada Lands Company erected this memorial. The Loyal Edmonton Regiment Storyboard is dedicated to all those who served the Loyal Edmonton Regiment.

Colonel Mewburn Road was dedicated to Frank Hamilton Mewburn by the Canada Lands Company on June 23, 2004, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).

In his long medical career, Frank Hamilton Mewburn (1858-1939) offered his surgical skills in both the North-West Rebellion of 1885 and in the First World War three decades later. Born in Drummondville, Ontario, Mewburn studied at McGill, then moved to Lethbridge in 1881 as company doctor for the North West Coal and Irrigation Company. Here he did remarkable work under primitive conditions, sometimes using strange bone instruments reportedly borrowed form the local carpenter and blacksmith. Dr. Mewburn performed his first appendectomy on a pool table, whit the barber giving the chloroform. During the rebellion, Dr. Mewburn became chief of the military hospital in Winnipeg, and he was decorated for his service. he later returned to Lethbridge, where he became medical officer at the Galt hospital, surgeon for the North-West Mounted Police, and mayor of Lethbridge in 1899-1900 and 1905. Turned down for military service during the First World War, Dr. Mewburn moved to England at his own expense and became Officer in Charge of surgical division at the military hospital in Taplow, near London. In 1922, he was appointed to the University of Alberta's Faculty of Medicine as its first Professor of Surgery. To his death he was affectionately known as "the Colonel".

Canada Lands Company erected this memorial. The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Storyboard is dedicated to all those who served, and those who are still serving in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment.

Sanctuary Wood Park was dedicated by the Canada Lands Company on January 18, 2006, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks). The park was named for the original Sanctuary Wood, where a Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery contains the First World War graves of 1,990 Commonwealth soldiers, of whom 1,353 are unidentified.

In the early months of the First World War, as the first Battle of Ypres in Belgium raged, British troops found shelter in a pine forest they called Sanctuary Wood. It lay within the Ypres salient, a bulge in the front line where British and Canadian forces halted the German advance and held the last remaining portion of unoccupied Belgium. On 1 June 1916, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry relieved Edmonton’s 49th Battalion in the trenches of Sanctuary Wood. The day after the Patricia’s arrived at Sanctuary Wood, the Germans launched a massive offensive, and captured the strategically high ground of Mount Sorrel, Hill 61, and Hill 62. The Patricia’s were left exposed and lost almost half their initial strength, but they held their position. Of the units ordered to reinforce the exposed Patricia’s, only the 49th Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel William Griesbach, arrived in time. Together they held the line. The broader Battle of Mount Sorrel ended on 13 June when the Canadians retook the lost heights, which remained in Allied hands until 1918.

Patricia Lake was dedicated to all those who served, and those who are still serving in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment by the Canada Lands Company on June 23, 2004, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).

Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was founded for service in the First World War on August 10, 1914, and paraded for the first time at Lansdowne Park, Ottawa, Ontario, on August 23, 1914. Hamilton Gault, a prominent Montreal businessman, raised the regiment out of his own funds, making the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry the last privately raised regiment in Canada.

The regiment was named after Princess Patricia of Connaught, the daughter of the Governor General at the time. Princess Patricia maintained close ties with the regiment throughout her life, and her handsewn original Regimental Colour, the Ric-a-Dam-Doo, was carried into the frontline on almost every occasion the Patricias were engaged in battle.

Over four years of fighting in Belgium and France, the Regiment established a reputation for excellence, never losing a ground on the battlefield. Vimy, Passchendaele, Ypres, Amiens, and Frezenberg stand out in history books as places where the Patricia’s demonstrated outstanding skill at arms, tenacity and courage. All three battalions have continued to train to fight, while also undertaking domestic and international operations at the behest of Canada. Domestically, the Regiment has provided battalions for service during the Winnipeg floods of the 1950s and the 1990s ice storms in Quebec, security to the G8 Summit in Kananaskis, and fighting forest fires in Alberta and British Columbia. Internationally, the Patricia’s have provided battalions for operational duty ensuring basic security and helping with humanitarian assistance. These battalions have seen service in Germany, Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Congo, Rwanda, Central America, Vietnam, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Afghanistan.