This Tuesday, many of you will visit the cenotaphs in Port Elgin and Southampton. Please take the time and read the names on the memorials. In total, there are 83 names of those who made the supreme sacrifice in the Boer War, WWI, and WWII.
If you visit both cenotaphs, you will find that two names appear on both cenotaphs. This is a result of boundary interpretation between the two communities.
In all cases, these soldiers were either born in our communities or had lived here for a period of time, before making the supreme sacrifice in defense of the life we all have today.
Over the last 13 years, I have been able to research the lives of all but two of them and have told the life stories of many of them. The two that remain a mystery are Captain Smith on the Port Elgin WWI memorial and S. Jamieson on the WWI Southampton list.
The search problem exists because in WWI, Canada did not have a Navy when the war began, and local men went to Halifax and signed on with British Navy ships as crew members. At that time, other recent local immigrants from Britain went back home and joined battalions in their earlier communities. Their names may appear on pages of the Port Elgin Times or Southampton Beacon, but there is nothing available in the online files in the Library and Archives in Ottawa regarding their service.
Visit our cenotaphs and read the names.
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM
LEST WE FORGET
