A Family Memoir: The Men of #2 Company, Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry, 1915 (Gazette: Documents & Archives‪)‬

I was lucky. My parents lived in the same house for forty-five years and they were always saving things: old daguerreotypes, tintypes, letters, notes, diaries, books, magazines, albums, gowns, and uniforms. History was alive in our attic. As kids my two sisters, brother and I played with period pieces: a brass medal of Admiral Dewey's victory at Manila Bay (1898), and my great-grandmother's Victorian gowns. Writing history papers in school was easy for a kid with original letters from the trenches and casualty clearing stations of World War I. Great Uncle William Gavin Johnston and his sister Annie Eliza Johnston (Argue) of Morden, Manitoba spent four years at the front, 1914-1918. William rose through the ranks from Private to Captain with the famous Princess Patricia Regiment Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI #552). Annie carried an equally impossible burden as a nurse at Gallipoli and in Flanders. Their sister Maud, my grandmother, saved all their mail.