The Ypres Times.
97
Further, the task and the spirit which these men bring to it is no longer confined to
the old country. Back in the old days men from far overseas, making our cause their
own, turned in at the ever-open door to play their part. To-day as the result of a three
months campaign, undertaken at the invitation of Lord Byng of Vimy, there are groups
of the brotherhood all across the great Dominion of Canada, and to the South in the
United States itself there is a beginning no less promising.
It is, of course, impossible in the tail end of a short article to do more than outline
these new developments.
The starting point in Canada, as in England, was in each case the old nucleus of
faithful sons of the House, who, despite the years between, had treasured the memory
of its influence on their lives, and now came together at whatever inconvenience, and at
the shortest notice, to be in at the birth of the new movement.
How terrible was the toll taken in 1918 of the Canadian Forces was shown only too
clearly by the gaps in what would have otherwise been a complete attendance in response
to every summons. On one page of the old list there were only four survivors out of
twenty-eightbut in not a few instances the family sent younger sons to represent those
that had passed forward and thus even at the first meetings of these groups Toe. H."
began to find the younger membership towards which its heart is set. Analysis of this
first membership would show that even in these small groups almost every area of life
and work was represented. At Winnipeg, for instance, from the C.P.R. workshops there
came two members who were mainly responsible for building, while resting from the line,
the Canadian Lounge at the back of the old House at Poperinghe. At Vancouver our
Charter members included a lawyer, a customs official, a drug store clerk, an engineering
•student, a university professor, the head waiter in a hotel, and a journalist on the
Vancouver Sun." In Toronto among those who answered the first summons was
TUBBY CLAYTON.
(Complete with the genuine original Blazer).
LITTLE TALBOT HOUSE,
YPRES.
