At the outbreak of the First World War, modern Mississauga was only a collection of rural communities. The men from these communities – towns like Cooksville, Port Credit, Streetsville and Clarkson – enlisted in numbers for overseas service and trained locally at the Long Branch Rifle Range and the Cooksville Fair Grounds. It is estimated that around ninety soldiers from historic Mississauga lost their lives during the war. Casualties were recorded at many of the war’s major Canadian confrontations: at Neuve-Chapelle, Ypres, Beaumont-Hamel, the Somme, Thiepval Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele and Vimy. One battalion that recruited from historic Mississauga and Toronto and known as the 75th Battalion (Mississauga) Battalion landed in France in 1916 with the 4th Canadian Division. Like other units in the Division, the 75th battalion participated in a series of large scale trench raids in the lead up to the battle of Vimy Ridge – in one such raid in March 1917, the 75th lost its commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Beckett.
Soldiers training at the Cooksville Fairgrounds under Colonel Kennedy, 1915. Credit: Heritage Mississauga /
Another battalion that recruited from historic Mississauga was known on the eve of the Second World War as The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment). Although The Lorne Scots were among the first regiments mobilized for the war, it never served as a cohesive unit. Rather, members of the regiment were broken up into many platoons and attached to brigade, division and army headquarters. Since The Lorne Scots were so dispersed throughout the Canadian Army, its members served in nearly every theatre of war. A platoon participated in the raid on Dieppe; another landed in Sicily; a third helped to capture the French coastal town of Boulogne, suffering nearly fifty percent casualty rates in the process.
In historic Mississauga, many women’s auxiliary groups and local branches of the Women’s Institute and Women’s Patriotic League also contributed to the war effort. Perhaps most notably, Mississauga housed the country’s first aerodrome during the First World War – the Curtiss Aviation School at the Long Branch Aerodrome, which was responsible for training 130 airmen.
Sources:
1. www.heritagemississauga.com/assets/First%20World%20War.pdf
2. DND publication – October 2010 - http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/his/ol-lo/vol-tom-3/par2/ls-eng.asp
3. www.heritagemississauga.com/assets/Heritage%20Mississauga%20Fall%20Newsletter%202014%20-%20large.pdf
Featured Image: Credit: Heritage Mississauga /