Eccentric. Ladies man. Bear owner. Oh, and Canadian hero
Medicine Hat First World War veteran Walden Secord Crews, (known as Bill to his friends), lived a colourful life before the war.
Making his primary living as a steam pump-man with the CPR out in Suffield, this did not stop him from engaging in equally lucrative endeavours on the side as a gambler, self-accredited hypnotist, spiritualist and a bit of a Lothario.
It was not uncommon in turn-of-the-century Medicine Hat to find Crews driving around in his luxury Ford Model N, which included fancy brass coach lamps and a right-wheel drive, with his pet bear cub sitting in the passenger seat beside him.
“To make a long story short, he was single, and he was known to like the ladies; and they to like him,” says granddaughter Patti Crews-McMorran. “He was a bit of an adventurer. Before he went to the war he had a pet bear. He tended to gamble, and sometimes took exchange instead of cash. That’s how he got the bear, we think.”
Crews-McMorran says her grandfather signed up to fight with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916 as part of the 175 Battalion. He would go on to fight at Vimy Ridge in 1917. Like many Canadian soldiers of the time, Crews was a bit of a magpie, bringing home several war souvenirs from the battlefield. There was one moment however, when those magpie tendencies caught up to him in a pretty horrific way.
“He saw a German mitt on the ground at the side of the road as he was marching by, and he did mention there was a bloody hand in it,” remembers Crews-McMorran. “That was something he didn’t add to his collection.”
Her grandfather came back a much more serious person after the war, says Crews-McMorran, but she doesn’t remember him being very grandfatherly in his character.
“We wish we had gotten to know him better because, obviously, he was a very interesting guy,” says Crews-McMorran. “He always seemed to look surprised he had a family. He seemed to always be looking around like he was asking himself: Where did all these kids come from? When we went over to visit he and my dad would go in another room and have whiskey, neat, and talk about the war.”
When Crews came back from the war he resumed his old profession as a pump-man with the CPR until diesel engines replaced steam in the 1950s. He was a dedicated Legion member and Freemason to the end of his days. And he never completely lost his sense of fun and mischief, says Crews-McMorran.
“I don’t think he ever had any regrets,” she says.