The heroes of Rose Street
Cambridge residents learn they live in the same homes as five Great War heroes
The awful news reached Matilda Coulthard on Easter Monday. Widowed a year earlier, she learned that her only son Barclay, 24, had been killed in action on the Western Front.
It pains Michael Brooks to hear this, almost a century later.
“I think it’s pretty sad and devastating that so many people lost their lives senselessly,” he said, struggling to make sense of the slaughter that was the First World War.
Brooks is not a kin but he is connected to Matilda and Barclay. They lived in his house on Rose Street, which sacrificed five of its own to the Great War in 1917 and 1918.
Rose Street sits high on a hill overlooking the Grand River. It was home to professionals and factory workers 100 years ago.
Its five heroes include an engineer who won a medal for bravery, a tinsmith who left his widowed mother behind, a salesman conscripted into combat, a machinist who volunteered at 18, and a nurse who followed her brother into war.
Their sacrifice is the story of Galt, a patriotic town now called Cambridge that sent more than its share to die in the Great War.
Today the street is renamed Roseview Avenue. Residents are keen to learn more about their neighbours across time. Who were the five heroes who answered the call to arms and never saw Rose Street again?
Pierre and Isabell Leclerc are renovating their stately home, enthralled by its historic charm. The grand pillars framing the front patio make 85 Rose St. feel like the home of an accomplished family.
And so it was. The McKay family lived here. Father Mark McKay was a manufacturer. Son William became a dentist. Son Harold became a banker. Daughter Gertrude worked as a teacher. Daughter Evelyn became a nurse. The family prized education.
In 1911, Evelyn was the last child living in the home after graduating from nearby Galt Collegiate.
When Britain declared war against Germany in 1914, her brother Harold enlisted as an artillery gunner, proudly going overseas with Canada’s first contingent of soldiers.
Evelyn was determined to do her part. She worked as a nurse at a military hospital in Toronto before enlisting in 1916 to follow Harold overseas. She was 23.
Behind the front lines, McKay wore a blue dress and a white veil while caring for wounded soldiers. Soldiers had a nickname for nurses like her — a bluebird.
Nurses who served overseas had much to do. Medical conditions could be primitive, leaving them to battle rats while dodging bombs and treating horrific injuries. Although kept away from battlefields, they were sometimes dangerously in range of artillery or air raids.
McKay worked at No. 3 Canadian General Hospital at Boulogne on the French coast. It’s the hospital where Lt.-Col. John McCrae toiled as a doctor after writing the famous war poem “In Flanders Fields.”
By October 1918, the Allies had the Germans on the run. But the fighting was still fierce on the Western Front. McKay’s hospital was further burdened by an astonishing outbreak of influenza, dubbed the Spanish flu. It killed millions around the world.
Influenza hit the No. 3 hospital. McKay fell ill along with 11 other nurses. She died Nov. 4, 1918, aged 25. Officers and nurses attended her funeral, held days before the Germans signed an armistice to end the war.
She’s the only local woman to die for Canada during the Great War.
Evelyn’s name is unknown to Pierre and Isabell Leclerc. Learning about her sacrifice makes them sad and proud. “I’m a true Canadian, so I appreciate that,” Pierre said.
Glenn Marriott flies a Canadian Armed Forces flag from his porch at 23 Rose St. He comes from a military family and wants to show his support for the troops. He listens soberly to the stories of past neighbours.
“I feel proud that they served for us and I feel sad that they never made it back,” he said. “They sacrificed for us today.”
Lt. John James Campbell lived across the street at 42 Rose St. He was an officer who kept his nerve even as the Germans shelled his men for five straight days. He steadied the shaken men under his command. He took steps to keep them safe as casualties mounted.
Campbell was a Galt native who attended Galt Collegiate. A tall, blue-eyed man, he launched a career as a civil engineer before enlisting in 1916. He was 26. His education and achievement made him an officer. He did not disappoint as a leader of men.
Campbell fought with the Canadian Field Artillery. One night, returning from an outpost with two other soldiers, a shell exploded, killing one man and badly wounding the other. Campbell hoisted the wounded man on his back and carried him for almost a mile in the dark over difficult, shell-swept terrain.
This feat earned him a Military Cross for gallantry in the field. He didn’t survive long enough to be celebrated.
Campbell was wounded in October 1917. He remained on duty. Six days later on Oct. 26, 1917, a shell killed him instantly at Passchendaele in Belgium. His Military Cross, not yet finalized, was awarded after he died. He was 27.
Leon Parker lived with his mother Lottie at 92 Rose St. Parker was an unmarried machinist when he enlisted in 1915 at 18. Canada made him a private and put him in the infantry.
On Sept. 16, 1917, Parker was on duty in trenches near Lens in northern France. The Germans bombarded his trench at night with mortars. He was killed in action, aged 20.
By 1918, Canada had run out of war volunteers. It began drafting men and forcing them to fight.
Cecil Albert Scott was among the conscripts. An unmarried salesman at 30, he lived with his father Henry at 79 Rose St. The nation was so desperate for soldiers it grabbed him up even though he was only five feet, three inches tall and missing a finger on his right hand.
Canada put Scott in the infantry and made him a private. On Sept. 27, 1918, his battalion helped launch an attack just after 5 a.m. to clear the Germans from the Canal du Nord in France.
A steady drizzle poured down. Canada fired a massive barrage of artillery at the Germans. Soldiers then went on the attack before the stunned enemy could fire up a counterbarrage.
The daylong assault surprised the Germans. “Enemy strongholds fell one by one, or surrendered when they encountered Canadians in front, around, and behind them,” historian Tim Cook writes. Canada advanced nearly eight kilometres.
The cost was steep. Scott’s battalion lost 38 on the battlefield and then it lost Scott, who was badly wounded and died the next day at a field hospital.
“It’s a bit of an honour to live on a street where so many people gave of themselves, left their families to make the world better in a brutally bloody war,” said Shelley Diebold, married to Glenn Marriott.
It’s a bit of an honour to live on a street where so many people gave of themselves, left their families to make the world better in a brutally bloody war. SHELLEY DIEBOLD CAMBRIDGE RESIDENT
Michael and Carrie Brooks have researched their house at 20 Rose St. and know the Coulthard name. They were unaware that a son had died in the First World War. Now they wonder: which bedroom was his?
Barclay Coulthard followed his father Walter into metalworking, finding jobs at foundries after elementary school. When Canada went to war, he joined a long list of young Galt men who answered the call, enlisting in 1915 at 23.
His departure for the Western Front left his mother Matilda almost alone. Walter was ill when his son enlisted and died soon after. The couple’s youngest daughter Helen had married and moved away. This left Matilda to share the house with oldest daughter Annie. There they waited for news from Barclay.
Canada made Barclay an infantry private and sent him to France late in 1916. He survived less than four months there, killed in action March 29, 1917. It was a relatively quiet day for his 75th infantry battalion, which was losing a few men almost daily to enemy shells or snipers or mishaps.
Ten days later Matilda received word. “The news came as a great shock to the widowed mother and much sympathy is felt for her in her bereavement,” the Galt Reporter wrote.
The Brooks are saddened by the sacrifice. There’s also respect and gratitude. Michael asks: can they have Barclay’s picture, to frame it? Because he deserves a place of honour on their wall.