Law students killed in WWI called to bar 100 years later

CALGARY — John William Gow Logan had one course and some articling to complete before becoming a lawyer, but his death in the First World War left his dream unfinished.

The son of Manitoba homesteaders enlisted as a private in the 50th Battalion in 1915 and within months was promoted to corporal. He was killed at the Battle of the Somme in France on Nov. 18, 1916.

Logan is one of 37 aspiring lawyers to be posthumously admitted to the bar in a ceremony Friday at the Calgary Courts Centre ahead of the 100-year anniversary of the armistice ending the conflict.

Logan’s great-niece Leslie Lavers, along with her daughter and some cousins, planned to be in the ceremonial courtroom for his bar call.

“It’s a piece of closure,” she said. “It brings him back and it puts him to rest all at the same time.”

Lavers never knew her “greatuncle Gow,” but she learned a lot about him from his eight siblings who lived into their 80s and 90s.

“The shadow of his death lasted with them until their own deaths.”

Letters Logan sent during the war were witty and cheerful, always seeking to ease the worries of his loved ones, she said. In one, he complains to his sister: “There are far too many lice and they are far too affectionate for my liking.”

Keith Marlowe with the Legal Archives Society of Alberta said that every November the profession recognizes members who died serving. But when law students’ names are read, there has always been the caveat that they were “never called.”

“But for the war, all of these students would have gone on to become lawyers and they would have given back to the Alberta legal community,” said Marlowe.