Chapter Seven

THROUGH THE YEARS

World War 1 to the Present Day

At the beginning of 1914 it would be difficult to imagine two communities more remote from each other’s experience than Mount Stew- art, Prince Edward Island and Sarajevo, Bosnia. It was, however, the political assassinations that occurred in the latter in June of that year that triggered a sequence of events that engulfed Mount Stewart and much of the rest of the world in the horrors of a world war.

Mount Stewart men had fought in foreign wars before. The Guardian for August 25, 1903, for instance, recorded the death of Mr. Daniel Barrett, a native of Mount Stewart, who had emigrated to the United States in 1850. Mr. Barrett had enlisted in the northern army at the beginning of the Civil War and had served throughout the entire conflict. Two brothers of Captain David Pigot of Savage Harbour join- ed the same army; however, it was their fate to die in a southern pri— son before the war was over. Great as was the cause for which these men fought, those villagers who gave service in the Great War did so with an added sense of urgency in that, this time, their own country

was directly involved.

The Charlottetown station yard was thronged on the morning of November 14, 1914, as, amid ringing cheers and stirring band music, “29 brave sons of P.E.I.” left for active service overseas. Numbered among these was Reginald Walsh of Mount Stewart. Pte. Walsh was destined to serve in France for nearly four years and to pass through some of the heaviest engagements of the war, including the Battle of Ypres, Hill 70, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and Amiens. Wounded several times and also gassed, he was awarded the military medal for conspicious bravery at Passchendaele.

Departure scenes, either at the station or at one of the wharves, became very frequent in Charlottetown, and Mount Stewart was in- variably represented among those who were departing. Charlottetown and, indeed, much of the Island, turned out en masse on June 12, 1916 to witness one of the proudest events in Prince Edward Island history, namely the farewell parade of the 105th Highland Regiment. Termed “the best of Prince Edward Island’s life blood,” this first regiment from the Island, 1200 strong, fairly deserved to be called “Highland” as one— quarter of its membership was “Macs.” As the battalion marched by him at Valcartier, Quebec, General Sam Hughes declared, “There is the

best in the lot.”

“We’re from Prince Edward Island, ‘Tis a land of noble worth, You’ll see by our geographee

‘Tis ‘the only Island on earth.

We have water all around us, Yet they say that we are ‘dry’; 0h we’re the boys to raise the noise With our regimental cry.”

Meanwhile, at home, people contributed to the war effort in less spectacular, yet necessary ways. Late in September, 1914, for instance, a publlc meeting was held at Mount Stewart in the interest of collections

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