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Albert Edward Owers (1899-1963)


Private in Canadian Army Young Soldiers' Battalion


Albert Edward Owers was born on 16 July 1899 in Jarrow. He was one of twelve children of the, then, coal merchant George and his Suffolk-born wife, Jane. Their oldest child, Lillie, was born in 1884, the year of their marriage, and the youngest, Reuben, in 1905. The family had moved to Jarrow from Boldon Colliery in 1897 and all the younger children were born there. Father George and two of the older children first moved to Canada in 1906, with the rest of the family following them to Winnipeg in 1912, and then moving on to become homesteaders in Sandridge, Manitoba, where George was also a lay minister.

Aged just seventeen when he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Winnipeg on 23 February 1916. Albert became Private 234052 and arrived in England eight months later as part of the 203rd Battalion (Winnipeg Rifles), which was absorbed into the 18th Reserve Battalion at Seaford early in 1917. As an underage soldier, he was moved from battalion to battalion, around all the various camps on the south coast. In fact, so many underage Canadian boys were in England that in July 1917 the Boys’ Battalion was organised. Commanded by Major K.L. Palton, it became known as the Young Soldiers’ Battalion, and boys under the age of eighteen were drafted in from other units and given a graduated course of training along with a general education.

Just weeks after his nineteenth birthday, Albert was posted to the 16th Battalion and joined them in France at the end of August 1918, to join them in an attack on the Drocourt-Queant line. 1 October 1916 saw the 16th Battalion, as part of the 1st Canadian Division, involved in a night time attack on the village of Cuvillers- west of the Douai Cambrai Road. Over 300 men were killed or wounded during the onslaught. Alfred Owers survived but received a shrapnel wound to his left leg. Initially treated in France, he was invalided to the Princess Patricia’s Hospital in Bexhill, Kent and discharged at the end of November having made a complete recovery with no disability. He didn’t return to France, but remained in England until his return to Canada in mid February 1919 for discharge from the CEF in Winnipeg at the end of March.

On his return to Canada after the war Albert worked on the family farm and then moved with his brother, Reuben, to live in the USA with his married sister, Mary. Returning to Canada in the early 1930s he trained as a veterinarian at Ontario Vet College and in January 1935 married music teacher Alice Petrie Tocher in Guelph. He and Alice remained living in Guelph where they raised their family of Bruce, Andrea and Marianne whilst he was employed by the Department of Agriculture working for Burns & Co. An elder of Trinity United Church, a freemason and a member of the Schneider Orpheus Choir; Albert died suddenly of a heart attack at the wheel of his car on 23 May 1963. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Guelph.

Civil Parish: Jarrow

Birth date: 16-July-1899

Death date: 23-May-1963

Armed force/civilian: Army

Residence: 1 Derby Street, Jarrow (1901 census)
503 Bannerman Avenue, Winnipeg (enlistment papers)
Coldwell, Selkirk, Manitoba (1916 census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta)
11 Filbert Street, Kitchener, Ontario (1940 voters list)

Religion: Methodist

Employment: Clerk (enlistment papers)
Farmer
Veterinary surgeon

Family: Parents: George Owers, Jane Owers nee Potter
Siblings: Lillie Owers, Thirza Owers, George William Owers, Frederick John Owers, Mary Ann (Polly) Owers, Mahala Jane Owers, Robert Henry Owers, Amy Ada Owers, James Alfred Owers, Edwin Ernest Owers, Reuben Potter Owers
Wife: Alice Petrie Owers nee Tocher
Children: Bruce Owers, Andrea Owers, Marianne Owers

Military service:

234052
Private
203rd Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
18th Reserve Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
128th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
19th Reserve Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
Saskatchewan Regimental Depot Company, Canadian Expeditionary Force
Boys’ Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
15th Reserve Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
203rd Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force
16th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force

Medal(s): British War Medal
Victory Medal

Gender: Male

Contributed by Jean Longstaff, Durham

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