Ron Dale was our speaker at the August 12th, 2014 Probus meeting. The title of his talk was “Girding for War: Canada and the beginning of the Great War”. In his presentation he discussed the beginning of the war and the amazing feat of recruiting, training and equipping the Canadian Expeditionary Force in record time in 1914.
On June 18th, 1914, 100 years ago the war began with an assassination in Sarajevo. Ron Dale shared a wealth of information with us that included historic statistical facts such as:
- There were only 3,110 men in the standing Canadian army as war was declared
- 50,000 Canadians were promised by the Canadian Government to be available within 2 months
- 100,000 Canadians volunteered with 2/3 having been born in England
- Of a population of 8 million, 430,000 Canadians served overseas and 170,000 inside Canada
- 61,000 were killed and 138,000 wounded
Our September 9th monthly meeting will be our Annual General meeting. There will not be a presentation but we will be shown a short video.