William John Portree’s love for horses may have been what got him through the war. Before he enlisted on January 23, 1915 from Winnipeg, Manitoba, he worked as a horse trainer. He served with the Military Police guarding prisoners and taught other officers how to ride.
“To know grandpa is to know that he & the horses were one spirit,” said granddaughter Donna Portree. “Of all the crappy stuff in that whole bloody, brutal war I know it would be the suffering of the horses that would have bothered him the most.”
He loved horses so much that his son resented the animal because Portree would feed his horses before his son. “The horses came first but I think my grandfather needed the horses to help him heal from that dreadful war.”
He returned to his wife, Mary Miller, in Canada in 1919 and again worked with horses.
A proud Scottish man, he named his only daughter Islay for the Hebridean Island he thought was beautiful. He was born in Golspie, Scotland May 12, 1886 and died at Deer Lodge Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba on October 30, 1971.
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