William Roy Ferguson spent his fifteenth birthday as a private in France with the 92nd Battalion during the First World War. He was only fourteen-years-old when he enlisted from Toronto and served as a despatch driver with his battalion in the 48th Highlanders.

In 1917 he was hit with shrapnel while delivering despatches from one officer to another on his motorcycle, forcing him to spend the rest of the war in the hospital.

“I always looked when he got a haircut if I could see where the silver plate was in his head. With that injury apparently part of his skull was removed,” said Dora Hocken, Ferguson’s niece.

Ferguson was born in 1898 at Little Current on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. After the war he married twice and had one son named William. He lived in Manitoba and operated a gas station before his brother-in-law got him a job with Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan. He died in September 1986 a dual citizen in Algonac, a city outside of Detroit.

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