When brothers Robert and John Gillespie of Winnipeg enlisted, Robert’s wife, Annie, had a dark premonition. She had a feeling that one of the brothers would not return. Sadly, her vision proved prescient—John, a lieutenant with the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish), died of wounds suffered at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Meanwhile, Robert, a lieutenant-colonel, raised the 226th Battalion and brought it to England, only to see it broken up and its members sent to reinforce other under-strength battalions. After the war, Robert returned to Manitoba and had a brief stint in politics, helping to found the “Reconstruction Party.” Annie later said that, due to the stress and hardships of the war, her husband returned to Canada “a changed man.”

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