The draw to join the war was strong for many patriotic university students like Arthur Livingston, and after two attempts at enlisting, he was finally accepted in the 5th Universities Company in 1914. He was twenty-one years old, and one of the four brothers his Brantford, Ontario, family would commit to the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

As part of a heavy machine-gun unit, Livingston served through some of the most intense conflicts in the war, including Ypres, the Somme and Vimy Ridge. It was in the latter engagement he was injured by shrapnel. “When I came out of the anesthetic there was a cradle over my legs,” he says in his memoirs. “I had no feeling in them and was sure they had amputated both. I was thrilled when I saw them intact.”

Both Arthur and his brother Brant would be removed from the front lines on account of injuries. After his recovery in Epsom, England, Arthur returned to his parents and future-wife Mable, in Brantford.

Arthur’s mother, Charlotte Livingston, met him at the Brantford train station upon his return. Sadly, she would lose two of her other sons to the war—Hugh, who was killed in Arras, and Lawrence William, who was killed in action at Vimy Ridge. The losses affected her deeply, and for decades after the war, until her death in 1949, she would place a “City of Brantford” wreath on the local cenotaph each Remembrance Day in honour of her son’s sacrifice.

Do you have an ancestor who served in the Great War? Submit their story and it could be included on this Great War Album website.