Herbert Lyth served as a lance corporal with the 24th Battalion (Victoria Rifles) and was shot near the heart during the Battle of Vimy Ridge. He survived and spent the rest of the war recovering in England.

Born in Yorkshire, England, there wasn’t much work there after the war. He heard that Toronto would have work for him as a gardener so he sent his luggage there and made his way over on a boat, where he met a man named George who was also a gardener from Yorkshire. “He was working here in Knowlton for people who were pretty well-off and he convinced dad that if he goes and gets his trunk (luggage) in Toronto and come back to Knowlton, he would be OK,” said Juliette Brouillette, Lyth’s daughter, with a laugh. That’s just what Lyth did.

While gardening for one wealthy household in Knowlton, Quebec, Lyth met Elmire Grandmont and knew he would marry her. There was one problem, though—he didn’t speak French and she didn’t speak English. “Dad has always said that when he saw her that morning, he said there’s my wife,” said Brouillette.

Bilingual villagers helped Grandmont learn English and they eventually married in the early 1920s and had three kids—Normand, Lawrence, and Juliette.

Lyth enlisted on February 3, 1916, and only talked about the war on November 11 and April 9—Remembrance Day and the day the Battle of Vimy Ridge began. “Those two days he would say, ‘that was quite a battle’ or something like that,” said Brouillette. “He was a very cheerful person and he would never talk about war other than that.”

He was born on August 31, 1889, and he died in 1980.

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