Lest We Forget
The Royal Canadian Artillery Association takes a moment of silence each year to remember those Gunners that have passed away in the previous 12 months. Unfortunately, we are not always notified of the passing of a Gunner and many go unrecognized.
In 1922, the RCA Association published a booklet listing Officers who served Overseas in the Great War with the Canadian Artillery. One hundred years later, it is our hope that we can publish an update to that compilation by gathering a short biography on all the Gunners that have ever served in The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. This is a long term project that may take decades to complete.
The attached document already contains all the names of the deceased that were read out during the RCA Association Annual General Meetings and we are now working on Regimental histories and World War I nominal Rolls. The Project is looking for members to join the committee in digitizing their names and information. A format consisting of the individuals Rank, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Birthplace, Birth Date, Units served, Appointments achieved, Awards presented, Civilian Jobs, Date of death, location of burial would be the ultimate goal. However, the information is not always available and a listing for a known Gunner without all the information would not be discouraged.
The current issue of the Lest We Forget Publication is dated 24 November 2022 and consists of more than 6,000 names.
- The .pdf document can be downloaded by clicking on the arrow icon at the bottom of this page. Hover with your mouse over the document to see the navigation icons.
- You can easily find an entry by using Ctrl + F.
You can now consult our second listing that identifies the known burial locations of deceased Gunners by cemeteries. Lest We Forget – Cemeteries Please check the list for your local cemetery and see if you can help us by finding more gunners.
Our third list: Lest We Forget – Units attempts to seperate our deceased Gunners by the unit that they served in. More work is required especially in the categories labelled Served in The Royal Canadian Horse Artillery – Unknown Regiment and Served in The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery – Unknown Regiment.
This fourth list Lest We Forget – Assigned is for the use of an ongoing project. We’ll let the membership know how it worked in the very near future.
If you have any additional names, note any errors or would like to join the project team, please contact the secretary.rcaa.aarc@gmail.com
