Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Lions and tigers, oh my

This came up in another context:

TORONTO MUNICIPAL CODE

ANIMALS
349-15 2006 - 09 - 27
SCHEDULE A TO CH. 349
PROHIBITED ANIMALS

MAMMALS
Artiodactyla (such as cattle, goats, sheep, pigs)
Canidae (such as coyotes, wolves, foxes, hybrid wolf dogs) except dogs
Chiroptera (bats such as fruit bats, myotis, flying foxes)
Edentates (such as anteaters, sloths, armadillos)
Felidae (such as tigers, leopards, cougars) except cats
Hyaenidae (such as hyaenas)
Lagomorpha (such as hares, pikas) except rabbits
Marsupials (such as kangaroos, opossums, wallabies) except sugar gliders derived from self-sustaining captive populations
Mustelidae (such as mink, skunks, weasels, otters, badgers) except ferrets
Non-human primates (such as chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, lemurs)
Perissodactyla (such as horses, donkeys, jackasses, mules)
Proboscidae (elephants)
Procyonidae (such as coatimundi, cacomistles)
Rodentia (such as porcupines and prairie dogs) except rodents which do not exceed 1,500 grams and are derived from self-sustaining captive populations
Ursidae (bears)
Viverridae (such as mongooses, civets, genets)

BIRDS
Anseriformes (such as ducks, geese, swans, screamers)
Galliformes (such as pheasants, grouse, guineafowls, turkeys)
Struthioniformes (flightless ratites such as ostriches, rheas, cassowaries, emus, kiwis)

REPTILES
Crocodylia (such as alligators, crocodiles, gavials)
All snakes which reach an adult length larger than 3 metres
All lizards which reach an adult length larger than 2 metres

OTHER
All venomous and poisonous animals

Water

We've officially given up on rain barrels (to make a long story short, our roof collects far too much rain to reasonably store, and my plan of having it leak gently out through a soaker hose was a non-starter, I think because the resistance of the hose was greater than the pressure created by the weight of water in the barrel). The limitations of the system started to become clear after a rainy night in May when the roof shed at least 385L of water.

Anyway, last weekend I moved to Plan B, or perhaps it's something like Plan Q by now - running downspout all the way to the back of the garden. This took about 45 feet of downspout. The advantage of doing this in winter was that I could work in the perennial bed without trampling plants.

The gutter is gently thawing, and there is water in the system, so we'll soon find out if it works. I've had to patch some small leaks, but nothing serious.

Wuzzles!

Wuzzles!

Mr. Wuzzle, pedestrian

Fourteen months, three weeks.

He'd been hovering on the edge of walking for a long while - walking with an adult supporting got old and boring a long time ago. He seems to have the idea that to walk, he has to start by rearing up directly from a sitting position, which took him a while to perfect - for some reason, standing with a supporting object couldn't be a starting point, although it certainly looked easier to us.

Anyway, today he had some sort of developmental breakthrough and started walking everywhere, and getting up self-confidently when he fell over.

The focus on these is a bit off - I was shooting without a flash, and as you can see, he's an active small person.

Sergeant Cochrane’s War

Back in November, I wrote about some things we found out about the first owners of the house after it was built in 1912, Frank (and later) Mary Cochrane.

I can’t get more information on Mary Cochrane without proof of her death, but a copy of Frank Cochrane’s First World War service file arrived Friday with lots of new information.

---

December 2, 1915 Medical examination. Apparent age: 29. Height, 5’3”, weight 119 lbs.

January 24, 1916 Cochrane enlists in the 116th Battalion in Uxbridge, saying that he was 29, with a date of birth of May 6, 1886 (more on this later), a telegraph operator by trade, and listing Mary Edith Cochrane of 835 Logan Ave. in Toronto as next of kin. He had previously been in the 109th Battalion, raised in Lindsay, between August 16, 1915 and November 24, 1915. There is almost no information in his file on this first enlistment.

The 116th was raised in Ontario County, which is now Durham Region. Recruits from the area had been sent as drafts to other battalions until May of 1916, when local militia officers were authorized to form and recruit for the 116th as a county battalion with a local identity. It’s an interesting question why Cochrane went to Uxbridge to enlist, since there was no lack of recruiting going on in Toronto. He was born in Peterborough – were there friends and relatives he wanted to serve with?

March 23, 1916 Promoted lance-corporal

May 18, 1916 He gives a birthdate of May 8, 1886, age 29 and 7 months.

June 28, 1916 Particulars of Family of an Officer or Man Enlisted in C.E.F.:

State full name of your wife: Mary Edith Cochrane
835 Logan Ave.
Toronto, Ont.
Are you a widower? No.
Have you any children? Yes.
If so, give numbers of boys and girls: Three stepsons.
Also their names and ages:
Francis Caldwell Byam, 21 (Invalid)
Percival Mark Byam, 19
Charles Morley Byam, 17

This raises all kinds of questions, since Cochrane himself was only 29 at this point – or at least that was his story in 1916, as we shall see. Were the Byams relatives of his wife, or her children from a previous marriage? In that case, Mary Cochrane would have to have been much older than her husband, which is not impossible. Or were they his relatives – perhaps orphaned children of an older sibling? The 1919 city directory mention of a Percy M. Ryam at 835 Logan is certainly a typo.

Is your father alive? Yes

` If so, state name and address: Fred Smith Cochrane, Milton West, Ont.

Is your mother alive? No

In March, 1916 , Mary Cochrane, living at 835 Logan, starts receiving pay allowances: $20 a month in separation allowance, and another $25 a month as 'assigned pay,' or a share of her husband's pay, starting in August, 1916. In December, 1916, she is paid a separation allowance of $55, as far as I can tell retroactive to her husband’s promotion to sergeant, and after that is paid $25 a month as separation allowance. Starting in August 1918, her share of Cochrane’s paycheque (assigned pay) is cut to $15, then increased in February 1919 to $20. This may be connected to Sgt. Cochrane wanting more money in his pocket in England, or maybe also to an increase in Mary Cochrane’s separation allowance to $30, which allowed him to keep more of his pay while leaving his wife’s income stable.

Mary Cochrane seems to have had an income of about $50 a month from her husband’s war service, between the two allowances. I’d be interested to know what her expenses were – presumably there was a mortgage on the Logan Ave. house, then as now. Also, she, the two able-bodied teenagers and the 21-year-old invalid may all have been working.

None of the Byams have attestation papers in their names, which they would have if they had enlisted, and none appear in the War Graves Commission database. I’m sure there’s a story there: by the last years of the war recruiting efforts in Toronto were very aggressive ( Our Glory and Our Grief: Torontonians and the Great War describes this in detail), and at least two of them were able-bodied young men in their late teens. Our Glory and Our Grief mentions a recruiting NCO who conducted a door-to-door survey of the whole east end of the city looking for shirkers, draft evaders and so forth – perhaps there is a note on 835 Logan. If I remember correctly, the document is in the National Archives.

July 23, 1916 Embarks from Halifax aboard S.S. Olympic and is, appointed acting sergeant.

July 31, 1916 Arrives in England

Aug. 1, 1916 Pay documents list him as being in the 116th Battalion Staff – Signals Section.

February 13, 1917 “Proceeds overseas” (ie., from England to France)

June 26, 1917 Acting rank of sergeant confirmed in the field.

At this point, we turn to The 116th Battalion in France, written in 1921 by an unnamed author who served as the unit’s adjutant. He has an easy, anecdotal style, though also a bad habit, grating to the modern reader, of only naming officer casualties, for example:

In sum we had captured 60 prisoners, including two officers, and killed at least twice that number, our own casualties being five officers-Lts. V. C. Lick, C. S. Lennox, F. S. Neil, T. W. Hutchison, G. R. Weber-and twenty-five other ranks killed, three officers and forty-two other ranks wounded.

The book opens as the battalion settles in France:

It was generally conceded that trench warfare had not all the advantages the instructors at Bramshott had claimed for it, and that" Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty" was not such a rotten song after all. Several of the Companies had encountered mud in the trenches, well over their knees, and, as military overcoats are not constructed for mud wading, a great many of the men in these Companies, following the advice of the "old" soldiers in the Battalions to which they were attached, had cut their coats in accordance, not with orders from the 9th Brigade, but with the depth of the mud encountered.

As these tailoring alterations were for the most part made by means of the Service Jack Knife the results were hardly in keeping with K.R. and O., and by the look on the C.O.'s face when he inspected the Battalion for the first time after its reassembly at Houdain there was certainly trouble in store for somebody. The next day saw about 200 brave, but ragged warriors, lined up outside Battalion Orderly Room, awaiting sentence for destroying Government property. The sentences were not severe, but the Battalion tailor had his hands full for a while.

The 116th is in reserve as the assault on Vimy Ridge begins:

From our position we could see only the flash of the guns as it was scarcely daylight, when, like a mighty earthquake, the artillery burst forth, sounding the keynote of the advance to our waiting comrades in the trenches. Gazing into the smoke and dust, caused by the bursting shells, we vainly tried to picture the drama that had just begun, and many a prayer for success went up from the watchers on Mount St.-Eloi that morning.

Eventually the battalion moved forward to relieve the troops who had taken the hill.

It is a very curious sensation to walk boldly across the shell holes, which only recently were called "No Man's Land," and over which we had been wont to crawl about with our noses pretty close to the ground. By the time we reached Spandau Haus, night had set in, and to look over the line with any intelligence would be an impossibility. This must have been a very joyous relief to the C.M.R.'s, for they were all dog tired, and to have to more or less instruct a new Battalion in all the intricacies of a newly captured position was asking them a little too much after their experiences of the last 36 hours.

- During the next ten days the whole Battalion was engaged in the reconstruction of the Lens-Arras road, between Thélus and Vimy, which had been rendered practically impassable by the recent barrages. This work was both laborious and nerve-racking. Fritz was quite aware that the road was one of our only lines of communication, having used it himself, and consequently he was not going to let us put it into good condition for nothing. Every variety of "hate," large and small, and generally in series of four, was thrown at that road blocked with mule transport, guns, ambulances, and working parties (chiefly 116th Battalion) and it is the most extraordinary thing that the work of reconstruction progressed as favorably as it did, and that there were not more casualties.

Having survived this, the battalion then endured a bullish staff officer:

It was during this period that the Brigade Commander announced his intention of formally inspecting us, and at the completion of his inspection, having congratulated us on our good appearance and also our general behaviour since joining his Brigade, he pointed out that although we had shown extraordinary ability at baseball and other sports, having lately won the Brigade Championship, much to the discomfiture of the older Battalions, we had not so far proved our ability in the noblest sport of all, namely, that of "strafing the Hun."

This turned out to involve a battalion-scale raid raid on ‘a large and ugly slag heap, shaped like a truncated cone,’

- reported to be a veritable nest of machine guns, and trench mortars; the railway embankment was believed to be fairly honeycombed with dug-outs, but all that was actually and really known was that the German front line was strongly barricaded and full of Germans, and that Quebec Road was partly sunken and full of wire.

- About midnight, therefore, the platoons were being led quietly and stealthily into position. Suddenly the bells in the German trenches, not a hundred yards from the right flank, began to ring. Gas fumes were rapidly making their way over our positions. It was difficult to tell whether the gas was merely lachrymatory or poisonous, and at the first indication every officer and man had slipped on his gas helmet.

It is hard enough to find your way about in the dark under ordinary conditions, but with a gas helmet on it is absolutely impossible, and in less time than it takes to tell, the greatest confusion arose, and the success of the whole operation hung in the balance.

A desperate situation confronted the Battalion; in a little while our artillery barrage would open, and its programme would be carried out while our men were stumbling blindly through the gas fumes, and in due course the enemy artillery would open up in retaliation, and our men, helpless with their gas helmets on, would be wiped out without a chance for their lives. For about thirty minutes the situation was critical and fraught with the greatest difficulties; the darkness, the gas, the fumes, the irregularities of the ground, wire entanglements, ruins, shell holes, all combined to make the assembling of our companies slow and difficult.

Chances had to be taken, and gas helmets were removed, the mouthpiece alone being used, and in this manner, our eyes streaming with tears and nerves strung to the highest pitch, we eventually reached our positions around the Quebec Road about five minutes before zero hour. Exactly on the stroke of one the barrage opened, falling like a hailstorm on the German front line, which was lit up along its entire length by the bursting shells.

It was certainly an unmerciful pounding and seemed to fill us with an ardent desire to get over there, and like Julius Caesar, "negotium finire." As the barrage opened "A" Company crept across the Quebec Road through the lanes in the wire which had been previously cut by the scouts, and at zero, plus three minutes, at which moment the barrage lifted off Metal Trench to the Railway embankment, they rushed forward, closely followed by "B" Company on the left and "C" Company on the right. By the time "A" Company reached Metal Trench the Huns had begun to pour out of their dug-outs in which they had taken refuge during the shell storm, and hand-to-hand fighting ensued, in which many of the enemy were either killed or taken prisoners; leaving "A" Company to deal with the destruction of the dug-outs and the capture of the slag heap, as previously arranged, "B" and "C" Companies proceeded to the final objective.

As already anticipated, our greatest trouble was to be from the flanks, and during the final stages of the attack, in which "B" and "C" Companies rushed the embankment, capturing many prisoners, some enemy machine guns came into action and inflicted heavy casualties on us. In spite of this, everything seemed to be happening just in the way we had practised it at Berthonval Farm, even the special carrying parties that were to bring up trench mats for crossing the wire believed to exist around the embankment, arrived, and were much disappointed when they were told they would not be needed. Also the signallers specially attached to Companies for communication with Battalion Head- quarters came through, but were unable to use their lamps on account of the smoke and gas.

- In sum we had captured 60 prisoners, including two officers, and killed at least twice that number, our own casualties being five officers - and twenty- five other ranks killed, three officers and forty-two other ranks wounded.

Hill 70:

- At 3 a.m., precisely, on the 17th (of September, 1917), an almost perfect barrage dropped on our front line and supports.

Now a certain Army order stating that no S.O.S. must be sent up until it was absolutely assured that the enemy was attacking had been recently impressed on us, and that is probably the reason why only one Company put one up (Red over Red over Red). Our artillery were sound asleep, for they never responded at all. The barrage lifted off our front line and it was evident that we were "for it." Up went another S.O.S., but our artillery still slept on.

A few of the enemy crept through the wire and entered "C" Company's frontage in an empty bay at its junction with 12th Ave. communication trench. They left the trench immediately, having captured Pte. Dewes of "B" Company, who had been wounded by the barrage, and was evidently on his way out to the rear. The smoke and dust were so thick we could see nothing, and a continuous rifle and Lewis gun fire was our only means of retaliation.

As fall turned into winter, the battalion went to Passchendaele twice:

The 9th Brigade, with the 116th Battalion in support, attacked the Bellevue Spur on the morning of October 26th, and by the morning of the 27th, after one of the fiercest and most bloody onslaughts in its history, succeeded in destroying the entire German garrison. On the evening of the 27th the 116th Battalion took over the front line from the remnants of the Brigade, remaining there until relieved by the 49th Battalion (7th Brigade)-during the early hours of the 29th October. We were not sorry to move away from our present gruesome surroundings.

The battalion was back in the line again just before Christmas, 1917, although ‘the general feeling amongst the troops was that they had seen enough of the Ypres salient, or what remained of it, to last them until the end of the war.’

The condition of the trenches in this sector was the worst imaginable. The mud was not only knee deep but like glue, and it was not at all an unusual occurrence for a man to lose his boots and socks in his endeavours to extricate himself.

It is at this point that Sgt. Cochrane for all practical purposes checks out of the war.

December 9, 1917 Granted 14 days leave to England

December 30, 1917 Returned.

December 30, 1917 Taken off strength from unit (illegible.) in Etaples.

January 4, 1918 Deafness, defective vision, B2. at Etaples. (The documentation for this medical exam later can’t be found.)

January 5, 1918 Taken on strength, Cdn. Lab Pool.

January 11, 1918 Struck off strength, Cdn. Lab Pool (Who are they? It’s not clear.)

Until June of 1919, Cochrane drifts around the Canadian army bureaucracy in England, as far as I can tell as a pay clerk, with postings varying from several months to two days. By August of 1918, he is certainly working as a pay clerk.

April 18, 1918 He is formally listed as a member of the Canadian Army Pay Corps. This lasts until May 8, 1919.

May 9, 1919: Cochrane has a medical examination in London, much more thorough than his enlistment physical in 1915. Here, he gives a birthdate of May 6, 1883, and an age of 36. Why did he give an 1886 birthdate when he enlisted? It’s not a clerical error – it’s repeated several times. Presumably he wanted to make himself out to be under 30, but it’s not clear why.

Original disease, or injury:

a) Defective vision

b) Defective hearing

Present condition. Patient states that he has difficulty in seeing without his glasses, but with glasses he sees very well. Also states that since childhood he has had discharge from right and left ear.

History: Patient states that since childhood has had weak eyes and has worn glasses for twenty years. Also right and left ears have been affected since childhood.

(Documenting that Cochrane’s medical problems predated his enlistment, and weren’t caused by the war, was important to calculating his veteran’s benefits. He was either very honest or naïve in saying so directly that he had hearing problems since childhood. Query: How did his hearing problems affect his career as a telegraph operator?)

May 19, 1919 Struck off strength to the Canadian demobilization centre at Kinmel Park, Wales. (Conditions there were miserable. Cochrane would have arrived ten weeks or so after riots that killed several Canadian soldiers.)

June 11, 1919 Embarks on RMS Scotian at Liverpool

June 24, 1919 Discharged at Quebec City:

On Demobilization Medically Unfit for General Service

Proposed Residence after Discharge: Toronto

Category: B1