John (Jack) Paton, his parents and two sisters immigrated to Canada from England in the spring of 1912. In early 1914 Jack and his parents lived in Edmonton, Alberta where he met my grandfather, Barry Galbraith, who frequently mentioned Jack in his diary. In April 1914 Jack, Barry and William Humphrey Webb, another young man who died in the war, travelled to the Cosmo area near Sangudo, Alberta where Humphrey and Barry had homesteads. Over the next few months the men worked together, clearing and cultivating land and constructing buildings and fences. Jack and Humphrey enlisted together in Edmonton within a week of the war being declared, travelled overseas together and apparently served together until Jack’s death on the Western Front 22nd April 1918. John Paton is commemorated at the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial and on page 32 of Canada’s First World War Book of Remembrance. Barry Galbraith’s 1914 diary has been donated to the Provincial Archives of Alberta and a longer version of Jack’s story is being prepared for the journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society.

Marilyn M Astle