So, returning now to where I left off on Aid from Canada about a year ago (Sika's and Kettu's, which was where I got sidetracked onto Hakkarainen....).... let's take a look at the Canadian Volunteer Brigade, which would become part of the Commonwealth Division in Finland over the course of the Winter War.
Canada and Finland – and the Canadian Volunteer Brigade….
Canada and Finland
Links between Canada and Finland go back centuries, although most Canadians were not aware of this, either then or now. Perhaps the first Finn in Canada was Pehr Kalm, an explorer, scientist, and botanist who explored New France in 1749 and the Niagara Falls region in 1750, carefully documenting his discoveries. There may have been earlier Finns, perhaps from amongst the early Finnish settlers in the US, but there is no record of them (Finns, as subjects of the Swedish Crown, were included in Sweden's seventeenth century effort to gain a New World foothold in the Delaware Valley. It is estimated that about half of the approximately one thousand colonists in "New Sweden" were either Finns from Värmland, Sweden, or who came directly from Finland. The colonizing effort was initiated by the Dutch-Swedish New Sweden Company, and led by the German-born Peter Minuit. The Company Board included a Finnish admiral, Klaus Fleming. Two ships, Kalmar Nyckel and Fågel Grip, set sail for the New World in 1637. They arrived in 1638, and the colonists purchased land from the native Americans to build Fort Christina, named after the Swedish queen.
In 1655 Dutch colonists took over the small settlement. The year 1664 saw both the arrival of a final contingent of 140 Finns, and a change of ownership of the area from the Dutch to the English. Several authors have suggested that the traditional North American log cabin was a Finnish contribution to the New World, and that John Morton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a descendant of the Värmland Finnish Marttinen / Mårtenson family. A less welcome contact occurred in 1838 when Nils Gustaf von Schoultz landed near Prescott, Ontario as the head of a 190-man American “invasion force” aiming to “liberate” Upper Canada. Von Schoultz was captured and executed.
Image sourced from: http://webnews.textalk.com/upload/artic ... Kalm_s.jpg
Pehr Kalm (6 March 1716 – 16 November 1779) (in Finland also known as Pietari Kalm and in some English-language translations as Peter Kalm) was a Swedish-Finnish explorer, botanist, naturalist, and agricultural economist. He was one of the most important apostles of Carl Linnaeus. Among his many accomplishments, Kalm can be credited for the first description of Niagara Falls written by someone trained as a scientist. Kalm was born in Ångermanland (in Northern Sweden), where his parents had fled for refuge from Finland during the Great Northern War. His father died six weeks after his birth. When the hostilities were over, his widowed mother returned with him to Närpes in Ostrobothnia, where Kalm's father had been a Lutheran minister. Kalm studied at the Academy of Åbo from 1735, and from 1740 at the University of Uppsala, where he became one of the first students of the renowned naturalist Carolus Linnaeus. In Uppsala Kalm became the superintendent of an experimental plantation owned by his patron, Baron Sten Karl Bielke. Kalm did field research in Sweden, Russia, and the Ukraine from 1742 to 1746, when he was appointed Docent of Natural History and Economics at the Academy of Turku. In 1747 the Academy elevated him to Professor of Economics, and the same year he was also appointed by Linnaeus and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (which he had been a member of since 1745) to travel to North America to find seeds and plants that might prove useful for agriculture or industry. In particular, they wanted him to bring back the red mulberry in the hope of starting a silk industry in Finland (which was then an integral part of Sweden).
Kalm arrived in Pennsylvania in 1748, where he was befriended by Benjamin Franklin. Kalm made the Swedish-Finnish community of Raccoon (now Swedesboro) in southern New Jersey his base of operations. Raccoon had been one of the settlements established as part of the former Swedish colony of New Sweden and had many descendants of early Finnish immigrants living there. While there he served as the substitute pastor of Trinity Church, the local Swedish Lutheran church. Kalm subsequently married the widow of Johan Sandin, the former pastor who had died. He remained in Raccoon until 19 May 1749. He made trips as far west as Niagara Falls and as far north as Montreal and Quebec before returning to Finland in 1751 to take his post as Professor at the Turku Academy, he established botanical gardens in Turku, and taught there until his death in 1771. Kalm's journal of his travels was published as “En Resa til Norra America” (Stockholm, 1753–1761). It was translated into German, Dutch, and French, and into English in 1770 as Travels into North America. Kalm described not only the flora and fauna of the New World, but the lives of the Native Americans and the British and French colonists whom he met. An American edition was translated by Swedish-American scholar and literary historian Adolph B. Benson (1881–1961). It was published as Peter Kalm's Travels in North America: The English Version of 1770 (Wilson-Erickson Inc. 1937). It has become an important standard reference regarding life in colonial North America and has been in continuous print in several updated editions. In his Species Plantarum, Linnaeus cites Kalm for 90 species, 60 of them new, including the genus Kalmia, which Linnaeus named after Kalm. Kalmia latifolia (Mountain-laurel) is the state flower of Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Image sourced from: http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/FinnsAme ... s/pag1.jpg
The Finnish scholar Pehr (Pietari) Kalm toured North America exploring areas of what are now the United States and Canada. He was one of the first Europeans on the continent to visit Niagara Falls. Kalm's findings were published in the work En resa til Norra America (Journey to North America) which was subsequently translated into several languages.
As relative latecomers in the great trans-Atlantic migration of Europeans to North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Finnish immigrants were first drawn in large numbers to "Amerikka"-that is, the United States of America - in the early 1860s. By the outbreak of World War I, more than 200,000 Finns had made their way to the shores of the North American continent, most of them settling in the United States. From there, some made their way into Canada in search of work and land to farm. Because the Finnish-American community was older, much larger and better established than its Canadian counterpart, the influence that it exerted on the early development of the Finnish-Canadian community was second only to that of the motherland. However, because of the heavy traffic flow of Finns that soon arose across the Canada-United States border, the same might well be said of the later Finnish-Canadian influence on the Finnish-American community. Finnish immigrants to Canada really began to arrive in large numbers in the 1870s and early 1880’s to work on the large canal and railroad construction work and later in mines and lumber camps. By the 1890s Finnish communities were established in British Columbia, the prairie provinces, and Ontario where the Finnish pioneers cleared homesteads, fished, trapped, and hunted. Coming from a country of similar geography and climate, Finns were well equipped to tame the Canadian wilderness. Finnish women were also in high demand as maids, boarding house keepers, and lumber camp cooks.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the growing stream of Finnish settlers from the United States and Finland had begun to coalesce into tiny communities at such places as Nanaimo, British Columbia; New Finland, Saskatchewan; and Copper Cliff, Port Arthur, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto (Ontario). Already the first manifestations of organized Finnish communal life had
appeared in 1890 with the founding of the Lännen Rusko Raittiusseura (Western Glow Temperance Society) and the North Wellingtonin Suomalainen Kirkko ja Seurakunta (North Wellington Finnish Lutheran Church and Congregation) at North Wellington, British Columbia. Thereafter, temperance societies and churches were established wherever sufficient numbers of immigrant Finns had concentrated. In 1892-94 the first group of families of Finnish origin settled permanently in Toronto. In 1901-06 their only organization was an Abstinence Society to promote sobriety and education.
Image sourced from: http://lepo.it.da.ut.ee/~lehti/Oralhist ... RzoQFU.jpg
Some of the first Finns of Timmins (Northern Ontario) on the threshold of their first Finnish Society hall in 1911. National Archives of Canada/PA127078
The initial emphasis on religion and religious institutions was a logical outgrowth of the predominant cultural values and attitudes that the earliest Finnish settlers brought with them from the Old Country These precursors to the first great wave of Finnish immigration to Canada were primarily a politically conservative and piously religious agrarian folk who had been deprived of their traditional livelihood by the mounting industrialization of Finland's agricultural economy. Whatever their economic motives for being drawn here-whether to find employment in Canada's great railway and canal construction projects, in her growing mining and lumbering industries, or in some other occupation for the purpose of amassing sufficient funds to buy a farm in Canada or back home in Finland - almost everyone supported the establishment of Finnish church congregations and temperance societies to combat the "evils" plaguing them on Canada's industrial frontier.
However, the fact that an unusually large number of religious dissenters were included in this group meant that there was no unanimity on which denomination to support. Thus, the Laestadians, or Apostolic Lutherans, who were seeking release from the bonds of the state church in their old homeland - the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland - now sought to make use of the religious freedom that they enjoyed in Canada to establish their own non-conformist congregations. Meanwhile, the more traditionalist element founded religious institutions that adhered to the Suomi-Synod, a federation of Finnish congregations in the United States and Canada that chose to recognize the spiritual and moral authority of Finland's state church. While some Finns felt the need to join other churches for want of a Finnish congregation in their local area, others deliberately chose to join "Canadian" churches as a means of integrating themselves into the Anglo-Canadian mainstream. Many of these churches encouraged this inclination, especially the Presbyterian and United Churches, whose missionaries were noted for their zeal in proselytizing amongst the Finns and other "foreigners" with the aim of "Canadianizing" them. One of the earliest and most distinguished of their Finnish converts was the Reverend Arvi I. Heinonen, who first served in the Presbyterian Church and, once it was formed, in the new United Church of Canada. His long career as a successful preacher won him a large following in the Finnish community.
Pastor Arvid Isaac Heinonen was a Finnish Presbyterian minister who served in Copper Cliff (the largest Finnish community in Canada in 1913), Northern Ontario, from 1913 to 1918. He did missionary work along the north shore of Sault Ste. Marie and up into Cochrane and Timmins. He was a very charismatic man, a skilled leader and organizer, an accomplished singer and lute player, and was the choir leader. Pastor Heinonen purchased property on the south side of Long Lake on January 15, 1915 where he lived with his wife Cecelia Marie, his sons Veikko, Oscar, and Kauko, and his daughters Agda, Maire, Kerttu, Ellie, Lea, and Vera. On October 5, 1939, he sold his mainland property to a local bachelor and his family lived on the island property he owned. Heinonen taught English language classes to new immigrants, would translate for them when required, and was always willing to help them find work
The Swedish-speaking Finns also had another option, that of joining a Swedish congregation in order to worship in their own native language. An early example of such a linking of Swedish and Finnish co-religionists occurred in the case of St. Ansgarius Lutheran Church in Port Arthur, Ontario. Given their extremely small numbers in Canada before World War I, and the facility with which they were generally able to move into either the Finnish, Swedish or Anglo-Canadian communities, the Swedish-speaking Finns had neither the resources nor the incentive to create their own independent religious, cultural or social institutions. Moreover, because it was far easier for Swedish-speakers to learn English than for Finnish-speakers, Swedish-speaking Finns were generally better able to integrate themselves into the Anglo-Canadian community than were their Finnish-speaking compatriots. Hence, the former did not feel compelled to maintain the same degree of communal adhesion and collective activity that was so characteristic of the latter. Yet, the fact remains that Canada's adherence to the right of religious freedom was to have profound consequences on the whole of the Finnish-Canadian community. These consequences were twofold: the first was the creation and deepening of sectarian rifts that divided the community; and the second was the development and elaboration here of new lifestyles and cultural patterns not normally encountered in Finland. Once freed from the rigid class structure and public institutions native to the Old Country the Finns in Canada could now evolve their own uniquely Canadian socio-economic patterns and cultural content. Like other peoples who preceded or followed them to Canada from every corner of the globe, these Finns both shaped and were shaped by their new homeland, thereby creating an identifiable Finnish presence that was truly indigenous to Canada.
Roughly a third of all Finnish immigrants to Canada arrived between 1900 and the outbreak of World War I (according to the available census data, Canadians of Finnish origin numbered 15,497 by 1911). This second great wave of Finnish immigration (the first was through the 1870’s and 1880’s) issued from the fact that Finland was then undergoing a major economic transformation as well as being in the throes of an explosive political crisis vis-à-vis her "russifying" sovereign, Nicholas II, who ruled as Tsar of All the Russias and Grand Duke of Finland. In the late 1890s the Canadian government, hungry for new settlers, also engaged in active recruitment of Finnish immigrants by distributing literature in Finland, and by sponsoring a delegation of highly respected Finns on a tour across Canada to select large tracts of land where Finns, disgruntled by the repressive Russification policies in Finland, could move en masse. While not much came of this planned mass emigration to Canada encouraged by the Canadian government, Finns immigrating to Canada continued to settle near already established Finnish communities. In 1901, the province of British Columbia gave Malcolm Island to a group of Vancouver Island coal miners of Finnish origins who established a short-lived utopian socialist community called Sointula. The disruptions in Finland’s economic life proved so severe to the working-class poor that, in certain regions of Finland, as many as twenty per cent of the landless rural and urban workers were forced to seek a new life abroad. Because so many of these working-class emigrants had also forsaken religion for the secular doctrines of socialism as their new road to salvation, the haalit (halls) of the Finnish-Canadian community were marked by a spirit of increasing secularization and radicalization after the turn of the century.
A good example of this increasing secularization and radicalization was the construction of the Finnish Labour Temple in 1910 by a group of Finnish immigrants in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Built in 1910, largely through the combined efforts of the Finnish-American Workers’ League and the Finnish New Attempt Temperance Society, the Big Finn Hall was built as a place for all members of the local Finnish community to meet. Almost immediately, locals began referring to the building as the “Port Arthur Finnish Socialist’s Local Temple” because of its connection to first the Port Arthur Branch of the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC). During the next decade it was home to the Finnish branches of the SPC, then the Social Democratic Party of Canada, and, in 1913, the Hall became the home of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) until 1918 when it was outlawed in Canada. As one can see, in its early days it was inseparably linked to the radical politics of Canadian labour and the left.
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The “Big Finn Hall” in Thunder Bay, Northern Ontario
Following the War, the Canadian One Big Union movement in Northern Ontario was headquartered in the hall until its 1922 national convention (held in the hall) resulted in a split in the socialist movement across the country. The hall became the epicentre of the revived IWW movement in Canada and, to add a bit of spice to the story, a number of Finnish Socialists left the big Finn Hall, bought their own building next door, and set up the communist “Little Finn Hall.” The radical politics that the Big Finn Hall were associated with continued to dominate the building's activities throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
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Image sourced from: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XgfRpPrgH5E/S ... 7-013a.jpg
The Hall was also the center of social activity for the community. Throughout the last hundred years, it has been host to theatrical productions, concerts, motion pictures, sporting events, and festivals. In 1923, a set decorator from New York was hired to build and paint a number of standard backdrops for the plays that were regularly held at the hall. (They are still being used). In addition to the plays there were Vaudeville acts, poetry readings, lectures, gymnastics, wrestling and boxing matches, and, because Finns are famous for their love of dance music like Tango and Polkas, the Hall was also the scene of dances every weekend. Most recently, the hall has become the home for a small museum operated by the Finnish Historical Society and it houses a number of artifacts and photos that tell the story of Finns in Canada. The Big Finn Hall was (and still is) the epicenter of Finnish culture in Northwestern Ontario.
The Big Finn Hall has also been a place of business. In the basement of the building is the Hoito Restaurant (
http://www.finlandiaclub.ca/), which began as a soup kitchen for workers and continues to operate as a now famous restaurant. The Hall has also been home to Finnish Language newspapers since it first opened its doors and now hosts the offices of the Finnish-Canadian weekly newspaper, Canadan Sanomat (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadan_Sanomat). And, if restaurants and newspapers were not enough, the Finnish Building Society used the Hall to establish a chain of People's Co-operative stores in Northwestern Ontario. The Big Finn Hall’s reach was far beyond the city limits. The onset of Second World War brought with it significant changes in the Finnish-Canadian community and this is why the film ends before the outbreak of World War II. The Big Finn Hall, however, remained a place for workers to get a decent meal and a place for the Finnish community to voice their concerns.
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The Finnish Labour Temple (also known as the Big Finn Hall or Finlandia Club) in Thunder Bay, Northern Ontario. Photo circa 2008.
A feature length docu-drama, in Finnish and English, “The Big Finn Hall,” written and directed by Kelly Saxberg and produced by Ron Harpelle of Franco Finn Films, has also been made about the lively culture and politics at the heart of Canada’s most vibrant labour hall. This film integrates archival footage, photos and fictionalized scenes to bring to life the Hall’s dramatic past.
The first secularized, local Finnish cultural society made its appearance in 1902 with the founding of the Toronton Suomalainen Seura (which was legally incorporated in Ontario under the name of “Finnish Society of Toronto”). Similar societies were subsequently established in many other centres of Finnish settlement. Secular and free-thinking by nature, these Finnish cultural societies quickly became hotbeds of socialist thought. That enthusiasm for Socialism increased even more when news arrived here of the remarkable successes achieved by the working class in Finland in forcing concessions from the Imperial Russian Government through the Suurlakko (Great Strike). This was a paralysing general strike mounted by Finnish workers in the grand duchy in conjunction with other anti-government activities undertaken by Russian revolutionaries elsewhere in the empire during the period of the Russian Revolution of 1905.
The lesson that the Finnish-Canadian socialists drew from the Suurlakko was that they should join with other like-minded elements in Canada to create a united socialist movement here. Thus, in 1905, the Finnish Society of Toronto established under its auspices the Socialist Party of Canada's first Finnish Socialist Branch-the Toronton Suomalainen Sosialisti Liitto (Finnish Socialist League of Toronto). Thereafter, other societies followed suit, with the result that many new Finnish Socialist Branches were added to the ranks of the party. In contrast, the Finnish community's earlier interest in single-purpose temperance societies was already beginning to wane, and its drive to establish new Finnish church congregations floundered until the advent of renewed immigration from Finland during the 1920s.
Other manifestations of the increasing fascination of Finns with socialism in one form or another included the establishment of the Kalevan Kansa (Kaleva Peoples) colony at Sointula (Place of Harmony) on Malcolm Island in 1901. This colony, which was led by Matti Kurikka and A.B. Mäkelä, embodied the famed Finnish attempt to fashion a utopian socialist community in the wilds of British Columbia. As one of its more ambitious undertakings, the colony founded Aika Printing Company Limited, which published Aika (Time), the first Finnish-language newspaper in Canada, from 1901 to 1904. With the bankruptcy of the colony's parent Kalevan Kansa Colonization Company Limited, the more secular-minded radicals became the dominant force in the community. They founded the Finnish Publishing Company Limited in Port Arthur, Ontario, together with its newspaper Työkansa (The Work People) in 1907, the second Finnish-language newspaper in this country. When the company failed in 1915, Työkansa ceased publication and its printing equipment was sold to a group of more conservative Finns who put out the non-socialist Canadan Uutiset (The Canada News), the first of its kind and the oldest Finnish-Canadian newspaper still in existence. Before the end of the decade, the secularized, socialist Finnish societies had become a significant force not only in the Finnish community, but also in the Socialist Party of Canada. However, in 1910, most of the socialist Finns were expelled from the party because of a quarrel with its leadership. These "dissidents" then decided to form their own Finnish Socialist Organization of Canada (FSOC; in Finnish: Canadan Suomalainen Sosialistijärjestö) in 1911. They were also instrumental in the founding of the Canadian Socialist Federation in 1911, an organization that subsequently reconstituted itself as the Social Democratic Party of Canada (SDPC) later in the same year. Moreover, the radical Finns demonstrated their wholesale support of these new parties by affiliating the FSOC with them.
Serious rifts also developed in the community as relations worsened between the more conservative, religious-minded "Church" Finns and the radicals. These rifts deepened during the course of World War I - especially after the outbreak of a short, brutal and bloody civil war in Finland between the "Red" and "White" factions during the first quarter of 1918. Because the
"Whites" had used German assistance to defeat the "Reds," the Canadian government declared Finland to be an enemy country and began treating all Finnish residents in Canada as "enemy-aliens" under the powers of the War Measures Act. Although it initially suspended all Finnish organizations and newspapers, the government quickly shifted its attention to the radical left as it succumbed to the "Red Scare" that swept across North America in reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Thus, its real aim soon became the quashing the "Red" FSOC, its newspaper Vapaus (Liberty) and their supporters, rather than the "Church" Finns, their organizations and newspaper Canadan Uutiset, which, in fact, constituted the prime support of the "White" regime in Finland. Hence, the government permitted Canadan Uutiset to reappear before the end of 1918, but delayed Vapaus's publication until almost a year later.
Following its suppression in 1918, the FSOC was not allowed to resurface until severing its ties with the SDPC. It did so to obtain the approval of the authorities, dropping the word "Socialist" from its name to signify this new independent status when it resumed operations in 1919. With the lapsing of the War Measures Act in 1921, this "provisional" Finnish Organization of Canada was again "reconstituted" as the FSOC. While the effect of the government's actions under the Act may have persuaded some of the more timid radicals to withdraw their support from the Finnish-Canadian working-class movement, these measures did not prove sufficient to quash the movement altogether.
Stepping back to the beginning of WW1, it should be noted that during WWI many Finnish immigrants volunteered to serve in the Canadian armed forces, mainly in the 94th Battalion and in the 223rd Scandinavian-Canadian Battalion. In the early days of WW1, Canadian recruitment was organized (or sometimes disorganized!) following the patterns imported from Britain. The system of “Pals” battalions was thought to be “great stuff” and battalions were raised by any “affinity” group that came up with an idea. The 223rd was one of these, as was the 197th “Viking” Battalion. However, by 1917 the pool of potential recruits had been pretty well picked over. Most Scandinavians who wanted to join up had enlisted with other battalions. (There were a sizable number of Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians in the Edmonton area, for example, who had enlisted early on). To fill their ranks, these “affinity”units sent recruiters across the country taking up anyone who showed up at the office. This resulted in charges by the local Military Districts of “poaching” and also netted men rejected by other battalions. Scandinavian volunteers also joined the Canadian Army, travelling to Canada to do so. One of these men was Thomas Dinesen, author of “No Man's Land. En Dansker med Canadierne ved Vestfronten”, Kopenhagen 1929; 1965, 1985. Thomas Dinesen was the famous Danish female writer Karen Blixen's brother. He went to New York from Denmark and enlisted at a Canadian recruiting office. He arrived on the Western Front during spring 1918.
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Image sourced from: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... onteam.jpgThe 223rd (Canadian Scandinavians) Battalion, Canadian Army, was recruited in Manitoba in 1916 and left for overseas in 1917. In the meantime it entered a team in the Manitoba senior hockey league. This was common for Canadian military units of World War I while training in Canada. Some of the players on this team later joined the Winnipeg Falcons.
The 94th Battalion supposedly contained many Finns, and a scan of the Nominal Rolls reveals the following “Finnish” names.
Aulto, Magnus – 198143 – Private - 8th Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Fort William, 34 years old, married and worked as a contractor when he enlisted. Transferred to 17th Reserve Battalion, 13 Jul, 1916
Bursiainen, Paul – 199186 – Sapper - 223rd Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Port Arthur, 18 years old, single and worked for one of the railways when he enlisted. Transferred to 223rd Btln 20 May, 1916.
Haanjo, Emil – 198451 - Private - 94th Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 29 years old, single and worked as a labourer. Deserted, 03 Apr, 1916.
Hakkarainen, Alfred – 198803 – Private - 94th Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 41 years old, single and worked as a labourer when he enlisted. Previous service, 20th Reserve Company, Finnish Volunteer Force, 3 years. Deserted, 04 May, 1916.
Hanta, Matte 198609 Private 94th Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 31 years old, single and worked as a labourer when he enlisted. Deserted, 07 May, 1916
Kangas, Eric 198452 Private 94th Btln, Private : Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 43 years old, single and worked as a labourer when he enlisted. Deserted, 05 Jul, 1916. ACPF - RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5001 - 11
Kangas, John 199254 Private 94th Btln, Private : Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 38 years old, a widower and worked as a labourer when he enlisted. Deserted, 05 Jul, 1916. ACPF - RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5001 - 13
Kangas, Sam 199153 Private 94th Btln, Private : Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 34 years old, single and worked as an electrician when he enlisted. Deserted, 03 Apr, 1916. ACPF - RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5001 - 14
Kari, John 198306 Private 94th Btln, Private : Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 28 years old, single and worked as a sailor when he enlisted. Deserted, 09 May, 1916. ACPF - RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5002 - 46
Karpuk, Jacob 198516 Private 94th Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 27 years old, a widower and worked as a labourer when he enlisted. Deserted, 05 Jul, 1916. ACPF - RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5004 - 5
Karuk, Fred 199155 Private 94th Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Fort Frances, 43 years old, married and was a farmer when he enlisted. Previous service, 11th Army Corps, Russian Army, 3 years and 8 months. Did not go overseas with unit. ACPF - RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5004 - 45
Kosala, Aksili 199148 Private 94th Btln, Private: Remarks He was from Morgan Siding, He stated that he was 19 years old, single and worked as a labourer. Discharged, 19 May, 1916, Under Age.
The 66th (Edmonton) Battalion which recruited mainly during the second half or 1915, was a typical “Prairie” Battalion and contained at least 13 immigrants born in Norway, Sweden, Iceland, or Denmark (mostly Norway). There were also at least 5 Finns, of whom two were killed at the front. This was in no way a "Scandinavian" battalion but was a fairly typical Canadian battalion. The following Finnish soldiers are commemorated on the Menin Gate.
ASPLUND, Private, HUGO, 6706. 15th Bn. Australian Infantry, A.I.F. 15th October 1917. Age 30. Son of Josefina Elisabeth Haapaniemi, of Helsingfors, Hoosgatan, 19/21 Makivens, Skydds, Finland. Native of Wasa, Finland.
PUURUNEN, Private, A, 267937. 28th Bn. Canadian Infantry (Saskatchewan Regt.). 6th November 1917. Age 26. Son of Anna Puurunen, of Fisalmi, Ruotaonmaki, Finland.
SANDHOLM, Private, JULIUS KONSTANTIN, 10495. 2nd Regt. (Inf.). South African Infantry. 20th September 1917. Age 23. Son of Maria Julina Sandholm, of Ulverso, Aland, Finland.
Next: The Second Wave of Finnish Immigration to Canada: 1920-1931
