72nd Seaforth Highlanders of Canada - waughfamily.ca

INTRODUCTIONnpHERE is much that is interesting in the origin of theA military organization to the history of which thesepages are devoted.That a Highland regiment should be formed in Vancouver,British Columbia, is in itself a somewhat remarkable factwhen the attendant circumstances are considered.At the time when the project was first broached, the memories of the early days of the city had not yet faded.Oldtimersstill spoke reminiscently of the great fire which, alittle more than a score of years before, had swept the infanttown out of existence. In the year 1887 the first locomotiveof the Canadian Pacific Railway had steamed in to thechosen terminal of the line.Its heralded approach had already been the stimulus for vigorous building operations.From this time onward the evolution of the City of Vancouver had proceeded at a rapid rate.Edifices costing millions of dollars had been erected, and upwards of forty milesof streets had been graded and paved. A steady stream ofsettlers had set in, till the population neared the 100,000mark.But this far western objective of the virile and the enterprising was a comparatively new city when the idea of aHighland regiment was first mooted in 1909. The glamourof Vancouver s novelty, its rapid growth and its up-to-datepublic utilities had not departed. A certain romance hungabout this ultima Thule of the Pacific Coast that was thousands of miles away from the older-settled parts of Canada.No wonder that it attracted large numbers of young menanimated by that pioneering spirit which has done so muchto expand the limits of the British Empire.Nor is it surprising that prominent among these newcomers there were many of Scottish ancestry. Eastern Canxix-^