Talbot Mercier Papineau was a Canadian soldier in World War 1 who championed pan-Canadian nationalism. He was the grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau, a leader of the 1837 Rebellion in Lower Canada. Papineau was educated in both English and French and advocated for unity between Quebec and the rest of Canada. He fought bravely in Europe during World War 1, receiving several honors before being killed in 1917. Had he survived, he may have become the first French Canadian Prime Minister of Canada.

1. THE CANADA TIMES
As it happened
Talbot Mercier Papineau
Was an Unlikely Hero
Jeanie Johnston Educational Foundation
Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jeruslem
155,du Buisson, Pierrefonds, P.Q.H8Y 2Z5
Tel.: 514-341-7777
Email: jeaniejohnstonfdn@videotron.ca
December 2014

2. The great grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau, the Quebec patriot who led the 1837 Rebellion in Lower
Canada, Talbot was a perfectly bilingual charismatic heartthrob, who attempted to stem the a rising
tide of Quebec separatism that swept through Quebec during the First World War. He was one of the first
Quebecers to champion a pan-Canadian nationalism and might even have become Prime Minister if fate had
not robbed him of the opportunity.
Talbot Mercier Papineau Was an Unlikely Hero
Adapted by Leo Delaney and Alan Hustek
He was born on the family estate in the manor
house at Montebello, on March 25, 1883. “There
I was born, and there is where my heart is,” he
often remarked. He was raised in an atmosphere
of privilege. His mother, Caroline Rogers, was an
American socialite from Philadelphia who insisted
that Talbot be educated in English. He was sent to
McGill University to study law and in 1905 won
a Rhodes Scholarship to continue his studies in
England. He returned from Oxford, opened a law
office in Montreal, and quickly made his political
ambitions known. In the 1911 general election,
he campaigned for the liberals in the contest,
which they lost. He went travelling around the
world, and when war was declared in 1914 he
immediately enlisted with the Princess Patricia’s
Light Infantry, not out of patriotic duty, but because, like many others, he believed “a good war” would
enhance his credentials in the political arena.
He sailed for Europe in the fall of 1914, but in December, while he was still in England his tent caught fire
and he was badly burned. He did not arrive in France until early 1915. He wrote vivid, often illustrated,
letters to his mother in which he admitted that he was both a scared and inexperienced soldier. “My
stomach seemed hollow,” he wrote in one of them. “My legs caught in barbed wire, but I stumbled through,
somehow. I set my fuse and hurled my bomb ahead of me. From that moment on, all hell broke loose.” He
was awarded a Military Cross, the British War Medal, and the Victory Medal for conspicuous gallantry at
St. Eliot, on 28th February 1915, when he shot and killed two of the enemy then ran along “the German
sap throwing bombs therein.” He came to national prominence back home when his “Dear Cousin” cousin,
Henri Bourassa, who founded Le Devoir, opposed the war effort. Papineau’s reply to Bourassa’s editorials
ran 10,000 words and was published in Le Devoir during the height of the 1916 conscription crisis.
“If you were truly a Nationalist – if you loved our great country and without narrow mindedness longed to
see her become the home of a good and united people– surely…you would have felt that in the agony of
her losses in Belgium and France that Canada was suffering the birth pangs of her national life. There, even
more than in Canada herself, her citizens are being knit together into a new existence, because when men
stand side by side and endure a soldier’s life, and face together a soldier’s death, they are united in bonds
almost as strong as the closest of blood ties. My Dear Cousin, if you have arrogated yourself to the term of
Nationalist, how can you not understand that if, without the sacrifice of the English soldiers we can never
hope to become a nation ourselves. What matters not is not the whys and wherefores, or whether we are
French or English… the one simple commanding fact is that Canada was at war, and Canada and Canadian
values had to be protected. Could you have been here yourself to witness in all its horrible detail the cruelty
of the war and seen your comrades struck down in death and naked at your side, even YOU would have
Manoir Papineau, family home of Louis-Joseph
Papineau and grandson, Talbot Mercier Papineau
… 2 …

3. The City of Ypres was of great
importance as five battles
occurred around that site.
In the first battle, the Allies
halted the German forces and
eventually surrounded the city
on three sides, bombarding it
throughout much of the war.
The Second Battle of Ypres
in 1915 was another attempt
to capture the city. The Third
Battle in 1917, commonly
referred to as Passchendaele,
was the most complex and was
a five-month engagement. The
fourth and fifth battles occurred
in 1918.
British and Commonwealth
soldiers often passed through
the Menenpoort now known
as the Menin Gate Memorial
on their way to the front
lines, with some 300,000 of
them being killed in the Ypres
Salient. Of these soldiers,
90,000 have no known graves.
failed to wish to visit punishment on those responsible. You too
would wish to see every ounce of our united strength instantly
and relentlessly directed to that end. If we are to preserve
liberty we must recognize that we do not belong entirely unto
ourselves, but to a mixed population, and we must rather to
seek points of contact and of common interest than points of
friction and separation. We must make certain concessions and
certain sacrifices of our distinct individuality if we mean to live
on amicable terms with our fellow citizens if we expect them
to make similar concessions to us. The fact remains that the
French Canadians have not responded in the same proportion as
other Canadian citizens, and the unhappy impression has been
created that French Canada is not bearing its fair share in this
great Canadian enterprise. For this fact, and for this impression,
you will be held largely responsible. You have brought (French
Canadian nationalists) into a disrepute from which they may
never recover. You have made the term Nationalist stink in the
nostrils of our English fellow citizens. Wherever you go, you
stir up strife and enmity; you bring dishonour to our race, so
that whoever bears a French name in Canada will be an object
of suspicion and possibly hatred. As I write, French and English
are fighting and dying side by side. Is their sacrifice to go for
nothing? Or will it not cement for a true Canadian nation, a
Canadian nation independent in thought, independent in action,
independent even in its political organization, but in spirit
united for high international and humane purposes to the two
motherlands – England and France?”
Talbot Papineau was killed at Passchendale on Oct. 30, 1917,
hit in the stomach by a shell. What was left of his body was
identified three weeks later by the puttees he had been wearing.
Princess Patricia herself was the chief mourner at the memorial
service in London. “Talbot Papineau became a symbol not
only of Passchendale, but of all the golden promise cut down
by the Great War,” Sandra Gwyn wrote in Tapestry of War.
Had he lived, he may very well have succeeded Sir Wilfrid
Laurier at the Liberal leadership convention in 1919 and gone
on to become prime minister. Mackenzie King, who won
the leadership, instead acknowledged Papineau as “the most
brilliant man in Canada,” and said had Papineau lived, he
(King) “would have been proud to have served in a cabinet with Talbot Papineau as Prime Minister.”
Justin Trudeau portrayed Talbot Papineau in a 2006 television documentary, The Great War. Trudeau
said he took the role because he “could really relate to the character. Like me he had a certain heritage
around the family name, he had an English-speaking mother, he believed in contributing to his country,
and we were both talkers, with a similar energy … my sense of Canada as a peaceful country is tied
directly to the fact that in order to be a peaceful country, we have a noble and glorious history in war,
which we are forgetting.”
… 3 …

4. It is the spring of 1963. I was in Ireland and I have done the usual things a tourist does on this beautiful island.
I have looked at the Atlantic Ocean and Galway Bay from the Cliffs of Moher; driven the Ring of Kerry; had
tea and scones in Glenveagh Castle; lunched at the Ross Hotel in Killarney, and, of course, visited every pub I
could find. I have never experienced the kind of warmth and hospitality that I found in this magical country.
I was born in the year 1898 on the outskirts of Hanover. I joined the German Youth Group in 1912 and two
years later I found myself on the crew of a tugboat in the North Sea, loading hundreds of Mauser rifles onto
a private sailing yacht called the Asgard. I remember that the rifles along with the boxes of ammunition
completely filled the little yacht’s cabin. I was told the destination of this cargo was the little harbour of Howth
in Ireland. Later that year, I joined a Panzer regiment and managed, somehow, to survive till the end of the war.
The highlight of my trip to Ireland took place in a crowded Dublin pub at lunchtime on Saint Patrick’s Day. The
place was packed. I was about to head for the exit when I felt a tap on my elbow. A gentleman motioned me to
take the second chair at his small table. He was a nicely dressed, handsome, elderly man, I guessed about my
age, and I was pleased to join him. In front of him was a pint of Guinness and a whiskey chaser. I ordered the
same.
Jack’s Story – The Great War of 1914-1918
The stranger introduced himself simply as Jack and for the
next three and a half hours, we had the most extraordinary
conversation I have ever had.
Jack asked me if this was my first visit to Ireland and if anything
in particular had prompted the visit. I remembered the shipment
of rifles and wondered if it might be a bad idea to mention it. I
did anyway and he laughed. He said that as a youth he and some
friends had taken some of those guns as they were unloaded
from the yacht and could have got themselves into some serious
trouble but for the fact that they had the wrong bullets. He told
me that the shipment to Howth was in answer to much larger
arms shipments made to the Ulster Volunteers in the north and
that gun running played a very significant role in Irish history.
Jack joined the British army at a very early age, probably about
fifteen. He was posted to England where he was enrolled in
a course for wireless operators supervised by Marconi. This
DAS GLUCK DER IRELANDER
By Dieter Dortmunder
resulted in an unusually varied military career since wireless operators were in short supply in all branches of
the British armed forces. He soon found himself with an infantry regiment in France. And here, on the front
lines, his extraordinary adventures began. He experienced near starvation several times when supplies could not
get through to the front. But he survived. A powerful enemy shell scored a direct hit on his dugout and killed all
his mates, He was unconscious for several hours and certainly would not have survived had not a recovery team
found him when they came only to retrieve the body of the regiment’s colonel.
When an artillery regiment needed a wireless operator at the front lines, Jack was transferred again. At this
time, the regiment was at the site of a captured German gun emplacement where several horses, which had
been used to haul heavy equipment, had been left to fend for themselves. Jack had never ridden a horse so
… 4…

5. during a lull in the proceedings, he was happy to give it a go. As soon as Jack was mounted, the horse decided
to take the new rider as quickly as possible back to its stables behind the German lines. And off they went at full
gallop. Not planning to attack the enemy yet, Jack slid down the side of the horse, landing in No Man’s Land
uncomfortably close to the enemy lines. Out in the open, enemy snipers pinned down Jack. He waited until dark
to crawl back to his unit. And he survived.
After a short leave back in Ireland, Jack was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer. This
involved reporting the exact position of enemy gun emplacements from a balloon! Apparently, Jack was colour-
blind and so was able to take fixes on enemy guns without the distraction of their camouflage. Even the most
inexperienced enemy pilot would surely have little trouble shooting a big balloon out of the sky. Jack certainly
had some “moments.” But he survived.
His next assignment was crew on Hanley Page bombers, again as an observer. British planes were relatively
slow and thus were fairly easy prey to the faster German tri-planes that could fly at about twice the speed.
German ace, Von Richtofen said the British aircraft were fairly easy to defeat as long as you didn’t fly
underneath them. British pilots would often carry things like scrap metal that sometimes could be quite lethal
when dropped from above onto an enemy plane. Von Richtofen reported that once ha had to crash land in a
farmer’s field after his propeller was smashed to pieces by a flying toilet seat.
These bombers were constructed of very lightweight materials and hence were extremely frail and crashes were
commonplace. Jack survived several. On one occasion, as his plane was taking off, the canvas floor he was
sitting on, collapsed, dropping him out onto the runway. He was unhurt.
After the war, Jack married Mary Callow, daughter of a well-known Dublin family. They had two children, a
boy and a girl. One evening, when returning from the theatre, Jack’s taxi was ploughed into by a truckload of
drunken Black & Tans. His wife was quite severely injured. Jack was sent through the canvas roof of the taxi
and landed on his feet more than twenty feet away. He was not injured.
Leaving the army, Jack joined the Irish post office as a clerk. When he retired, he had risen to the position of
superintendent of all the postal services in Ireland.
There is a saying, I think it’s English – “A cat has nine lives.”
What about Jack?
No wonder they won the bloody war!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgxGxp6nQlQ
Check out this utube video (the trailer to The Great War) featuring Justin Trudeau
… 5…

6. We are working towards having the Battle of Chateauguay included in the curriculum for Quebec
schools. That students are in ignorance of these historic times is very unfortunate. Former Premier,
Jean Charest, has recommended a meeting with the Minister of Education to discuss this; we are
awaiting a time and date.
The Minister of Public Affairs, Pierre Moreau, MNA, Chateauguay, has espoused our endeavours and
written to M. Bolduc, Minister of Education.
We have also initiated a competition, for all schools across Canada awarding two prizes of $1000
each for the best power point presentation by a secondary student on the subjects “The Battle of the
Chateauguay” and the “Battle of Queenston Heights.” LEARN, a division of Ministry of Education
Quebec, and the Canada Education Agency, which covers all other Provinces, have agreed to finance
the prize monies. We will require help in funding the research and web information which will enable
students to compete.
Suggestions for new articles should be submitted to Alan Hustak, Editor. hustak@themetrepolitan.ca
WEB SITES: click to view
www.irishfamine.ca – focusing on the effects of arrival of thousands of famine victims into Canada and the USA.
www.canadarailwaytimes.com – focusing on the building of the Victoria Bridge, the founding of the Grand
Trunk railway and the effect of this on sports, entertainment, politics and education.
Did you know that the Victoria Bridge has only been closed for one day since it was built?
www.hospitaller.ca – focusing on the history and aims of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.
NEXT ISSUE:
We promise to tell you all about Voytek, the Soldier Bear, at Monte Casino
and
The Scots’ emigration to Poland
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This news letter is produced by the Jeanie Johnston Educational Foundation. In this issue, we feature Talbot
Mercer Papineau, who was awarded the M.C. (Military Cross) one of the highest honours for bravery in
the armed forces. He was the grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau, one of French Canada’s most revered
historical figures. He was also the first Canadian Rhodes Scholar and was educated at McGill University,
Montreal. His letters to his cousin Henri Bourassa (Le Devoir) and to his mother were published widely,
both in Canada and throughout the Commonwealth and are maintained in the Canadian Archives in Ottawa.
It was thought, that if he had survived the war, his career in politics would have led to the Office of Prime
Minister of Canada.
“May the Lord keep you in the palm of His hand and never close His fist too tight.”
… 6…
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