Babcock, John

  • From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: See full biography at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Babcock
  • Wiki Biography:
    • John Henry Foster Babcock (July 23, 1900 – February 18, 2010) was a Canadian electrician and soldier. At age 109, he was the last known surviving veteran of the Canadian military to have served in the First World War and, after the death of Harry Patch, was the conflict’s oldest surviving veteran. Babcock first attempted to join the army at the age of fifteen, but was turned down and sent to work in Halifax until he was placed in the Young Soldiers Battalion in August 1917. Babcock was then transferred to the United Kingdom, where he continued his training until the end of the war.
    • Babcock was born on July 23, 1900, into a family of thirteen children on a farm in Frontenac County, Ontario. According to Babcock, the barn where he was born (which no longer exists) was located off Highway 38 in South Frontenac Township. His father died in 1906 after a tree-cutting accident, when Babcock was only six years old. As described in his account given to Maclean’s, while his father was cutting down one tree, another dead tree fell on his shoulder. Although he was brought into the house on bobsleigh, he only survived another two hours. Babcock said that this was an “awful blow” to the family.
    • At the age of fifteen and a half, Babcock was impressed at Perth Road by two recruiting officers, one a lieutenant and one a sergeant, who quoted from the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. He was also enticed by the offered salary, which was $1.10 per day, as opposed to the 50 cents he could have made through physical labour. Babcock was recruited in Sydenham, Ontario and joined the 146th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was then sent to Valcartier, Quebec. There Babcock underwent a physical, where it was discovered that he was underage. He was designated status A-4: physically fit, but underage. At the time, the minimum age for combat was eighteen. Babcock was turned down, but managed to make it all the way to Halifax by train before he was stopped by the company commander.
    • The Young Soldiers Battalion trained the recruits for eight hours a day. In his spare time Babcock went on leave to Scotland, where he met his first girlfriend, a woman from the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. He was also introduced to the pleasures of beer and the horrors of war that some of the older veterans had come across. Babcock asserts that he would have fought in the conflict, given the chance, but the war ended before he could be brought to the front lines. For this reason, Babcock claims that he never felt like “a real soldier” and rarely talked of his experiences until his centenary. He also never joined any veterans associations.
    • From the death of Dwight Wilson on May 9, 2007, Babcock was the last known Canadian veteran of the First World War. He was proud of his status as the last surviving Canadian World War I veteran, although he did not feel the need to be honoured in a specific state funeral. Instead, he was of the opinion that “they should commemorate all of them, instead of just one.” He was also quoted as saying “I’m sure that all the attention I’m getting isn’t because of anything spectacular I’ve done. It’s because I’m the last one.”
    • Nevertheless, Babcock received much attention on the occasion of his 107th birthday, with wishes from Queen Elizabeth II as Queen of Canada (who Babcock joked is a “nice looking gal”), Governor General Michaëlle Jean, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. James Moore, a Member of Parliament from British Columbia, visited Babcock personally to deliver gifts and greetings.
  • Great Grandson to United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=284
  • Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/48327680/john-henry_foster-babcock