John Duncan Jones was born in Peterborough, Ontario on the 9th of August 1899. He was the second of five children and would
have been a second generation Canadian.
As a boy he would have lived and played around the construction site of the world famous Peterborough Hydraulic Lift Locks which opened
in 1905 - lifting boats 65’ - the largest of it’s kind in the world.
His father was a tinsmith at the DeLeval company in Peterborough where production consisted mainly of dairy milk cans. John’s mother
died when he was 13. John was apprenticing as a draftsman when the war broke out.
At the age of 15 he was declared medically fit and 10 days after his 16th birthday, on August 19th, 1915 he was enlisted with
the 8th Canadian Mounted Rifles. His Attestation Papers had his birth date listed as August 9th, 1896, suggesting he was 19 years old.
His training in Canada was completed at Barriefield Camp near Kingston, Ontario, and he was shipped out to England in October 1915,
where further training was conducted at the Bramshott Camp. In December 1915 the 8CMR was broken down and re-assigned to the 4CMR.
With the 4th CMR on the front line in February, near Ypres in Belgium, on the 28th March 1916 he “was hit by a rifle bullet in the
left side, just below the ribs, bones not injured.” - this from his Casualty Report. While recovering from his wound back in England,
his older sister was so upset that her younger, under aged brother, was overseas and now wounded, that she advised the authorities
of his true age. As “punishment” he lost his rank of Corporal and his pay was put back to Private’s pay. (You would think that being
wounded would be punishment enough for a 16 year old boy.) He continued to serve until the end of the War and then departed for Canada
and was discharged in Toronto on the 20th of March 1919.
On his return to Canada he worked at DeLeval in Peterborough, the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario, and the Ideal Bread Company
in Toronto. At Ideal Bread he was a delivery man with a horse drawn bread wagon. Once again he got to work with horses. He eventually
began a long and successful career with Ontario Hydro. At his retirement in 1964, after 36 years, he was the Operating Superintendent
for the Toronto region.
John was married twice with two children from each marriage and six grandchildren in all. His favourite pastime was building,
expanding, and maintaining the family cottage at Lake Simcoe, Ontario. He was a long time member of the Masonic Lodge and passed
away at the age of 78 in 1978.
Many thanks to Brian Jones for the above biography.
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