First in the Field: Gault of the Patricias

Paul D. Dickson is a post-doctoral fellow in military history at the
Department of National Defence.

Andrew Hamilton Gault was the founder of the Princess Patricia’s
Canadian Light Infantry; he was also the son of one of Montreal’s most
famous (and wealthy) families. This well-

researched biography follows Gault from his silver-spoon early life
through his storied wartime and postwar experiences, and is interspersed
with tidbits from his scandal-tinged personal life.

Award-winning biographer Jeffery Williams, who has written a book on
the PPCLI and was a member of that regiment, writes Gault’s story with
a verve that probably could have come only from one with such strong
personal connections. Williams provides a solid narrative of his
subjects’s life without—as might be expected, given his affiliation
with the regiment and admiration for its founder—treating the reader
to a hagiographic romp. Indeed, Williams takes great pains to accurately
recount Gault’s personal life, whether marital or financial, warts and
all. Though he makes good use of what is fairly thin material,
unfortunately he does not have enough to afford more than speculative
answers. This proves to be a problem, because the public Gault—the
ardent imperialist, driven adventurer, and genial
philanthropist—emerges easily, but the private Gault does not. What
drove him? Gault himself provides few clues, and to his credit Williams
does not draw conclusions where none can be drawn. The book is,
therefore, very much, as the title suggests, the story of Gault of the
Patricias.