Great Military Leaders: Charismatic Canadian Commanders

Richard Wilbur is author of The Rise of French New Brunswick and H.H.
Stevens, 1878–1973, and co-author of Silver Harvest: The Fundy
Weirmen’s Story. His latest book is Horse-Drawn Carriages and Sleighs:
Elegant Vehicles from New England and New Bruns

Great Military Leaders outlines the careers of five well-known
commanding officers of equally well-known Canadian regiments plus
another, Joe Boyle and the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Brigade. Four of
them—Donald Smith, who became Lord Strathcona; Henry Pellatt, who
built Toronto’s Casa Loma as his residence; John Craig Eaton, son of
the founder of the department store chain; and Joe Boyle, a
swashbuckling self-made Klondike millionaire—all bought their way into
the military by donating the cost of equipment regiments. Only George
Taylor Dennison III came from a long military line whose regiment,
Governor-General’s Body Guard, played a key role in repulsing the
Fenians in 1866 and in quelling the Riel Rebellion of 1885.

Leach, a military historian who has also written on business themes,
makes excellent use of published accounts to produce a highly readable
and authentic slice of Canadian history.