5 Queen’s Stationary Hospital, “preserved their university identity in France,” says Neatby. In France, the 46th Battery of the Royal Canadian Artillery and the No. In the first year of the conflict alone, 300 students had enrolled.

“One cannot read without emotion the script, on the South tablet,” Gelley continued: “Hark how the drums beat up again for all true soldiers, Gentlemen.”Īcross the causeway, on the far side of Kingston, says historian Hilda Neatby, the Queen’s Journal, reported that by 1917, 980 Queen’s University students were participating in the war. “The Memorial Arch” they say, “was given by the Royal Military College Club of Canada in 1924 to commemorate those ex-cadets who died in the service of the crown in this and earlier wars.” A total of 982 ex-cadets served in the war. “The inner” walls, Gelley said, “of the archway” display, “the names of the Gallant Dead.”Ī total of 147 ex-cadets gave their lives in the Great War of 1914-1918, say George F. The words appear to come from the “parted lips,” he says, of “a helmeted head,” with “expressive” face, carved in relief. There’s none of these so lowly or poor of old,īut dying has made us rarer gifts than gold. When this Memorial Arch was dedicated in 1924, the college’s registrar Tom Gelley, according to the webpage “RMC History-Arch Story,” reported the event in the November 1924 edition of the “RMC Review.” Inscribed on the “South parapet,” he wrote, are lines from “The Soldier,” by the celebrated war poet, Rupert Brooke (1887-1915): The road runs straight with the shore, bends, seeking the heart of Kingston’s Royal Military College of Canada at the parade square. The arch enjoins “Truth, Duty and Valour,” and opens a verdant path to the paved grit of Valour Drive.

A Gallant Company by Jonathan F. Vance