Campbell River Genealogy Society
~ LOST FAMILIES FOUND ~
JOHN STICKLAND
Cenotaph records name as Jack Strickland. Research confirms the name should read John Stickland. No soldier was found with the surname Strickland who has any ties to Campbell River or the surrounding areas. See His Story below.
Service Personnel Information 1914–1918
| Attestation Paper | |
| Service/Regimental Number: | 624718 |
| Present Address: | |
| Birthplace: | Torn, Devonshire, England |
| Date of Birth: | 4 Dec 1893 |
| Next of Kin: | George Stickland (father) |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Trade or Calling: | Butcher & Farmer |
| Previous Service in a Military Force: | No |
| Date of Enlistment: | 4 Feb 1916 |
| City and Province of Enlistment: | Vegreville, Alberta, Canada |
| Digitized Personnel Record: | Library and Archives Record Link |
Military Service Record 1914–1918
His Story
John (Jack) Stickland (Jack Strickland) was born on 4 December 1893 in Devon. He was the second youngest of eleven children of George Stickland and Mary Pearce (his second wife)(m. 1874). In C1901 the family (parents and ten of the children) was living in Long Sutton in Somerset. By C1911 the family (including five of the children) had moved to Swanage, Dorset. George was variously a gamekeeper, a farmer and a gardener. John and his brother Albert emigrated to Canada together. They arrived in Quebec on 5 July 1912 on the Empress of Ireland. They were both recorded as being butchers in the UK, and going to Edmonton to be farmers. At some point John must have returned to England, because he came back on the Carmania on 19 April 1914. It was recorded that he was going to Vancouver to farm. By 1916 John was in Alberta. When he applied for a land grant, he reported that he had been living in Rock Bay, BC. Jack Stickland himself had only a tenuous connection to the Campbell River area. In Canada he lived and worked mostly in Alberta.
He attested in Vegreville on 4 February 1916 with the 151st (Central Alberta) Battalion. He sailed from Halifax on 3 October 1916 on the S.S. California. In Europe he was immediately transferred to the 9th Reserve Battalion and then to the 50th Battalion. For four months in early 1917 he was attached to the 176th Tunnelling Co. (“These units were engaged on underground work including the digging of subways, cable trenches, saps, chambers (for such things as signals and medical services), as well as offensive or defensive mining.”) In early April 1917 he was back with the 50th Battalion to take part in the action to secure Vimy Ridge. Two months later he was dead. John Stickland was killed on 3 June 1917 in fierce hand-to-hand fighting. He was among fifty-two ORs killed. His body was never recovered.
He is memorialized at the Vimy Memorial (South Wall). His name is also on the Swanage War Memorial.
Family Bits:
Four of John’s brothers also emigrated to Canada. George and Blanche Amy Beckett were married in 1902 in the UK; their son Harold Charles George was born in 1904; George emigrated in 1906 (his family came in 1913); in C1911 he was in a logging camp on Valdes Island (Blanche and Harold were in England with her parents); the family was in Vancouver in 1916 when he attested; Harold married in Wyatt Bay in 1931; George and Blanche both died in 1962 in Vancouver.
Thomas likely came to Canada before 1911; there was a record of a land grant in his name in NE Alberta near one for “John Stickland the late”. For some years he lived in rural Manitoba with his wife Alice Peckham and two daughters. They might not have gone to BC with him. (Both daughters married in Manitoba in the 1920s.) Thomas died in Vancouver in 1917.
Albert emigrated in 1912 with John; returned to England in 1920; married Amy Pitcher in 1922; founded Sticklands the Butchers, High Street, Swanage, which his son Peter ran until 2008.
Percy came to Canada in 1913 (with Blanche and Harold); was working as a cook in Rock Bay on Vancouver Island in 1918 when he was drafted to the 2nd Depot Battalion BC which sent men to the 1st Reserve Battalion in England and from there to the 7th, 29th and 72nd Battalions at the front; he returned to Canada on 18 March 1919 going to Victoria, BC. From 1920-1947 Percy (sometimes his nephew Harold and brother George) lived on Stuart Island. In 1923 he married Kathleen Cripps in Nanaimo; she died in Murrayville (Langley) in 1975; Percy died in Saanich in 1984. They had three children; a married daughter died in 1944 in a tragic Stuart Island fire.