At stunning memorial near Ypres, sentinel looms over Canadians killed in gas attacks

“Dear Wife we hear all kinds of rummers hear but I must tell you this that those who gets through is going to be very lucky & I hope I shall be one of them,” he wrote, with a few spelling errors, in a small town near Ypres, behind the front lines. “Since I have seen these poor Belgians with their familes it as made me think a lot of my three young ones.”

Howe was from the 3 rd Battalion (Toronto), an early volunteer who trained at Valcartier and was a finalist in the egg and spoon race on the way to England, the country of his birth. While many joined to defend the motherland, Howe signed up for his family. “I am giving my life on a chance for all you conforts & not to help out others for their benefit that would not do right to us so keep an eye on you own business & do not let others in on it,” he wrote in an earlier letter, advising his wife to squirrel away the $20 a month he was sending home. By April 22, the pragmatic tone of his earlier letters had eroded.

“…at present we are having very nice weather & we are in a very dangerious place now the worst in the whole firing line they are being killed & wounded all around it is awful to see the poor soldiers passing us on the road with the bandages in all sorts of places but mostly in the head,” wrote the 40-year-old, in one of his letters featured on the Canadian Letters and Images Project .