THE ENGLISH TRIP OF 1910

Kapches relates a notable event in the history of the longest-serving regiment in the Canadian Army in this nonfiction debut.

The Queen’s Own Rifles, active since 1860, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1910, not only with the usual parades, but also with a special junket in which 600 reservists were sent to England to train for a few weeks with the British Army, accompanied by a press contingent to publicize the whole thing. The QOR, as they were known, participated in military exercises and war games, were presented to the king himself, and, in their off time, enjoyed what London had to offer: “London was a large, exciting city and appetites of all sorts could be explored with anonymity and probably were.” Kapches is the daughter of J.N.M. Brown, one of the original press reporters, and in these pages, she does groundbreaking research to flesh out all the details of this moment in the QOR’s history. The main character of the story, as told here, is the regiment’s commanding officer (and the trip’s sponsor), Sir Henry Pellatt. It was a year of change for the English monarchy in 1910, with King Edward VII dying in May and King George V succeeding him, and in these chapters Kapches includes not only all these broader atmospheric details, but also many archival photographs from the press coverage of the day. The result is a priceless work of micro-reporting that’s also an involving reading experience. Kapches is skilled at teasing the nuances of personalities out of yellowed old newspaper columns, particularly in the case of Sir Henry, who comes across in this telling as a fascinating blend of touchy and pompous (“We are not undertaking this trip to England as a mere picnic,” he testily tells a Toronto newspaper at one point). In 1939, Sir Henry commented that “far too much tribute has been said about that 1910 trip,” but those echoes have long since faded. Kapches does a wonderful service in reviving the story so entertainingly.

An energetically readable history of a Canadian regiment’s working vacation.