Paddy Hope

Paddy Hope, a former drugstore owner in Creston, joined an overseas battalion in September 1914. He took a gunshot wound in the back in May 1915, in one of the first battles fought by Canadian troops. By early 1916 he was hospitalised with severe rheumatic fever due to the constant wet and cold of trench warfare. Hope was invalided home in May 1916.

Less than a year later he re-enlisted with the Forestry Corps, serving at Base Depot Sunningdale in England for the rest of the war. While waiting to be shipped home after the Armistice, he received word that his wife had died in early November of Spanish Influenza.

Hope was found dead in his bed in camp on 18 December 1918. The official cause of death was later reported as narcotics poisoning.