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Rename Bay Street Armoury for Canadian hero: UVic historian

Renaming the Bay Street Armoury after Sir Arthur Currie is not just historically and locally appropriate, it’s also long overdue, says a University of Victoria historian.
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Michael Heppell, former commander of the Canadian Scottish and a current trustee, with a portrait of Canadian military hero Sir Arthur Currie in the Bay Street Armoury.

Renaming the Bay Street Armoury after Sir Arthur Currie is not just historically and locally appropriate, it’s also long overdue, says a University of Victoria historian.

Jim Kempling, PhD candidate at UVic and a specialist in the First World War, said local connections to Currie, who began his soldiering in Victoria, are too strong to overlook.

“We have Canada’s most famous soldier and perhaps Victoria’s most famous citizen and we have a couple of little streets named for him,” Kempling said. “And they are not even prominent enough for anybody to notice unless they went looking.”

Last month, the two commemorative heritage associations attached to the reserve units now headquartered at the Bay Street Armoury sent a letter to the federal government asking that the building’s name be changed to General Sir Arthur Currie Armoury.

The 5th (British Columbia) Field Regiment RCA Foundation and the Canadian Scottish Board of Regimental Trustees, representing two units commanded by Currie in years before the war, have signed the letter and are awaiting a response.

“It’s all about why would we ever name such a prominent local building after a street when we could name it after such a prominent Canadian military hero,” said Michael Heppell, former commander of the Canadian Scottish and a current trustee.

Even the armoury building has connections to Currie. It opened in 1915 and was originally intended as a home for the Gordon Highlanders during a time when Currie was commanding and organizing the regiment. The mess of the Canadian Scottish still contains a chair, re-upholstered several times, bearing a small brass plaque declaring “Sir Arthur Currie His Chair.”

Arthur William Currie (1875-1933) was the first Canadian to lead the Canadian Corps, a command to which he was appointed in June 1917, where he distinguished himself as a meticulous planner always careful with soldiers’ lives.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, British wartime prime minister Lloyd George called Currie a “brilliant military commander” and even considered putting him in charge of all British forces.

Currie was born and spent his childhood in Ontario. He moved to Victoria in 1894 at the age of 18 and found work as a school teacher, but later moved into real estate.

Soon after arrival, Currie signed up as a gunner with the militia regiment the 5th Brigade, Canadian Garrison Artillery, and rose in rank to lieutenant-colonel and commanding officer.

Later, he was asked to command a new infantry unit, the Gordon Highlanders. At the outbreak of the First World War, he was promoted to command the 2nd Infantry Brigade of the Canadian Expeditionary Force sent overseas to the trenches.

By the end of the war, Currie had been promoted to lieutenant-general, made commander of the entire Canadian Corps in June 1917 and knighted in July 1917.

One scandal and one political battle stained Currie’s otherwise exemplary record.

During his command and buildup of the Gordon Highlanders, Currie took $11,000 of regimental funds to pay personal debts and ward off bankruptcy. During the war, when the move came to light, he borrowed money from friends to pay the money back.

In 1919, Sir Sam Hughes, minister of militia during the war who held a grudge against Currie, rose in Parliament and called him a butcher who had squandered Canadian soldiers’ lives for his own personal glory. When a newspaper repeated the charges in 1928, Currie successfully sued for libel and restored his public reputation.

In 1920, Currie was made principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University. Despite his lack of any post-secondary education, he proved an enormously successful university administrator and fundraiser.

Currie suffered a stroke in 1933 and died that year of complications brought on by pneumonia. His military funeral in Montreal attracted 150,000 people, and a packed service was held the same day in Westminster Abbey in London.

Kempling said Currie was a remarkable soldier and a Canadian who jealously fought off all attempts to break up the corps as piecemeal supplements for depleted British units.

Instead, Currie worked hard to make sure Canadian units fielded more soldiers, more artillery pieces, more machine guns, more trucks and more engineers than British units of similar designations.

He also had no fear when it came to disagreeing with British superiors who demanded actions that could result in unnecessary casualties.

“Currie never backed down from saying ‘No’ to the Brits,” Kempling said.

“In fact, he did a lot of imaginative things that led to the success of the Canadian Corps,” he said. “He is well lauded as Canada’s best-known and most successful general.”

rwatts@timescolonist.com