Creature Comforters
Written by Nancy Payne
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Posted June 28, 2021
From prime ministers to army privates, people of all ranks and stations adore their animal companions. Pets and working beasts have inspired acts of compassion, conservation, and sometimes even artistic greatness. Furred, feathered, or fetlocked, here are a few animals that have pawed, prowled, and pranced their way into Canadian history.
Donald E. Bent Family
WARHORSES
Roughly one out of every ten horses the Allies used in the First World War came from Canada — about 130,000 in all. The Toronto Police Force’s mounted unit sent eighteen, of which only Bunny, a strawberry roan that saw action at Vimy Ridge, survived. Although the city offered to pay Bunny’s way home after the war, the military decided that only officers’ horses would be returned, and he was sold to the Belgian government. The only Canadian Member of Parliament to die in the war, Lieutenant-Colonel George Harold Baker, also had an equine companion. Baker, who commanded the Fifth Canadian Mounted Rifles Battalion, left Quebec on July 18, 1915, with his horse, Morning Glory. Upon arriving in Europe, Baker was separated from his horse, as his battalion was converted to infantry and sent to the trenches. Baker was killed in Belgium; there is a statue of him in the House of Commons in Ottawa. Morning Glory, who worked behind the lines in France, was given to an officer and returned home after the war. The horse pictured here, Fritz, was captured from the Germans. Lieutenant Colonel C.E. C.E. Bent of the Fifteenth Battalion, shown astride Fritz, adopted the horse and a sheepdog, Bruno, also pictured here.