WWI Portrait Photograph
"Young men enlisted from everywhere, even Carberry."WWI oval photo portrait of Carberry's H.L. Moore (see Death Penny)
H.L. Moore WW1 Portrait photo
Story
More than 619,000 Canadians enlisted to fight in the First World War. The vast majority were young men looking for adventure, a chance to fight for their country, or a new opportunity.
Herbert Leonard Moore, a young man from Carberry, Manitoba, was no different than most. However, in another way he was completely different as each man who fought had their own interests and personality, each was a unique individual.
Numerous men enlisted from the Carberry area, but the community had another connection to the war; located west of Carberry was Camp Hughes, a large military training camp.
Soldiers were housed in canvas tents yet the camp was not without state-of-the-art facilities including a railway station, administrative offices, vehicle maintenance buildings, a hospital, kitchens, churches, prison, post office, and even an in-ground swimming pool.
An area known as the midway featured commercial businesses such as six movie theatres, a watch repair shop, tobacconist, tailor, bookstore, banks, camp newspaper, and a photography studio. At its peak, in 1916, the camp accommodated over 27,000 people making it the second largest community in all of Manitoba. The camp also boasted a ten-kilometer network of trenches used to prepare soldiers for the battlefields of Europe.
More than a hundred years later the trenches remain as a reminder of what once took place on the site and of all the unique individuals who trained there.