Private H M. Bolam

Kamloops Cenotaph, British Columbia

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Born on 21st June 1899 and baptised at Christ Church, Gateshead four weeks later, Hubert was the first son of Joseph Frazer Bolam and Mary Elizabeth (nee Hope), who had married three years previously. Listed as living in Ravensworth View, Gateshead on the 1900 Register of Electors, by 1908 they were living in Teviot Street and father Joseph, a Freemason, was working as a cashier. Their second child, a daughter Helene, was born about 1905.

At the beginning of April 1909 the family arrived in Canada aboard the SS Corsican with the intention of making for a new life in Midway, British Columbia, but three years later Joseph died.

As a 16 year old teenager Hubert lied about his year of birth enlisted with the 172nd Battalion at Kamlopps on 21st December 1915 with his mother’s approval, and ten months later sailed with the battalion aboard the SS Mauretania arriving in Liverpool at the end of October 1916 and a posting to Bramshott Camp, Hampshire. In December he was posted to France with 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, where after a few weeks on the front line he forfeited seven days’ pay for buying alcohol. Admitted to hospital with influenza, whilst recuperating he was found to be underage, and by the end of June he was back in England posted to the Young Soldiers’ Battalion at Bexhill to wait for his 19th birthday. Whilst there Hubert won medals in shooting competitions held at Aldershot.

In late August 1918 he was posted to the 72nd (Seaforth Highlanders) Battalion and joined them at Dury in France on 6th September. Private Bolam was killed in action at Sancourt on29th September 1918 whilst in command of a machine gun section. Records show that he was buried at the Marcoing Line Cemetery, later renamed as Cantimpre Canadian Cemetery.

His name does not appear on any local war memorial.

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance, and on the Cenotaph at Kamloops, British Columbia.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Bolam