Canadian Book of Remembrance
Errington War Memorial Hall
Canadian Badge
Dorothy Barker has submitted the following:
He was born in Wallsend on 28th April 1890 and baptised at St. Peter's on 3rd May 1890, the son of Thomas Anthony and Elizabeth May Brewis.
He was one of my grandmother's cousins and is remembered on the Vimy Ridge Memorial as he emigrated to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1907.
Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
Born in Wallsend on 28th April 1890 and baptised in St. Peter’s Church a month later Thomas Anthony Brewis Jr was the first son of grocer Thomas Brewis and his wife Elizabeth May (nee Stewart) who lived in Artizan Terrace with their first child, a daughter Aurora Mary. Ten years later the family had moved to the coast and were living in Helena Avenue, Whitley Bay, and as soon as he was old enough young Thomas volunteered with the Northumberland Fusiliers.
Aged 17 at the end of March 1907 Thomas Jnr arrived in Canada having sailed from Liverpool on the SS Empress of Britain and settled in Vancouver where he was joined by the rest of the family in October and his father set about establishing his own grocery business again.
Thomas enlisted with the 29th Battalion (Toibin’s Tigers) Battalion in Vancouver on 1st March 1915 and was assigned to the Scout Section. Three months later he arrived in Devonport on board the SS Missanabie and was posted with the rest of the Battalion to Dibgate Camp near Folkestone, Kent. After more training, on 17th September the 29th proceeded from Folkestone to Boulogne as part of the 6th Infantry Brigade, 2nd Canadian Division. Taken ill with myalgia in November he was admitted to 6th Field Ambulance Station for two days before rejoining his unit.
In January 1916 Private Brewis attended a Wiring Course and five months later would have put his training into good use during the fighting at Mount Sorrel after the Battalion had moved into Belgium.
On 28th August 1916 Thomas broke his right leg whilst the battalion were moving camp and after treatment in Calais was invalided to England and admitted to Walden Court Military Hospital, Eastbourne on 7th September, followed by convalescence at Uxbridge. Discharged to duty at the end of October he didn’t return to France for six months, rejoining the 29th at Neuville-Ste.Vaast, in the shadow of Vimy Ridge, at the end of May 1917.
The Canadian Corps spent July 1917 in reserve, but on 15th August 1917 the 1st Division attacked Hill 70, north of Lens whilst the 2nd Division joined in a week later at Reservoir Hill, and on the night of 20th/21st August the Scout Section was in no-man's land guiding the various companies forward. Thomas Anthony Brewis was reported as missing in action after this, a report changed to killed in action fourteen months later.
Thomas Anthony Brewis is not remembered on any local North-East War Memorials.
In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance, and the Errington War Memorial Hall, Vancouver.
