Mentioned in the Whitley Seaside Chronicle Roll of Honour is 160013 Private James Maddison who served with the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles.

Sarah Isabella Maddison (nee Nelless) wife of farmer James Maddison of Whitley Links Farm, Northumberland died after giving birth of their ninth child James. Their first child Hannah Margaret was born in 1870, the year after the marriage in Christ Church, Tynemouth, and after her came Jane Ann, Mary Isabella, Thomas, Sarah Elizabeth, John William, Ada, Maud, George and then James on 10th March 1890. Ten years later father James was no longer living on the farm but was at 14 Beech Grove, Whitley with seven of his children, including young James.

According to border crossing papers James arrived in Canada in 1912 and settled in Calgary, Alberta, where he found work as a boilermaker’s helper with the Canadian Pacific Railway in their yard at nearby Alyth. In 1915 he married Louisa Davison Harper, originally from Monkseaton, also living in Calgary.

On enlistment on 23rd August 1915 in Calgary, Louisa was named as his next of kin with an address in Sarcee and James became Private 160013 with the 82nd Battalion. After initial training the battalion sailed on the SS Empress of Britain to Liverpool, arriving at the end of May 1916 and a posting to the camp at Shorncliffe in Kent. Absorbed into the 9th Reserve Battalion, Private Maddison was one of the men posted to 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles as part of the 8th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Division arriving in France on 18th July. Attached to the 3rd Entrenching Battalion he eventually joined 2CMR at Bouzincourt at the end of September.

Taken ill with bronchitis early in January 1917 at Chateau Etrun, he was treated in hospital at Camiers and didn’t rejoin his unit until the end of March at Vimy Ridge. Whilst he had been in hospital, Louisa too had been ill and she died in Canada on 10th January 1917.

From October 1917 Private Maddison was attached to the 8th Infantry Brigade Transport Section at Cambligneul, north of Arras, France and James remained with that unit, seeing fighting at Paschendaele, Ypres and Mons, until proceeding to England in February 1919, and returning to Canada on the SS Carmania for demobilisation in Calgary on 24th March 1919.

James married Mary Ellen Inwood in Calgary on 8th April 1920 and they remained living in Calgary, celebrating their golden wedding there in 1970, just four months before her death. James had retired from work aged 65 in March 1955 having worked for the CPR for 39 years. He died on 7th January 1974 in Calgary and is buried in Queen’s Park Cemetery, Calgary.

James Maddison is remembered in Whitley Bay on W84.30 page 11