English Trip of 1910: Toronto, Sir Henry Pellatt, the Queen's Own Rifles and the Press Gang

The year 1910 saw the 50th anniversary of the Queen's Own Rifles, Canada's longest-serving reserve regiment. To celebrate this landmark, a series of events, military parades, and spectacular historical pageants featuring hundreds of participants were held in Toronto, all of which were bankrolled by financier and Commanding Officer of the QOR, Sir Henry Pellatt-better known to Canadians as the man who built Toronto's Casa Loma as a private residence for his family.

The highlight of the jubilee celebrations was Pellatt's sponsorship of a trip to the UK for more than 600 young reservists to train in military manoeuvers with the British Army for four weeks, including a week's vacation. The group was accompanied by reporters-known as the "Press Gang"- from six Toronto newspapers. Author Mima Brown Kapches' father, J.N.M. (Jim) Brown, was one such reporter. When researching her father's journalism career, Brown Kapches came across an article filed by her father in Toronto World about the trip. Surprised to discover that there was little comprehensive documentation of this fascinating bit of Canadian history, she set about painstakingly reconstructing the trip, primarily through newspaper accounts written by her father and his fellow journalists. The English Trip of 1910: Toronto, Sir Henry Pellatt, the Queen's Own Rifles and the Press Gang is a meticulously researched and eloquently written account of the English excursion.