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(born: Batheaston, England, 1873 - died: Bronte, Ontario, 1940)
composer, teacher, organist and choir director
Born in England, William Hewlett came with his family to Canada in 1884, at the age of eleven. At the Toronto Conservatory of Music he studied piano, organ, theory and orchestration, and graduated in 1893 with a gold medal for his organ playing. At age seventeen he began a job as organist and choirmaster in Toronto, and at age twenty-two he moved to London, Ontario. In that city he held another position as a church musician and conducted the London Vocal Society from 1896-1902. He then moved to Hamilton to assume another church position. Hewlett was one of the founders of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and served as the choir's first accompanist from 1895-97.
In 1907 Hewlett became a co-director of the Hamilton Conservatory and served as the principal from 1918-39. While working at the Conservatory he traveled throughout Canada as an adjudicator and examiner. Hewlett also conducted the Elgar Choir from 1922-35. He was highly respected in his day as an organist and as an authority on the installation of church organs.
Hewlett composed mainly smaller forms of music, including a musical play entitled "Jappy Chappy." His other compositions included short vocal, choral and piano pieces. He served on a committee that put together the hymnbook of the United Church of Canada in 1930. His setting of "In Flanders Fields" has been used in schools and in Remembrance Day ceremonies.
Sources:
Encyclopedia of Music in Canada
CMHS biography
(born: Guelph, Ontario, 1872 - died: France, 1918)
Born and raised in Guelph, Ontario, John McCrae was a doctor, soldier, author and artist. At age fifteen he became a bugler in the local military regiment of which his father was the commander. One year later, McCrae received a scholarship to the University of Toronto (U of T). He attended classes at that university until 1893, when he was forced to take a leave absence due to asthma. While on this break, he became a resident master in English and Mathematics at Guelph's Ontario Agricultural College. Later he returned to Toronto, completed his B.A., and then began medical studies at the U of T and did a medical residency at a convalescent hospital for children in Maryland, U.S.A.
McCrae continued his military involvement throughout the course of his studies. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in the Guelph military regiment and also became involved with a Toronto militia, of which he later became company commander. His poems and short stories first appeared in print while he was at university, and he later moved on to writing medical textbooks and scientific articles.
McCrae graduated top of his medical class, and in 1899 received a fellowship in pathology at McGill University in Montreal. Due to the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, he postponed his fellowship so that he could travel with the artillery to South Africa. McCrae went overseas in 1900 and served in several campaigns as a commander for one year.
Upon his return to Canada in 1901, McCrae completed his medical fellowship at McGill. While at McGill, he lectured in pathology and was appointed an associate of medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. McCrae was also appointed special professor in pathology at the University of Vermont. Upon the completion of his fellowship in 1905, McCrae worked in Montreal at the Montreal General Hospital and the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Infectious Diseases. In 1910, in the capacity of doctor, he accompanied General Lord Grey on a canoe expedition from Lake Winnipeg to Hudson's Bay.
At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, McCrae served as Brigade Surgeon. His duties also included serving on the front lines and officiating at burial services. He wrote his now famous poem, "In Flanders Fields" after performing the burial service for a friend. One year later, in 1915, he became second in command of medical services at a Canadian General Hospital in France. Still at the hospital three years later, McCrae contracted pneumonia and later meningitis. Just before his death, he was the first Canadian appointed as consulting physician to the First British Army. He was buried with military honours at a cemetery in France.
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