On a quiet street in Montreal West, there’s a house that Robert Drummond never walks past without giving a small nod. It once was the home of Lloyd Higginson, one of 47 young men from the neighbourhood who died in the Second World War.
“There’s a letter his sister wrote him after he left. She told him how she couldn’t wait to welcome him home on the same front step where she’d said goodbye,” Drummond said. “But he was already dead when the letter arrived. It was returned, unopened. Stories like that, they stay with you.”
That kind of loss – personal, specific and gut-wrenching – is at the heart of One Town in a Very Long War, Drummond’s new book chronicling the lives of Montreal West’s Second World War fallen. What began as a modest plan to hang remembrance placards along Westminster Ave. evolved into a thoroughly researched, emotionally powerful 300-page tribute.
“These men were deeply connected to the community,” said Drummond. “They went to the same schools and churches, they played on the same hockey teams, they were in Scouts and walked the same streets. When they died, it wasn’t just their family’s loss, it was the community’s as well.”
Montreal West, with a population of just 3,500 during the war, saw 546 of its residents enlist, one of the highest per-capita rates in the Commonwealth, according to Drummond.
“One street lost five boys in two years,” Drummond said. “There’s not a single block in this town that wasn’t touched.”
Labour of love
There is a strong McGill thread running through the book. Fifteen of the 47 fallen men attended McGill. Some played varsity sports. Some belonged to fraternities. All had lives that extended far beyond the battlefields where they fell.
“They aren’t just names on a cenotaph. They are the sons of McGill, the sons of Montreal West and the sons of Canada,” he said.
Drummond himself is a proud McGillian. He graduated in 1987 with a BSc in biochemistry. He earned a medical degree from McGill in 1991 and completed his residency there, choosing to stay close to home. Now an emergency physician at St. Mary’s Hospital and an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Drummond worked on the project during his free time, weekends, evenings and days off.
“It became a kind of mission,” he explained. “The more I dug, the more I realized how much had been lost, and how much could still be found.”
He began by pulling service records from the national archives, often travelling to Ottawa to flip through musty files no one had touched in 80 years. A chance encounter with a friend led him to his first real breakthrough: a wartime flight log belonging to a fallen airman whose name also appeared on the Montreal West cenotaph.
From there, the search deepened.
“I’d find a squadron number in someone’s file, then track down the squadron history, read books, find mentions, reach out to authors and, next thing you know, I’m on the phone with a 95-year-old pilot in Alberta who trained with one of our boys, Robert Warren Conway, and would stay at his house over the holidays,” Drummond said.
Living connections
Some of the most powerful moments came not from archives but from living connections.
“There’s a woman at my church, Anne Williams, whose maiden name was Johnston. She mentioned her uncle was killed in the war. That name rang a bell. I went back and checked. He was one of the 47. I was able to tell her exactly how he died. In turn, she shared stories passed down in her family. That exchange, that trust, it’s been a privilege to be invited into people’s lives.”
It’s not just about war stories or military history. The book includes pen pal letters to American girls, requests for cookies from home and a story about one soldier who tried to hint to his mother he was stationed in Gibraltar by referencing a Prudential Life commercial.
“These were kids. They wrote home asking for sweaters, telling their moms not to worry,” Drummond said. “Some of the letters were literally tear-stained. How do you read that without getting emotional?”
The son of British parents who both served in the British military during the war, Drummond has an interest in the war that is deeply personal. His father served as an air gunner in a Lancaster bomber, flying at 24,000 feet in an unheated rear turret. Despite the danger, he rarely spoke of his experience, offering only a quiet, stoic refrain: “It was cold.”
“Writing this book has given me a glimpse into what my father might have endured,” said Drummond.
“I feel incredibly privileged to be Canadian, to live in a country that is safe and free from conflict,” he said. “That peace didn’t just happen. It was bought by men and women who served and sacrificed. If I can acknowledge that, even in a small way, and make it personal for others, that’s what matters to me.
One Town in a Very Long War, published by Double Dagger, will be launched Nov. 5 at 7 p.m. at the Montreal West Public Library. Space is limited so people are asked to RSVP at 514-481-7522 or info@mwpl.ca. The book is also available on Amazon. All royalties will go to the Royal Canadian Legion.