The focus of our World War I project is the experience of men and women from Deseronto. Many of the people we are tracking were born in Deseronto but had moved away from the town by the time war broke out: Deseronto was entering a period of industrial decline by the 1910s and the lumbering industries which had employed hundreds of people in town in the late nineteenth century were closing down. The map below shows places where Deseronto-connected men and women signed up to serve in the First World War.

Enlistment locations

Below is a detail of enlistment locations in the area around the eastern Great Lakes.

Enlistment locations detail

 

The bigger the dots, the more people signed up in a particular location. Toronto, Belleville and Kingston were the main sites, but Deseronto people also signed up in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia. One Deseronto man signed up in California, one in Michigan and another in London, England. The maps are an interesting reflection of the dispersal of Deseronto’s population in the period before the 1914-1918 war.