Joseph Laheed Smart signature

Joseph Laheed Smart signed up in Winnipeg on this day in 1916. He was the second member of his family to join the army – his son (Joseph William Smart) had enlisted on December 8th, 1915. Joseph Laheed Smart was born in Tyendinaga on November 12th, 1871 or 1872, the son of David Smart, a Mohawk, and Jerushia/Sonora [?] (who seems to have been born in the United States, of English ancestry). He married Philomène Picard (née Rauney) in Sudbury, Ontario on June 25th, 1893.

Smart joined the 101st Battalion with the regimental number 700618. He was five feet nine and a half inches tall, with a dark complexion, brown eyes and black hair. His service record shows that he left Canada on the SS Olympic on June 28th, 1916. He was transferred to the 42nd Battalion, which he joined in France in October 1916.

On April 14th, 1917, Smart received a severe gunshot wound to the left ankle at Vimy and was sent to England for three months to recuperate. In July he was treated in hospital for myalgia. He returned to France in October 1917 but was sent back to England in December as being unfit for further service in France. In January 1918 he was sent back to Canada.

A medical board in Winnipeg examined Smart on February 27th and noted that he was over age and still suffering from myalgia. He was discharged as being medically unfit on March 12th, 1918.

Notes on Joseph Laheed Smart’s file indicate that payments were stopped to his wife because she had married another man. Philomène Smart died of womb cancer on January 5th, 1918. Joseph died in Sudbury on November 30th, 1964.