Wallace Brooker signature

On this day in 1916, Wallace Brooker, a warehouseman, enlisted in Toronto. He was born in Deseronto on June 23rd, 1897, the son of Robert Booker and Maggie (née Eden).

Brooker joined the 127th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, with the regimental number 778653. He was five feet seven and a half inches tall, with a fresh complexion, brown eyes and black hair. His service record shows that he arrived in England on August 30th, 1916 on board the RMS Olympic. Just nine days later he was admitted to hospital suffering from chronic nephritis (a complication of the scarlet fever he had as a child), brought on by “sleeping in wet clothing on first night in England”. He spent most of the following year in hospitals in England and was eventually invalided back to Canada in October 1917 on the hospital ship Araguaya. A medical board held at Whitby Military Hospital on April 23rd, 1918 recommended that Brooker be discharged from the army as medically unfit. He was discharged on May 4th.

In 1921 Wallace was back in Toronto with his parents, living at 98 Earlscourt Avenue and working as a packer. He died at the age of 41 of a coronary thrombosis on June 27th, 1938 in Toronto and was buried in Prospect Cemetery.