LEST WE FORGET 121 CHEESMAN, Arthur Sidney “Sid” WWI Sid was born on October 26, 1873, in London, Ontario to parents Arthur William Cheesman and Mary Elizabeth Box. He was the youngest of five children, but after his mother died when he was ten, his father remarried, and Sid had two younger stepsisters. His occupation was stone mason, and he owned a house in Rocanville, Saskatchewan by 1916. He enlisted in the Army with the 217th Battalion on March 28, 1916, in Moosomin along with his good friend Ed Davis. He left Canada on June 2, 1917, on a seven-day voyage aboard the Olympic and was transferred to the 1st CMRs. He went to France on November 9, 1917, and served there for eleven months. He received a Good Conduct Badge on May 6, 1918. While in France, he was hospitalized on November 19, 1918, for abdominal pain and had surgery for kidney stones. He was invalided back to Canada and was discharged on September 10, 1919. Sid returned to Rocanville and was among the fifteen veterans who received the charter for the Rocanville Branch in 1923. He was a bachelor but was very community minded and well-liked by all. He had a small house on Main Street, and he acted as caretaker of the large brick Farmer’s Building for many years. He was a great gardener (flowers), and his special hobby was raising Boston Bull Terriers to which he became so attached he disliked selling them. Sid was a keen fisherman and was interested in all sports. He served on the executive of the hockey club for many years. On several occasions when the hockey club had no funds and were without hockey sticks or nets, Sid bought them expecting no thanks – just the desire to help. Sid passed away on July 6, 1946, and is buried in the Webster Cemetery. CHILCOTT, John Kenneth WWI John was born on August 26, 1897, to George Frederick and Harriet Ann (Roach) Chilcott. He grew up with nine siblings on a farm in the Elim district near Rocanville. At the age of nineteen. He was working as a farmhand when he enlisted in the Army with the No. 3 Forestry Draft on June 22, 1917, in Winnipeg. He embarked on the HMT Megantic from Halifax on September 5, 1917. Private Chilcott was drafted into the 79th Battalion of the Canadian Forestry Corps and spent one month in England before being sent to France on October 17, 1917, for eighteen months. He was discharged on April 4, 1919. John joined the Great War Veterans in Rocanville on October 28, 1919. Many of his siblings had moved to Illinois so John moved to Harvey, Illinois where he worked as an electrician at Austen Motor Grader Co. He married Bertha Elizabeth Lamb in 1929 and he had one stepdaughter, Mable Brown, and a daughter, Sharon. He passed away in 1966 at the age of 69 and is buried at Washington Memory Gardens in Homewood, Illinois.
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