The Incomplete Story of Alf Leonard

Either "Thomas Alfred" or "Alfred Thomas" Leonard
Leonard is in US Army uniform
with an unidentified woman, once thought to be his mother.
(From the Leonard collection)

In the small northern Ontario village of Nakina, Canada, behind the eponymous crest of the hill in a small cemetery, a weathered wooden headboard is the only earthly monument to an extraordinary man.  With no known relatives and few remaining contemporaries, no one is left who is able to tell the story of the man known as either "Thomas Alfred" or "Alfred Thomas" Leonard, though it is a fascinating, if incomplete, story to tell.

Due to records that vary or have vanished, significant gaps exist in the record of Leonard’s life, and even his name is uncertain: on some documents he signed his name “Thomas Alfred Leonard,” while on others “A. T. Leonard.”  According to his burial permit, Leonard was born on 6 June 1900 in Williamstown, Massachusetts, one of at least two children (a sister, Mrs. W. Turgeon, is recorded as his next of kin) born to parents whose names have been forgotten.  Nothing is known at this time of his early life until his enlistment in the US Army at the age of 17 on either 20 January or 25 December of 1917 (records vary).  On applications to join first the British Empire Service League and, later, the Royal Canadian Legion, Leonard stated that he served in Troop A of the 15th Cavalry Regiment, fighting bandits and Pancho Villa’s revolutionaries in Mexico and the southwest United States and the Imperial German Army in France.  His applications alternately state his rank to have been private or sergeant.

At some point after his discharge at Camp Devins, Massachusetts, on either 19 June or 24 June -- again, records vary -- Leonard left the United States for Canada. For reasons now unknown, he ended up in Nakina, perhaps drawn to the area by a minor gold rush that gripped the regions northeast of Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 1934.  Today a ward within the larger Municipality of Greenstone and a gateway to remote wilderness, isolated aboriginal communities and potential, though stalled, mining developments, when Leonard arrived, Nakina would have been a busy, albeit small and remote, village serving a station railway yard on the transcontinental Canadian National Railway.

A HBC convoy of frieght heading for
distant trading posts in northern Ontario.
(Photo from the Leonard collection)

His life’s adventures did not end with his settlement in the remote village.  Leonard came into the employ of the French fur trading company Revillon Frères and, later, the Hudson’s Bay Company, which once held a monopoly over three million square miles of North America and absorbed Revillon Frères in 1936.  Leonard hauled freight to and beaver, otter, marten and other skins from some of the 101 HBC posts scattered across northern Ontario.  Photographs and a hand drawn map show that he travelled by barge, by canoe and by bush plane, at least as far afield at Fort Hope, now Eabametoong First Nation, 920 miles to the northwest of his hometown. 

After his service with the HBC, Leonard worked as a towerman for CN Rail -- controlling, at least in some small part, the movement of freight and passengers through the northern arteries of Canada’s railways -- and sometime fur trapper.  He was a man dedicated to his adopted community, as evidenced by his being awarded a Life Membership in the Royal Canadian Legion in 1977.  The citation reads that Leonard had “been a good member, devoted to the aims & objects of the Legion for many years,” and notes that he “served the branch well whenever… called upon to do so.”

Since his death on 7 October 1982, however, most visible relic of his extraordinary life is the ornately carved yet slowly decaying wooden headboard marking his grave.  But now a movement is underway to provide Leonard with a lasting memorial.

Barely visible above the driven snow,
Leonard’s deteriorating grave marker in
Hillcrest Cemetery, Nakina ON
(photo by the author)

For more than 20 years, the Last Post Fund, a Canadian non-profit organization and registered charity whose mission, according to their website, is to ensure that "no Veteran is denied a dignified funeral and burial, as well as a military grave

stone…”, has provided permanent military-style markers for Canadian and Allied Veterans who lie in unmarked graves. Unfortunately, without critical documentation including Leonard’s service records which could corroborate information and fill in gaps in his historical record.

Anyone with information about the life, legacy and, most importantly, the military service of Alfred Thomas Leonard is encouraged to contact the Royal Canadian Legion in Nakina ON or this blog.  Your knowledge may be the key to completing his story and to ensuring that his heroism and adventures spanning four nations and two continents continues to be remembered and honoured.