Private Ronald Reeve Crawford was born in the town of Brampton on February 24th, 1897, to parents George William Crawford and Sophia Emily Reeve. When he registered for the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force he was a 20 year old student living in Toronto. Ronald was 5 ft. 2 inches tall (a couple of his documents say he was 5 ft. 7, but with a given weight of 117 lbs, the 5 ft 2 height seems more likely) with a fair complexion, blue grey eyes and brown hair. At the time Ronald signed up, he was a student at the University of Toronto and also his mother’s sole support, as he was an only child and his father had died 9 years earlier. Ronald was sending her money ‘periodically’ as a student, and as a recruit requested that his mother be paid a ‘separation allowance’ while he was away; she went on to receive his entire $20 pay each month.

            Private Crawford was accepted into the Canadian Army Medical Corps and sailed from Halifax on the S.S. Grampian to Europe where he spent his entire service in France (Source: Library & Archives Canada). Being a member of the CAMC, Ronald was presumably a medical student at U of T, but there is nothing to confirm this in his files. The CAMC was founded in 1904, and during WW1 casualties among Canadian troops in France and Belgium were so heavy that more than half of all Canadian physicians served overseas to treat them (source: Canadian War Museum).  Ronald stayed behind to assist after the war ended, but in December 1918, for an unknown reason, he marched for six days with ‘full pack’, at an average of 21km per day, and in February 1919 he spent 10 days in hospital being treated for influenza. He was subsequently sent home to Toronto with ‘some signs of chronic bronchitis’. Once home, Crawford went on to marry Grace Stanley with whom he spent a long life - eventually passing away at 89 years old and being buried in Brampton Cemetery with his wife, father and mother.