Papineau, Talbot Mercer 1883 -1917

liverpool annie · May 18, 2009

In memory of
Major
TALBOT MERCER PAPINEAU
who died on October 30, 1917

Age: 34
Force: Army
Unit: Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (Eastern Ontario Regt.)
Citation: Military Cross
Honours and Awards: Military Cross
Son of Louis Joseph and Caroline Rogers Papineau, of The Manor House, Monte Bello, Quebec.

Cemetery: MENIN GATE (YPRES) MEMORIAL Belgium
Grave Reference: Panel 10

http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=collections/virtualmem/photos&casualty=1595104

Papineau, Talbot Mercer 1883~1917

Great-grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau leader of the 1837 rebellion. Talbot was a strong proponent of greater French Canadian support of the Great War. He was killed at Passchendaele in 1917.

Talbot Mercer Papineau

Papineau, Talbot Mercer (1883-1917), lawyer and soldier, was born at the manor-house of Montebello on March 25, 1883, the son of Louis Joseph Papineau and Caroline Rogers, of Philadelphia, and the great-grandson of the Hon. Louis Joseph Papineau. He was educated at Oxford University (B.A., 1908), and on his return to Canada was called to the Quebec bar. In August, 1914, he joined the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry; he won the Military Cross in France, and rose to the rank of major. He was killed at Paschendaele on October 30, 1917. He was the author of "An open letter to Mr. Henri Bourassa" in Canadian nationalism and the war (Montreal, 1916). With his death, a career of great promise was cut short.

PAPINEAU, TALBOT MERCER, lawyer and army officer; b. 25 March 1883 in Montebello, Que., second of the four sons of Louis-Joseph Papineau and Caroline Rogers; great-grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau*; d. unmarried 30 Oct. 1917 in Passchendaele (Passendale), Belgium.
Talbot Mercer Papineau was a beau idéal of his generation: handsome, clever and athletic, a gifted orator and writer, impeccably bilingual, and possessed of a charismatic personality. His brief life continues to symbolize all the bright promise cut down by World War I. Although he bore one of Quebec’s most famous surnames, his lineage was largely American and his upbringing mainly in English. The dominant influence of his childhood was his strong-willed and ambitious mother, a member of a prominent family from Philadelphia. Papineau was brought up a Protestant and he was educated at the High School of Montreal and at McGill Universitet he described himself as a “French Canadian” and his boyhood at Montebello, in the Papineau family’s seigneury of Petite-Nation, instilled in him an attachment to the Quebec landscape that was close to metaphysical.
In 1905 Papineau received one of the first Rhodes scholarships awarded to a Canadian. He read law at Brasenose College, Oxford, achieved a second, and rowed stroke for the college eight. After returning to Montreal in 1908, he set up a law practice and began a career in public life. Thus far, his political ideas were eclectic; a strong believer in free trade, he was also a member of the Montreal chapter of the Round Table, a forum on imperial federation [see Edward Joseph Kylie]. Probably through the influence of his cousin Henri Bourassa*, who founded Le Devoir in 1910, Papineau also began to cultivate an interest in Quebec culture. The most concrete expression of his developing political philosophy is found in a letter written in October 1915. “Especially, I want to see Canadian pride based on substantial achievements, and not on the supercilious and fallacious sense of self-satisfaction we have borrowed from England.”
At the outbreak of war in August 1914 Papineau rushed to enlist in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry [see Charles James Townshend Stewart]. His reasons for volunteering were straightforward. The war was both an adventure and the educated bet of a careerist. Although he had never joined the militia, he was well aware that a good service record would further his political fortunes.
Papineau was instantly commissioned a lieutenant. He proved to be both resourceful and mettlesome. He received one of the first Military crosses of the war to be awarded to Canadians for his role as co-leader of a successful raid at Saint-Eloi (Sint-Elooi), Belgium, during the night of 27–28 Feb. 1915. By May of that year, having survived the battle of Frezenberg Ridge, in which his regiment suffered massive losses, he was the only officer of the original complement not to have been killed, wounded, or sent off sick. That summer, promoted captain, he embarked on one of the most remarkable correspondences engendered by the war, with a young woman he had never met, a sculptor in Philadelphia named Beatrice Fox. As he later said, he was in search of a relationship that could be “absolutely natural and free from the artificialities which surround so generally the intercourse between men and women.” Nearly all of his letters are preserved, along with those he wrote almost daily to his mother. His style is alive and assured, his observations acute, his accounts of his own feelings candid and unsparing, as is illustrated in a passage dated 5 Aug. 1915. “I hate this murderous business. I have seen so much death. . . . Never shall I shoot duck again, or draw a speckled trout to gasp in my basket – I would not wish to see the death of a spider.”
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http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7637

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006069

http://www.famousamericans.net/louisjosephpapineau/

liverpool annie · Nov 2, 2009

Talbot Papineau was born into a privileged and famous family (his grandfather was Louis-Joseph Papineau, leader of the patriote rebels in 1837), and was a 31-year-old Montreal lawyer when war broke. He immediately joined the regiment that his friend Hamilton Gault had formed, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. As a member of the Princess Patricia's he fought at St. Eloi and Bellewaerde Ridge. He received a Military Cross for bravery during a trench raid at St. Eloi.

Papineau was well connected both in Canada and in England. In Canada his reputation as a promising politician was secure. He engaged in debates with his cousin Henri Bourassa over French Canada's role in the war. While in London these connections provided him with a safe job working for Max Aitken as an Eyewitness for the Canadian War Records Office in the summer of 1916.

Papineau rejoined the Princess Patricia's for the Battle at Passchendaele, well aware that death was the likely result. He was uncomfortable watching from the sidelines as the Princess Patricia's fought at Mount Sorrel and the Somme and were successful at Vimy. Papineau also knew that he needed to rejoin the regiment and be involved in one more big battle, in order to be successful in politics after the war.

On October 30, 1917 the Canadians made their first attack in their efforts to secure Passchendaele Ridge. Minutes later Papineau was killed by a direct hit from a German shell. He is commemorated by name only on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.
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http://www.kingandempire.com/who_P.html#papinpeau

liverpool annie · Nov 13, 2009

Here he is - remembered at the Menin Gate .......

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12044624

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Papineau, Talbot Mercer 1883 -1917

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