Colours
The Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, the Honourable Pauline McGibbon, presented new Colours to the regiment on 28 May 1978. The Regiment had been without colours since the Colours of the Simcoe Foresters, presented in 1932, were laid-up in St. Thomas Anglican Church at Shanty Bay, Ontario, near Barrie, on 17 November 1946, when the Regiment was converted to Royal Canadian Artillery. In 1968, a decade after reverting to armour as the 28th Armoured Regiment, Royal Canadian Armoured Corps, a guidon was approved but never produced. Two years later, The Grey and Simcoe Foresters reverted to infantry, Royal Canadian Infantry Corps. On 3 September 1983, the Colours were trooped in the presence of His Excellency The Right Honourable Edward Schreyer . In 1986, the Colours were paraded with the Guard of Honour for HRH The Princess Anne during her official opening of Queen's Quay, Toronto, Ontario.
The first Colour of the 31st Grey Battalion was presented and consecrated 22 March 1867 at Annan, Ontario. It had first been produced following the Fenian Raids for the Leith Rifles, which became No. 3 Company, 31st Grey Battalion. This Colour was entrusted to the Telford family, which presented it to the Regiment in 1962, which laid it up in the Owen Sound Officers' Mess.
The 147th Grey (Overseas) Battalion received its Colours on 22 August 1916 at Camp Borden. These were laid-up for safe keeping in St. Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, on 26 May 1917. They were reclaimed on 3 March 1919 and returned to Canada where they were deposited in the Owen Sound Public Library on 16 September. Eventually, they were encased in the Owen Sound Officers' Mess. In a rather unorthodox approach, a duplicate stand of 147th Colours was produced in 1948 by the Grey Council Council and deposited in the old County Courthouse by the Association on 13 April 1949. The 248th Grey (Overseas) Battalion did not receive Colours before embarking for England in 1916 and was later disbanded for reinforcements.
The 35th Simcoe Foresters received its first stand of Colours on 25 May 1868, one year after Canada's Confederation, during the reign of Queen Victoria. The second stand of Colours was presented on 8 July 1909 (during the reign of King Edward VII) and later laid-up in All Saints Anglican Church Collingwood, Ontario on 15 October 1932, (during the reign of King George V), following presentation of the third stand of Colours. On 17 September 2000, the 1909 Colours were reclaimed by the Regiment and laid-up in the regimental museum at Barrie, Ontario.
The 157th Overseas Battalion (Simcoe Foresters) of the Canadian Expeditionary Force received its Colours on 12 October 1916 at Camp Borden. Following the First World War this stand of Colours was laid-up in St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Barrie, Ontario on 10 October 1919 and subsequently moved to the Simcoe County Archives on 21 July 1968 and then to the Simcoe County Museum in December 1979. On 18 June 1982, the Regiment reclaimed this stand of Colours and laid them up in its Barrie Officers' Mess. The 177th Overeseas Battalion (Simcoe Foresters) did not receive a stand of Colours during its short existence.
Read more about this topic: The Grey And Simcoe Foresters
Famous quotes containing the word colours:
“Your wits can’t thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You’ve no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she
Knew Prince Albert’s tall memorial took the colours of the floreal
And the borealic iceberg;”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)
“When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)