Cyril Tost

Cyril was one of those soldiers we have all heard about, the ones who enlisted underage. Cyril claimed on his enlistment papers that he had been born in 1900, when his Birth Registration shows that he was born on September 6, 1902…son of William Henry Tost and Florence Lee, Georgetown. He was just 16 years old when he enlisted and was one of seven children…his younger brother was Hubert (killed in WW2).

Cyril’s military file, notes that he was “never out of Canada” and he was discharged on September 11, 1919, as medically unfit, just five months after enlisting.

The 1921 Canadian Census places Cyril living on John St, Georgetown and by 1925 Cyril had married Mary Violet Wilson of Milton and the couple had moved to Hamilton with Cyril working in iron construction. Unfortunately, Violet died of TB in 1933 and Cyril returned to Georgetown …the 1935 Voters List recording him as working as a labourer, living with his widowed mother, his two spinster sisters and brother Hubert “east of the creek and north of the CNR”. Cyril remarried in 1939 to Leona Harlow who coincidentally had been working as a domestic for Dr. Claude Williams, a WW1 veteran living on Main St. in Georgetown.

Cyril died on February 4, 1988 and is buried at St. Andrew’s and St. James’ Cemetery in Orillia.

Truly a Canadian Hero. His story lives on.

*Information taken from Ancestry.ca and findagrave.com