Regina Leader-Post
May 16, 1944. p.14
By Ken Liddell
Moosomin, Sask.
Staff Special
Andy McNaughton had dinner at home last night.
He ate it in the hall of the old stone opera house - and if you don't believe it's there, go and look at the words etched in stone above the door - and there were 300 other people at the table.
All afternoon ladies of the town had been carting to the hall plates of delicious pies, cups, saucers and cutlery; had been busy preparing a dinner to honor the man who left Moosomin 44 years ago, and who in the meantime had risen to become a leading s
cientist of his country and one of the empire's great soldiers.
If you picked up a light stone and could throw it for a block, the opera house today is just a stone's throw from the station. But when Lt.-Gen. A.G.L. McNaughton's father, the late R.D. McNaughton, came here in 1882 to set up the McNaughton departmen
t store, they were thinking of gathering enough stones to build the station because the end of steel was at Oak Lake, Man., 70 miles east.
But if you look at the architecture around here stones must have been plentiful in those days. Old homes are of stone, many business buildings are of stone, including the McNaughton department store which today is managed by George Whiting, who to som
e extent is practically a member of the McNaughton family. Mr. Whiting is a second cousin of Lt.-Gen. McNaughton, and his father, James A. Whiting and Mr. McNaughton, were partners in setting up the original business.
Still Shares In Business
Lt.-Gen. McNaughton and his brother Murray McNaughton, Montreal, have shares in the business.
The old home where he was born; the first department store, a frame building across the street from the present store, must have looked pretty much the same to Lt.-Gen. McNaughton, except that the store today had a modernized front with venetian blinds
.
The back of the store looks about the same, however, and Old Betty, the delivery horse for 21 years - of whom Bob Elmslie the delivery man, said, "it had pretty good speed and a pretty good body, but her legs won't hold up much longer," - has the place
pretty well to herself.
As he said at an open air reception Monday afternoon, Lt.-Gen. McNaughton left Moosomin around 1907, "But the town is always in the minds of the family and particularly mine, because it brings back such fond recollections of my mother and father and t
heir many old friends."
Hopes For Day's Shooting
He said that he hoped he would be able to get back for a day's shooting.
At the reception Lt.-Gen. McNaughton, with Mrs. McNaughton and their daughter, Leslie, were welcomed by Mayor J.G. Wright and Mrs. Wright. J.A. Virtue, president of the board of trade which arranged the affair in co-operation with all the organization
s in the town, and Mrs. Virtue; Percy Willis, president of the Canadian Legion, which provided a guard of honor, and Mrs. Willis. In their one-day's stay the McNaughtons were guests of Mr. and Mrs. George Whiting. In the afternoon Lt.-Gen. McNaughton in
spected the veterans, addressed the open air crowd, while Mrs. McNaughton and Miss McNaughton were given bouquets by Beverly Wright and Donna Willis.
Loan Objective Topped
At the banquet in the evening the general was introduced by the Hon. A.T. Procter, K.C., minister of highways and member of the legislature for Moosomin and an old friend. At this gathering Bert McKay, chairman of the victory loan committee, announced
the Moosomin total was $1,049,000 as against its quota of $711,000.
J.J. Virtue was chairman and Rev. Robert Leitch, of the United church, air force veteran of the First Great War, pronounced grace. A toast to the King was given by Col. A.H. Sharp, warden of Moosomis jail. Soloists were Mrs. Quantrill, of Brandon, an
d Jack Smith, Winnipeg. A toast to the ladies was proposed by P.M. Willis and Mayor Wright offered a vote of thanks to Gen. McNaughton following his address.
Community singing was led by W.O. McKay. The orchestra of No. 2 I.T.S. band played in the afternoon.
And that was Moosomin's public welcome to its hero. But there was a welcome the public did not see. That was when Gen. McNaughton visited his old school chums and the old pioneers who knew his parents.
Meets Old Chums
It was then that he saw, or was remembered to, such people as S.H. Calvert member of the McNaughton store firm for 46 years; R.J. Young, S.C. Vayles, J.H. Pillsworth, all old chums and shooting pals.
It was with those people that the converstion got around to boyhood days and times; of how they put the potato in a home-made cannon that time and blew it over the elevator. It made such a noise the town thought the indians were attacking; of the time
young McNaughton settled a political argument between his father and an uncle by setting off a charge of powder outside the sitting room window; of the time he impersonated his father's voice in a long distance call to Winnipeg and got the C.P.R. to stop
a transcontinental train near Mortlach so he and some friends could get off and go shooting.
Lt.-Gen. McNaughton, the man who carried such a tremendous burden for Canada at the outset of the war, the man who organized the Canadian militia so the country was not entirely unprepared at the outset of war must have enjoyed those few miniutes, for
at the banquet he said: "You have no idea how much pleasure it has given me to bring my wife and daughter here to meet these real old freinds."
