Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Stephen Dawson was born in Leeds, and his connection with Bradford Grammar was a short lived one. He died during the successful storming of Vimy Ridge in France by the Canadian forces. His father Leonard Dawson was the son of an architect who lived in Croydon in Surrey. After training with his
father, Leonard went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, and was then ordained in the Church of
England. In 1888 he married Alice Blanche Blackett, a clergyman’s daughter. Leonard successively held several church livings in northern England, and he also spent four years in Canada where a daughter Alice Beryl was born. Stephen was born in November 1894 while his father was Curate of Chapel Allerton, Leeds. He later returned to Yorkshire from 1902 until 1911 when he was Vicar of St. Jude’s, Manningham. This was when Stephen went
to BGS. He started in 1903 when he was eight, but after little more than a year his father took him from the school.
In September 1906 Stephen was sent to board at Denstone College in Staffordshire. He seems to have been happy there. We know he was admitted into the Choir, coming second in the Choir race at the 1909 sports, and he passed his lower certificates. However, when he was sixteen his father became warden of a mission station in Canada’s far west, the St. George’s Industrial School for Indian boys at Lytton in British Columbia. Stephen followed his family there and entered the Sixth Form at the University School, Victoria as a boarder. He enjoyed great success: at six feet in height he was an asset in the First XV’s forwards; in
the School Cadet Battalion he was rapidly promoted from private to Cadet-Major and commander; he was a Prefect; and he completed his matriculation for McGill University. When he left in 1913 he served in the 6th Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles, one of two Vancouver militia battalions, before he crossed into the USA to study at Washington University.
When war broke out Stephen volunteered for the Canadian Army, but he was turned down on account of his eye-sight. He resumed his studies until March 1916, when he crossed the USA to New York and took passage for Liverpool, giving Oxford as his destination, but he may have learned that the second Vancouver battalion, the 72nd Seaforth Highlanders
of Canada, were en route for Europe and he was determined to join them. In England he made his way to the Canadian transit camp at Bramshott in Hampshire where he was accepted as fit on 7th June. The 72nd Battalion crossed the Channel in August with 4th Canadian Division. After a brief spell in the trenches near Ypres, they went to the muddy nightmare of the Somme where they provided working parties and spent a week holding Regina Trench, described as a ‘sodden ditch, half-filled with water.’ The welcome move to Vimy Ridge to prepare for the Spring offensive united the four Canadian divisions for the only time. The 72nd, a kilted unit, entered the trenches there on Christmas Eve 1916. Great
emphasis was placed on winning the sniping battle and on raiding German positions. One raid in February was held up as a model, but another in divisional strength on 1st March cost 700 casualties. Dawson survived both.
In the attack on Vimy Ridge on Monday 9th April, Easter Day, 4th Canadian Division was on the extreme left. The 72nd Battalion sheltered in Gobron Tunnel until half an hour prior to Zero at 05.30 where they were served hot soup. However, they mustered only 400 men, no man’s land was a ‘vast expanse of small lakes formed by joined up shell craters’, and the
attackers were exposed to machine-gun fire from the left where the Germans held a knoll called the Pimple. A smoke barrage and heavy snow flurries gave some cover, but they fell behind the barrage and lost direction. Only 62 of those who attacked did not become casualties. Dawson was sheltering in a crater with three other men when a shell exploded beside them killing all four. His name is on the Vimy Memorial.'