Edwin Howard Stephenson, the second son of William Howard and Caroline Emily Stephenson (née Farrow), was born in Tillsonburg, Ontario, on 20 April 1886. In 1902 in Hamilton, he worked as a watchmaker, and, then in 1906, he opened a small jewelry store in the Manitoulin Islands. In 1910 he entered Huron College and the University of Western Ontario. Ordained as a Deacon in 1916, he obtained a B.A. in 1917, and was ordained as an Anglican priest on 26 May 1918. He resigned his charge at the parish of Desboro Williamsford and Holland Centre on 11 June 1918.
On 2 July 1918, he went into training with the Canadian Army Medical Corps at London, Ont. On 11 October 1918, as part of the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force (No. 11 Stationary Hospital), he set sail from Vancouver to Vladivostok. With an advance party of soldiers on the Trans-Siberian Railway, he travelled into the interior of Russia to Omsk and back. Although he was scheduled to return to Canada with the C.S.E.F on 18 May 1919, he contracted smallpox and died on 23 May 1919. He is buried in the Churkin Russian Naval Cemetery.
Published
RC0635
The fonds (nine numbered files) consists of the following: (1) medical information from Huron College, church documents, biographical information, and an issue of the Canadian Churchman, 49, no. 2 (12 January 1922); (2) 23 b&w photographs of Stephenson in Russia, people and places in Russia, and the Churkin Russian Naval Cemetery; (3) “Notebook” with b&w photographs taken by Stephenson (numbered 5-49, including Harbin, Manchuria, Irkutsk, and Omsk); (4) ephemeral publications, including Instrumental Concert by Austrian-Hungarian Prisoners of War Now Under Japanese Control at First River, for Entertainment of Allied Control at Y.M.C.A. (30 March 1919) and the Siberian Sapper, 1, no. 4 (8 February 1919); (5) an address book; (6 and 7) Russian religious icons; (8) photocopies of military documents about Stephenson; (9) The War Graves of the British Empire (1931, see p. 24 for Stephenson) and a colour photograph [200-] of the WWI monument in Burlington, Ont.
No further accruals are expected.
See also the Roy Stephenson fonds and the website Canada’s Siberian Expedition (for digital reproductions of various photographs and the Siberian Sapper).
There are no access restrictions.