Canada has little appetite for heroes. God knows we have enough of them, but once their days of glory are past they disappear into everyday life like the wake behind a ship. What a contrast to the United States, which almost deifies its heroes, especially the military ones. No fewer than ten American Generals have gone on to become president and George Washington was even asked to be King as well.

Major General Bert Hoffmeister, who lived most of his life, after retiring from the military, on Proctor Avenue in West Vancouver, would be hard to beat as a hero and as a successful military leader, but long before his death in 1999 his name was hardly a household word save among Canadian veterans of the Second World War.

Bert Hoffmeister was born on May 15th, 1907 in Vancouver, a member of a family which arrived from Ontario in Vancouver’s earliest days, right after the Great Fire of 1886. Young Hoffmeister’s list of uncles included the city’s first major electrical contractor and one of the earliest automobile dealers. His own father however wasn’t one of the rich Hoffmeisters, and after graduating from Kitsilano High School, Bert couldn’t afford to go on to University and worked on the green chain at the Rat Portage Lumber sawmill. His workmates were the sort of people he would later lead in battle and he developed an empathy with them that not all Generals have.

At age 11, soon after the end of the First World War, Bert joined the Seaforth Highlanders’ cadets, and in 1926 he went on to join their Militia. His leadership qualities were recognized from the start, and when the Seaforth Highlanders went overseas in 1939, he was a major and company commander. . .