Wilson, Matthew Maurice: Service no. 880871

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Chatham Man Remembered at Osgoode Hall

Digitized Service Record

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Source: Law students killed in WWI to be called to bar: For the centenary of WWI, the Law Society of Upper Canada is giving honorary calls to the bar to the 60 Ontario law students killed in 1914-1918.

Excerpt

Take law student Matthew Maurice “Sonny” Wilson. After he died in France, his mother supposedly threw his revolver into the Thames River in Chatham, Ont., so it “could never kill again.”

The truth was less romantic, as great-nephew Fred Hall relates. The gun had been taken to a gunsmith so it would never discharge again, and it was later destroyed by the police. When Hall explained this to his aunt, she became very upset — she had believed the bridge story her entire life.

“They twisted things to suit themselves or to make themselves feel comfortable with the story,” Fred Hall says. “They didn’t want to be open and honest about the past.”