| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information
John Helm was born in Beverley the 15 Aug 1883 and was baptised at Beverley Minster the 19 Sep 1883. He was one of seven children born to William Helm who originated in Bury, Lancashire, and his first wife, Jane Hannah. After her death he remarried in 1893 at the Minster. John’s step-mother was Jane Barker a Beverley widow. William was a gas meter inspector and fitter for Beverley Corporation. John was brought up on Friars’ Lane and later Trinity Lane in Beverley. He became a tanner’s labourer. In Apr 1906 he was one of 50 local men who were assisted in migration to Canada by the Beverley and East Riding Emigration Committee and by the Church Army. Leaving Liverpool on 10 Apr 1906 onboard the SS Lake Erie, he arrived in St John’s on 21 Apr and headed to Toronto, Ontario and worked as a labourer, though by 1915 was employed as a groom. His brother, Albert Harry Helm was to join him in Kitchener, Ontario in 1913. John married on 1 Aug 1911 in Berlin, Ontario but then moved to Kitchener with his new wife, Florence Giesel, born in 1892. They had two children, the first, Walter, was born in 1912.
John served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France. He enlisted in late Sep 1915 and served as a Private in the 118th Infantry Battalion. He sailed for Europe on 23 Jan 1917, arriving at Liverpool on 6 Feb 1917. He was hospitalised with serious eczema in the summer of 1918. He was discharged in Jan 1919.
He continued to live in Kitchener after the war and died there aged 80 on 15 Jan 1964 and is buried at the Woodland Cemetery.
John’s younger brother, Joseph Helm served in the British Army in the war and was killed in action on the opening day of the Somme on 1 Jul 1916.
Includes information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |