Capt. George Herbert Bowlby

On Sunday morning, November 12th 1916, news came to Kitchener (recently renamed from Berlin) that Major George Herbert Bowlby, Director of Medical Service, Canadian Expeditionary Forces, had met his death in a fall from a cliff at night near Seaford in East Sussex on the south coast of England. The City Hall flag was placed at half mast in token of respect to the memory of this distinguished citizen and ex-mayor.

  George Herbert Bowlby, son of the late Dr.  David Sovereign Bowlby and Martha Esther Murphy, was born July 16th, 1865 in Berlin.

  After education at the public and high schools of Berlin, and a year at St.  Jerome's College in Berlin, he earned a degree in medicine at Trinity Medical College at the University of Toronto, and later took post graduate work in England where he became Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Member of the Royal College of Surgeons.  For some years he was in partnership with his father who was also a physician.  Devoting himself more particularly to surgery, he again went abroad for study and experience in Vienna and elsewhere. In 1906 he returned to resume regular practice.  He was for some years identified with the County cavalry regiment, known as Grey's Horse, of which he was medical officer with the rank of Captain. He was on the Medical Advisory Committee of the local hospital, in which he took keen interest.  Dr.  Bowlby was for some years in the town council and became mayor in 1901, the first person born in Berlin to be elected as mayor.

  After the break out of war, Dr.  Bowlby was to do his part.  He left Berlin in July 1915, and signed up on October 5th in Shorncliffe, England with retention of his previous rank of Captain.  He was active at the military hospital there later at Bath, and finally at Seaford.  Shortly before his death he was promoted to be Director of Medical Service, and to the rank of Major.

  From his school days G. H. Bowlby was prominent in sports.  He was a member of the famous Berlin High School football eleven in the early eighties.  He was a member of the Waterloo County Golf and Country Club, and charter member of the Grand River Country Club.  He was a past warden of St John the Evangelist Anglican church.

  On April 18, 1894 he married Adine S. Seagram, the only daughter of Joseph E. Seagram and Stephanie Erb.  There were no children. Mrs. Bowlby accompanied her husband to England in 1915 where she worked for the Red Cross.

  The inquest into his death deemed it to be accidental. George Herbert Bowlby was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on November 17th and the ashes were given to his widow to be returned to Canada.  His urn was placed in a niche in the wall below the Bowlby Memorial window at the Church of St John the Evangelist in Kitchener.  The ashes of his wife Adine were placed beside his when she died in a car crash two years later. Note: George Herbert Bowlby's name appears on the War Memorial at Kitchener Mt Hope Cemetery but his ashes are in a niche at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Kitchener.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: May 22 2017, 14:04:35 UTC
• Wikipedia Article: George Bowlby