Remembering a Canadian Great War Chaplain: Donald MacPhail

I owe this chaplain story to my friend Dr. Duff Crerar.   I had never heard of Padre MacPhail or of the Llandovery Castle until he told me the story.  The text and photo are his.  MP




Not every chaplain who lost their lives in Canada’s First World War died as a result of enemy action in the field. Some died from illness, such as Chaplain H. Ingles, who contracted meningitis in the wards at Shorncliffe Camp in 1914. Many Canadians were appalled at the 27 June, 1918 torpedoing of the Canadian-manned (and clearly marked) Hospital Ship Llandovery Castle, in which many nurses and other medical staff lost their lives. It was the worst Canadian naval disaster of the Great War, claiming the lives of 234 medical personnel, soldiers and sailors, including fourteen nursing sisters.

Among those lost was Presbyterian Chaplain and Honorary Captain Donald G. MacPhail, a graduate of Queen’s University Theological School and minister at Knox Church, Cayuga, when he volunteered for overseas service. As the ship was going down, MacPhail, who had seen action as chaplain to the 6^th and 12^th Brigades at the Somme and Vimy, was last seen assisting the nurses into a lifeboat which was later sucked under the stern as the ship sank. Just one nurse survived from that boat. Eventually a notice was received in London that MacPhail’s body had been recovered on the French coast, and he had been buried in Lamphaul, France. His widow sponsored a memorial window in the Cayuga church after the war. On the inscription she had placed: “He that believeth in Me hast everlasting life”. He is commemorated at Queen’s University in the John Deutsch centre Memorial Room