By Michael Sasges, Nicola Valley Museum

When Capt. John Foster Paton Nash went to war in August 1914, he left the Nicola Valley a middle-aged bachelor and British Columbia a new husband.

His English bride, Eleanor Flora Wilson, had been in the valley since the spring, visiting a sister. Nash had been in the valley since at least 1901.

They married Aug. 17 in a Church of England ceremony in St. Paul’s, Kamloops. He was 48 years old and she was 29.

Eleanor and “Jack” Nash passed most of their married life apart.

They may have had 10 days together in Kamloops, but only as his duties as an officer of the 31st Regiment, B.C. Horse permitted. The special train organized by the Canadian government to take B.C. volunteers to the Valcartier training camp in Quebec left Kamloops on Aug. 27.

They may have kept each other’s company in the fall of 1914 and the winter of 1914-15 in the United Kingdom. Each member of the first Canadian contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force who trained in the Salisbury Plain camps was allowed up to six days’ leave while there. (She was in the U.K. from October.)

They had three opportunities to keep each other’s company after his battalion left the U.K. for the continent. He took three leaves in 1915 and 1916. Canadian officers serving in Belgium and France routinely passed their leaves in the British Isles.

The couple passed the first anniversary of their marriage apart. His battalion was in Belgium on Aug. 17, 1915, in the trenches. She was in the United Kingdom, in Devon.

Jack and Eleanor never celebrated a second anniversary. John Foster Paton Nash was killed on April 23, 1916 in the trenches, circumstances not recorded. He died one day after his 50th birthday.

What Jack Nash did as a man in the Nicola Valley he did out of doors. He was a rancher, according to his attestation, or enlistment, form. He was a fire warden, according to his marriage certificate. He was the fire warden for Aspen Grove, according to a news story about his death.

The earliest recorded year of Jack Nash’s residency in British Columbia is 1897. He was a rancher in Grande Prairie, later Westwold, in the Henderson’s British Columbia Gazetteer and Directory for 1898.

In 1900, he volunteered for Strathcona’s Horse in Kamloops. (He reported his occupation as “cow-puncher.”)

Discharged in the spring of 1901, he was in the Nicola Valley by the end of the year. On Dec. 2 he asked the military authorities in Ottawa to send his Boer War campaign medals to Quilchena, Nicola Lake, “my address.”

He probably passed his years in the Nicola Valley agreeably enough. He was an officer with the militia regiment, B.C. Horse. His closest companions, accordingly, were more likely than not older men like him who had experienced military service and were interested in repeating it and younger men who wanted to be like them.

Employment with the provincial government, as a fire warden, probably meant a regular income, at least seasonally. And he met, in the valley, a woman who would share his life — always an agreeable experience.

Capt. John Foster Paton Nash is buried in Railway Dugouts Burial Ground in Belgium.

Mike Sasges is a director for the Nicola Valley Museum. This profile is the first in a series of profiles of men from the Nicola Valley who died in the Great War battle to commemorate their contribution to Canada.

He is inviting valley residents to collaborate in creating profiles of the valley’s war dead. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at 378-6982.