Children of John Fanning and Eliza McCarthy

James Fanning was married in 1905 to Claudia Laurine Aukron/Ankorn in Toronto. Claudia Aukron/Ankorn was a woman of Canadian descent whose family had been in Owen Sound in Ontario for some years. In 1906, James and Claudia move to North Battleford in Saskatchewan where the family farm property. They have three daughters over the next few years, Catherine, Claudia and Patricia. However, the farming lifestyle wasn’t to go on. In 1916 as the First World War continued, James Fanning joined the Canadian army, the 46th Saskatchewan Regiment and was posted overseas to service in France.

The 46th Battalion was known as the ‘Suicide Battalion’ for the large casualty rates and need for replacements. They fought in all the major battles where Canadian soldiers fought including Ypres, Passchendaele and in Flanders. However, it was near Arras by Vimy Ridge on 5th January 1917 that James Fanning died in the mud, cold and horror of trench warfare.  The unit war diary notes that the German Army began a massive bombardment at 9.10 am.  During that bombardment, James Fanning was buried alive and died. His remains were dug up and transferred to the Villiers-sur-Bois war cemetery. According to the Army, he was 35 years old, however, he was 37.

The Army bureaucracy kicked into gear and informed his wife of James Fanning’s death. In the records, it’s possible to see how quickly the army and government stopped his pay and transferred his wife to a pension. There’s very little to see of what happens next to James’ widow, Claudice, but she remarried and stayed in the Mountain Lake community until she died in 1965.