Clifford W. Holliday, 105; Last of Canadian WWI Combat Vets

Clifford W. Holliday, the last surviving Canadian World War I combat veteran who spent the last 3 1/2 decades as a volunteer Southern California activist working on behalf of senior citizens, has died. He was 105.

Holliday, a retired electrician, died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Gardena, said his friend, Robert W. Johnson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.

Johnson, adjutant for the Department of California Veterans of World War I of the USA, estimates that there are fewer than 100 living veterans of the Great War in the United States, and believes that about half a dozen of them are living in California.

Of the 650,000 Canadians who served in World War I, only eight are known to be alive, according to Veterans Affairs Canada. Holliday, however, was the last survivor who had served in combat.

“Mr. Holliday was in the thick of fighting in a couple of fierce battles, he was wounded in action, and he was the last of our battle-hardened First World War veterans,” Janice Summerby, spokeswoman for Veterans Affairs Canada, said Friday.

“It’s a real loss,” she said. “It’s living history we’re losing.”

In recognition of his wartime service more than 80 years earlier, Holliday was awarded France’s Legion of Honor and the Canadian McCrae Medallion during a ceremony in Los Angeles in 1999.

War came to Holliday at an early age.

Born on a farm in Plumas, Manitoba, in 1898, he was one of 16 siblings, including half-brothers and sisters.

He lived and worked on the farm until shortly after the start of World War I. In February 1915, at age 16, he lied about his age and enlisted in the Canadian Army’s 43rd Battalion of the Cameron Highlanders in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Although he was taken in as a bugle boy, Holliday told the Toronto Globe and Mail last year, “I never touched a bugle in my life.”

In the summer of 1915, his unit became part of the 16th Infantry Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France. Holliday spent nearly 18 months in combat and fought in campaigns in Ypres, Belgium, and Mans, France.

“I remember heads and bodies and arms and legs being scattered around when I reflect back, but I don’t want to,” Holliday, recalling one battle, told the Ottawa Citizen last November.

He was wounded twice during two engagements, the first time by a bullet that sliced through both legs and the second time by shrapnel that struck his jaw and cheek.

While Holliday was recovering in England after his second wound in late 1916, doctors discovered that he was underage. He spent the remainder of the war working in a supply unit in England, where he met his future wife, Annie.

Returning home after the war, Holliday apprenticed as an electrician. In 1922, he immigrated to Los Angeles, where he went to work for a large electrical contracting firm.

He started his own electrical contracting company in 1927 and worked with movie studios and theaters that were converting from silent films to “talkies.”

After retiring in 1970, Johnson was recruited to help the Los Angeles Police Department develop the Neighborhood Watch program.

He also spent the next 34 years as an advocate for senior citizens.

He served as state president of the Congress of California Seniors from 1980 to 1984 and was a board member of the National Council of Senior Citizens from 1980 to 1998. He also served as president of the Gardena Valley Affiliated Commission on Aging, worked with the Older Americans Social Action Council, and spent more than 18 years on the Los Angeles County Area Agency Advisory Council.

“I didn’t intend to volunteer, but I was always willing to help somebody who needed it,” Holliday told The Times in 1999. “You don’t get anywhere without somebody helping you.”

In 1989, at age 90, Holliday became the oldest recipient of the Advocate of the Year award, given by the California Commission on Aging.

Fourteen years later, he was still at it, regularly taking the bus -- and later being driven -- to the downtown Los Angeles office of the Congress of California Seniors, where he answered the phone and provided information to people who came into the office.

Because of health problems, Holliday ended his 20 to 30 volunteer hours a week only last September.

“He believed very much in the cause of seniors,” Ramon Holguin, chairman of the Los Angeles County region of the Congress of California Seniors, said Friday.

“He believed in fighting to make sure that our Social Security fund is not raided. He wanted to promote the expansion of the Medicare program to provide prescription drugs. He was very much into the concerns that many of us have about affordable housing for seniors.

“Certainly, he was a great companion for me and a great advisor.”

Holliday’s wife died in 1974 and his daughter, Grace Doreen Bean, died in 2001. He is survived by two grandsons, four great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. May 15 at the Nakaoka Community Center, 1670 W. 167th St., Gardena.

Instead of flowers, donations may be sent in Holliday’s memory to the Alliance for Retired Americans, 888 16th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20006.