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Figure 1. William McKeown with fellow soldiers; courtesy of Randall McKeown.
"History remembers kings."
Agamemnon says it with complete certainty in Troy. Standing before Achilles, he speaks as though history has already decided who deserves to be remembered.
Kings build empires. Generals command armies.
Their names survive in books, monuments, and classrooms.
Perhaps he is right. History may remember kings.
But people remember stories.
A man leaves Canada.
He leaves behind a wife.
Children.
A life already built.
He is forty years old.
Old enough to understand what war takes from a family.
Young enough to believe duty is still worth answering.
His name is William McKeown.
When the First World War begins, he crosses the Atlantic believing he will serve his country the way thousands of others do—through battle, sacrifice, and perhaps one day, a name carved into stone.
But history refuses him even that.
In England, the army decides he is too old for the front line.
Instead of carrying a rifle into battle, William spends his days preparing younger men for a future he may never see. They leave camp one after another. He stays behind.
I often wonder what he thought as he watched them disappear down those roads.
Did he feel relieved?
Or forgotten?
History never tells us.
One night, an ambulance makes its way along a nearly black military road. Wartime regulations allow only the faintest light. The driver suddenly notices several soldiers ahead and instinctively turns the wheel.
He never sees William. The ambulance strikes him.
Moments later, the same vehicle that killed him carries his body back to camp.
Figure 2. Newspaper notice reporting the death of William McKeown's companion; archival document courtesy of Randall McKeown.
For years, the story sounded much simpler.
William died in the war.
And perhaps that was true.
But it was never the whole story.
Figure 3. Newspaper article reporting the death of William McKeown; archival document courtesy of Randall McKeown.
Someone cleared his throat.
I looked up.
Across the table sat Randall McKeown, William's great-grandson.
We were sitting inside a Tim Hortons in Mississauga.
I had travelled from downtown Toronto carrying a laptop and a list of interview questions.
Randall had travelled with a cane that had quietly accompanied his family through generations.
Until that moment, I believed I had come to write about a soldier.
Instead, I found myself listening to a man searching for himself.
Randall had long wondered whether the McKeown family story began in Ireland, Scotland, or somewhere in between.
One by one, Randall placed pieces onto the table—John McKeown—William's father.
Born in Brockville in 1839. A fisherman on the Great Lakes. A veteran of the Fenian Raids.
Figure 4. William McKeown's family; courtesy of Randall McKeown.
A man whose entire public life had eventually been reduced to a few lines in a newspaper obituary.
Then came Emma Fortier.
William's wife.
She lived to be ninety-nine.
Family stories suggest she may have been Indigenous.
Randall never says she was.
Figure 5. Emma Fortier; newspaper clipping courtesy of Randall McKeown.
Only that she may have been.
Years of research had taught him to respect uncertainty.
History is often written with confidence.
Family stories rarely are.
Then came Ronald McKeown.
Randall's father.
A connection was slowly lost after his parents divorced when he was still a boy.
The further he drifted from that side of the family, the louder the silence became.
Names became photographs.
Photographs became questions.
Questions became a lifetime.
"I just wanted to know more about me," Randall finally said.
Then he stopped talking.
So did I.
That was the moment I realized we were no longer discussing genealogy.
We were discussing identity.
For years, Randall searched through church archives, military records, cemetery stones, census documents, DNA results, forgotten photographs, and fading memories.
Each discovery solved one mystery while creating another.
A surname changed its spelling.
A record disappeared.
A rumour survived without proof.
One branch of the family stretched back for centuries.
Another simply vanished.
Randall smiled.
"It is like putting together a puzzle," he said.
Some pieces fit perfectly.
Others almost fit.
Some seem to belong to the same picture but refuse to lock into place.
As I listened, I realized the puzzle was no longer his alone; it had quietly become mine as well.
When our conversation ended, I packed away my laptop and walked toward Clarkson GO Station.
The train pulled away from the platform.
Mississauga slowly dissolved into Toronto.
Outside the window, neighbourhoods passed one after another.
Inside my head, the puzzle pieces refused to stay still.
Was this William's story?
The soldier who crossed an ocean only to die on a dark road, no battlefield would ever remember.
Was it John's story?
The fisherman whose life survived inside a handful of official records.
Was it Emma's?
A woman whose identity still waited somewhere between family memory and historical certainty.
Or was it Randall's?
A man who had spent decades searching for people who could no longer answer his questions.
Was Randall searching for his Irish roots? Or was he trying to assemble a puzzle whose pieces—John, William, Emma, and finally himself—revealed a single picture: a family bound to Canada across generations?
The closer the train came to Union Station, the less certain I became.
Perhaps I had been asking the wrong question all along.
Every story may require a hero, but this one does not.
This story belonged to no single person.
Not to John.
Not to William.
Not to Emma.
Not even to Randall.
The real hero had been sitting quietly among them from the very beginning.
The story itself.
A story patient enough to survive war.
Divorce.
Silence.
Misspelled names.
Forgotten photographs.
Broken family branches.
More than a century of waiting.
History may remember kings.
People remember stories.
And perhaps stories remember us long before we remember them.
This narrative is based on an interview with Randall McKeown and was shaped through his generous guidance and the family photographs, documents, and archival materials he kindly shared.
If you'd like to share your family's roots story in Toronto, simply reply to this email. We'd love to hear from you.
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