There are 29 Canadian soldiers who fought in the First World War that are buried in the Buxton Cemetery, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, in addition to the grave of Canadian nurse Ada Janet Ross.Irene Galea/The Globe and Mail
I didn’t expect, while on a recent trip to Buxton, England, to find myself crouching before 29 shining white tombstones of Canadian soldiers, clustered under a row of holly trees bearing bright red fruit. Rain fell onto the precisely trimmed grass and a grey October wind blew the red roses growing between the graves.
On Nov. 11, locals will gather for the annual ceremony here, to light candles and lay wreaths to honour these men, casualties of the First World War who now rest far from where they lived and died.
While the northern English town, nestled in the quiet Peak District, may seem an unlikely spot for such a concentration of graves, these headstones represent just a small portion of the tens of thousands of Canadians who came to Buxton during and immediately after the war to heal in hospitals, grand hotels and elegant mansions.
The buildings of the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, which recently closed for renovations, formerly contained the Peak Hydropathic Hotel, which was converted to the Canadian Red Cross Convalescent Hospital during the First World War.Irene Galea/The Globe and Mail
The historic centre of Buxton is clustered around its original attraction: a stream of warm and slightly mineralized spring water that erupts from a stone fountain in the city centre. This water and its purported health benefits have drawn people to the site since at least Roman times, and later prompted the construction of elegant Georgian buildings such as Buxton Crescent across the way.
When the industrialized fighting of the Great War began inflicting horrific injuries and illnesses, Buxton was a fitting spot for a convalescent centre. The inland city already contained numerous hotels and hydrotherapy facilities that could easily be repurposed to accommodate and treat soldiers.
And in 1916, the Canadian link was cemented when Victor Cavendish, the 9th Duke of Devonshire and local land owner, was appointed governor-general.
That same year, Buxton became home to the Canadian Red Cross Special Hospital, which spread itself over numerous buildings in the city centre. A plaque on the exterior wall of the train station commemorates the soldiers’ arrival.
The Buxton, England, train station saw thousands of troops pass through its doors, either during the war in order to convalesce in the city, or afterwards as they were assigned passage back to Canada through the Canadian Decommissioning Depot.Irene Galea/The Globe and Mail
“When the local reception went to meet them at the station, they were silenced by their condition. They had never seen such injuries before,” said Gillian Williamson, a local geographical historian who has studied the Canadians’ experience in Buxton.
Williamson and I pass the city’s tall 19th-century cafe windows, which are clouded with condensation and framed by colourful foliage and vines, as we approach the Buxton Dome. Originally a ring-shaped stable and later converted to a glass-domed hospital that held hundreds of military beds, the building rises above the historic centre.
Vera Brittain, a British nurse and author of the bestselling 1933 war memoir Testament of Youth, first treated soldiers here. Her house is just up the road.
Gillian Williamson stands in the Buxton Dome in October, 2025.Irene Galea/The Globe and Mail
Across the street from the Dome and through a screen of orange and red leaves, we approach the château-inspired Palace Hotel, a Victorian grand dame fronting a broad, stepped lawn. The property held up to 650 convalescing soldiers during the war, including Sir Frederick Banting, who treated wounded soldiers in Buxton then returned as a patient himself after suffering a shrapnel injury at the front. The Canadian would go on to win the Nobel Prize for his co-discovery of insulin.
Pte. Harold Rowbottom, in front of his regimental tent in Vernon, B.C., in 1916.Supplied
Another soldier treated in Buxton was Private Thomas Harold Rowbottom, who joined the army in Kamloops at 17 years old and was sent to the front in France the following year. His hand was wounded in 1917, and after several stops he was transferred to Buxton, where he spent six months recovering from an amputation, according to his granddaughter, Sherry Rowley.
Like many other Canadians in Buxton, Pte. Rowbottom joined in local activities (he played trombone in a band, Ms. Rowley says). Others trained in arts or trades in preparation for life after war, or contributed to the newspaper printed by Canadian soldiers. Announcements in The Globe and Mail from the time show that some married local women.
Just up the road from the Palace Hotel, we wind through tree-lined residential streets up to Northwood House, a heavy-set stone mansion that once was home to the Northwood Hospital for Sick Sisters.
Northwood House is just a few minutes' walk from the buildings used as the central Canadian Red Cross hospitals during the First World War.Irene Galea/The Globe and Mail
Among the volunteer nurses treated in the city was Toronto-born Ada Janet Ross, who had worked behind the lines in France, on a hospital ship and in England. She was admitted to Northwood with tuberculosis, and her death in 1918 was marked by a city-wide procession, newspaper clippings from the time show. She is also buried in Buxton cemetery.
Treatment in Buxton went beyond care for injuries and physical illness, however. After months or years at the front, many nurses and soldiers were treated for exhaustion and psychological conditions.
“At the time, shell shock was just becoming understood,” said Williamson, whose grandmother was also a nurse during the First World War. “She believed it was important to mend people in more than a physical way, which in the early 20th century was still quite a novel sort of idea.”
Ada Janet Ross enlisted in May, 1915, at age 47, and served at the Canadian General Hospital in Etaples, France, as well as in Buxton.Irene Galea/The Globe and Mail
Once peace was declared, the city’s Empire Hotel became the site of the Canadian Discharge Depot. More than 80,000 Canadians passed through Buxton as they awaited a ship to take them back to Canada via nearby Liverpool, historian David Roberts writes in his book Maple Leaves in Buxton.
The Empire was demolished in 1964, but the buildings that remain – and the rows of gravestones above the town, still so fastidiously maintained – are reminders of the sacrifice of those Canadian soldiers and nurses who served far away, and their quiet, enduring legacy.