WHOLE CITY HONORED THE ARMY DEAD
With the heavily draped standards of their late corps massed before, and amid the solemn notes of the funeral dirge, the dead of the Salvation Army were on the following Saturday borne in melancholy state through the streets of Toronto to their final resting place in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The procession followed an impressive and soul-stirring service in the Arena, attended by a sorrowing multitude which crowded the vast building to its utmost. The service was under the direction of Colonel Gaskin and Commissioner McKie, successor to Commissioner Rees. Lying in heavily-draped caskets, covered with the world-renowned colors of the Army, emblazoned with the motto, “Blood and Fire,” and surrounded with handsome wreaths, tokens of love and esteem sent by sorrowing comrades and friends, the bodies lay in state in the Arena. The mute evidence of the terrible disaster which had overtaken the Army on the “Black Friday” of the week before, when the Empress of Ireland was swept beneath the waters of the St. Lawrence River, drew a vast concourse of people.
Long before the service commenced the streets were lined with the grief-stricken citizens who desired to pay their last respects to those silent Soldiers of the Cross. With sorrowing faces and tear-glistening eyes they reverently passed through the heavy banks of floral tributes encasing the catafalque, on which rested the caskets in three long rows, and gazed for the last time upon the still forms of the sixteen victims who had done so much for the uplift of humanity in the city and whose labors were so suddenly ended.