Canadian Militia buttons
I stumbled across this thread and wanted to give some thoughts on the general service Canada Militia buttons. Smylie’s book is mentioned above and I am quite certain that when I sat with him during his research stage that neither of us were certain as to the difference between these two types of militia buttons in use simultaneously. Since then, with some more research I have done on the late Victorian Militia system, it is quite possible that one was used by the “Active Militia” and the other by the “Sedentary Militia”. This system was put in place in 1855 which would loosely correspond to when these buttons were introduced shortly thereafter. If I were to make an educated guess, based on uniforms that I have seen with these buttons still attached, I would think that the active militia would use the beaver button and the sedentary militia the centre crown design. Again all of this is theory but might hold some insight as to why we had 2 styles for basically the same use.
Remo
|