Dwight Wilson

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Dwight 'Percy' Wilson (born 26 February 1901 in Toronto, Ontario,) is one of only two surviving Canadian veterans of the First World War.

Signing up as a 15-year old boy in 1916, when asked about his actual age he told the recruiting officer 16, but faced with soaring casualty rates for each meagre metre of territory won and lost, that was good enough for the Canadian Army. On arrival in England, Wilson's youth was quickly discovered, and he never went near the battlefield, before being returned to Canada in 1917. Still determined he enlisted again, winding up once more at Camp Petawawa for military training. The war ended before he got another chance overseas.

Wilson's spirit of patriotism never left him though. Shortly after the Second World War began, he enlisted for a third time. Instead of being too young, he was now too old, and he spent the war as a captain in the Perth County Reserves.

Wilson currently lives in Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, aged 106.