Dignitaries at the Vancouver Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) station platform for the departure of the Seaforths for overseas service, 15 December 1939. Vancouver mayor Lyle Telford, Major H. Francis, Brigadier J.C. Stewart and Captain Don Clark, From the regimental history: Alan Morley, a local newspaper reporter, summed up the scene on the station platform in these words: There was kissing and shouting and tears and brave smiling and long, long waving of hands and hearty back-slaps and shouts of "Good luck!" and half strangled "God bless you's" and more kisses and girls weeping and tucking pathetic little notes into uniform pockets to he found later, and an exchanging of souvenir badges and brooches and all the immemorial, sad, tear-dimmed ritual. And in the midst of it a few civic dignitaries and important personages looked on bewilderedly as their dignity and importance dwindled to nothing in the swelling tide of common emotion. And when it was all over, the place was empty and the streets around were filled with a thinning crowd of sad-faced men and women, some of whom had not cried before but were crying now. Shortly after ten, the first of the two special trains pulled away from the station, followed by the second within the hour.