Mr. Speaker, I want to mention why I am delighted we will have the Canadian museum of history.
I mention one of the exceptional Canadians who I am passionate about and whose memory is connected with a small museum in Woodstock. The Canadian museum of history would be better known to all Canadians. One reason I am here is because of this exceptional Canadian.
Colonel Joseph Whiteside Boyle was born in 1867, when our confederation was born, in Toronto, Ontario, and was buried in Woodstock, Ontario. He made his fortune in the Klondike.
During World War I, Boyle organized a machine gun company, giving the soldiers insignia made of gold to fight in Europe. He undertook a mission in Russia on behalf of the American Committee of Engineers in London to reorganize the country's railway system.
He successfully petitioned the new Bolshevik government of Russia to return archives and paper currency from the Kremlin to Romania. He served as the principle intermediary on behalf of the Romanian government in effecting a ceasefire in 1918 with revolutionary forces in the present Moldova, then part of Romania.
He rescued over 50 high-ranking Romanians held in Odessa—