Rear-Admiral Leonard Warren Murray, CB, CBE (22 June 1896 – 25 November 1971) served in the Royal Canadian Navy and was the only Canadian to command an Allied theatre of operations during World War II, when he was appointed Commander-in-Chief, Canadian Northwest Atlantic. Drawing on his operational and administrative experience gained during World War I and the inter-war period, Murray successfully led Canadian, British, American and other Allied naval and air forces to victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. Early years to the end of World War I Leonard Warren Murray was born at Granton, Nova Scotia on 22 June 1896. His father, Simon Dickson Murray (1859–1936), was a mid-level manager in various enterprises, and managed the Acadia Coal Company's pier in Pictou Landing from 1903 to the early 1920s. His mother was Jane Falconer (1868–1968)—a direct descendant of the Scottish immigrants who travelled to Pictou County on the Hector in 1773. At 14 years of age, Murray left Pictou Academy to join the first intake of 21 recruits into the Royal Naval College of Canada in Halifax, which had just been created by the Naval Service Act of 4 May 1910. Life for the recruits was difficult. In his own words: "The first winter at the naval college was absolute hell, we had no uniforms, we arrived in what we stood up in and had to send home for further clothing. A case of measles broke out very shortly and we were quarantined, and the only time we got out of the college was when we went to the skating rink to play hockey; and that was a great relief." – Admiral Murray. Immediately after graduating in January 1913, Murray first served as a Midshipman in the Royal Navy vessel protecting British interests in the Mexican Revolution, and then in . This was a tense moment for Canada's fledgling navy: the newly elected Government of Sir Robert Borden favoured a policy of providing ships and sailors to the British navy, but was blocked by the opposition led by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who advocated for Canada to have its own navy. On 14 August 1914, immediately following the outbreak of World War I, Midshipman Murray was assigned to the protected cruiser , the largest ship in the Royal Canadian Navy at that time. mostly patrolled the coastal waters from New York to Newfoundland, and prevented 38 German merchant ships