Lieutenant-General Kenneth Stuart (September 9, 1891 – November 3, 1945) was a senior Canadian Army officer who saw active service during both the First World War and, later, the Second World War. During the latter conflict, he served as Chief of the General Staff (CGS), the head of the Canadian Army, from December 1941 until December 1943, but he is perhaps most remembered today for his role in the Conscription Crisis of 1944. Early life and military career Kenneth Stuart was born on September 9, 1891 in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the son of Henry Coleridge Stuart, an Anglican clergyman, who was then the rector of St James Church and the author of The Church of England in Canada, 1759−1793, and his wife, Annie M. Stuart (nee Colston). Although there was little money, Stuart went to Bishop's College School in Lennoxville, Quebec in 1908, the same school his father had attended and where Andrew McNaughton, later destined to play a huge role in the young Stuart's military career, was an upper classman. 1908 also saw him apply for the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC), which was accepted, despite being twenty-eighth of the thirty-eight applicants. While he was there, however, he changed significantly, growing an inch-and-a-half until he was just under six foot tall, his chest measurement increased by four inches, and he made close friendships that would be maintained throughout his life, such as James Vernon Young, later a major-general, and Colin W. G. Gibson, later a Liberal cabinet minister, and he did better at his studies as, by the time he graduated, on June 22, 1911, he stood fifteen out of a class of thirty-three. He joined the Royal Canadian Engineers and received further training at the School of Military Engineering in Chatham, England. He returned to Canada in 1913 and was posted to the 1st Fortress Company in Halifax. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Stuart commanded a battery of searchlights in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He remained in this post for several more months, during which time he received a promotion from lieutenant to captain on 5 July 1915, before being sent overseas to France in late 1915, where he initially served with the 1st Army Troops Company, Canadian Engineers, one of the first mechanized engineer units then on the Western Front. He subsequently joined the 7th Field Company, part of