Alice Strike
Last surviving female Canadian World War I veteran
Alice Mary Strike (31 August 1896 – 22 December 2004) was the last surviving female Canadian military First World War veteran. She was so designated as she lived in Canada after the war, but had actually served in the British armed forces. Canada did not allow females to serve in the military until the Second World War.
Strike was born in Godalming, Surrey, England. In 1914, she enlisted in the RFC as a pay clerk. She married her first husband, a Canadian man named James Stobie Sr., whom she met in Woking, England, during World War I, and later relocated to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she had four children with him over forty years.
After Stobie retired, they moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and, after her husband had died, she met George Strike on Haida Gwaii in British Columbia. At the age of 90, when she was single again, she moved to Nova Scotia, where her daughter Buzza would care for her. She also had a son, James Stobie Jr., of Victoria, British Columbia, four grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren at the time of her death.
Strike died, aged 108, at Camp Hill Veterans Hospital, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alice Strike” as last surviving female Canadian World War I veteran. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as last surviving female Canadian World War I veteran. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4726114. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 2004 and 1914.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Alice Strike”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Alice Strike primary sources, Alice Strike archive and Alice research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Alice Strike”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Alice Strike” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.