Denis Whitaker
Canadian general
Brigadier William Denis Whitaker, (February 27, 1915 – May 30, 2001) was a Canadian athlete, soldier, businessman, and author.
Early life
Born in Calgary, Alberta and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Whitaker was educated at the University of Toronto Schools and later at the Royal Military College of Canada. He was student #2357 in Kingston, Ontario. He graduated in 1933. He was a quarterback for the Hamilton Tigers of the Ontario Rugby Football Union.
He joined the Canadian Army and accepted a commission, as a second lieutenant with The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (Wentworth Regiment) in 1937.
Military career
During the Second World War, Whitaker was awarded the Distinguished Service Order at the rank of captain for his achievement in the Dieppe Raid in August 1942. He was the only one of the 100 officers who landed on the beach to fight his way into town and escape unwounded. As a lieutenant colonel, Whitaker commanded the 1st Battalion, The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry–Canadian Army Active from February 17, 1944, until July 17, 1944, and from September 15, 1944, until March 29, 1945, throughout most of the fighting in northwest Europe. On October 16, 1944, during the Battle of the Scheldt, Whitaker took the village of Woensdrecht, which presented particular problems for the Canadians in their advance along the banks of the river Scheldt.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Denis Whitaker” is canadian general. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Denis, Whitaker and Canadian, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5257577. VIAF identifies the subject as 22813260. The Library of Congress control number is n84079567. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 2001, 1933 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Denis Whitaker” 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.