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Caption: Sergeant, Hamilton Field Battery, Royal Canadian Artillery, 1894

In 1894, the Canadian volunteer militia was comprised of 17 field batteries. Field batteries were mostly armed with British 9-pounder Rifled Muzzle Loading guns, which were obsolete by the 1890s and were replaced with British 18-pounder guns from about 1906. The uniform of the Royal Canadian Artillery was nearly similar to the British Royal Artillery except that Canadians mostly preferred to wear white tropical ‘pith’ helmets on all occasions rather than the blue-black British helmet.