Malcolm McEachren

Malcolm McEachren was a Canadian soldier. According to Peter Wronski, of the University of Toronto, McEachren was the "Canadian army‘s first combat casualty and its first officer killed in action." Canadian soldiers had been killed in the past, but they had been either part of a standalone militia unit, or were serving in a British unit. Since the conflicts where those deaths occurred an official Canadian army had been formed.

McEachren was an ensign in The Queen's Own Rifles when a group of Irish-expatriate nationalists, the Fenians, tried to carry their struggle for an independent Ireland, by invading Canada, from the United States. On June 2, 1866, McEachren was leading his men towards the Fenians, and was shot when he stopped to open a fence.

McEachren was shot by a "minie-ball" in his lower abdomen, a "gut-shot", almost always fatal in the days before antisepsis. He died twenty minutes later.