Bill Lindsay

Brigadier-General W.B. Lindsay, Chief Engineer of the Canadian Corps. Directly named twice earlier in 1917: "raising cain" over blocking postings to England in February, and, more tellingly, at the yard on May 9, when Robertson tells him personally that he'll soon be ready to go back to the Field Company. That exact conversation resurfaces almost word for word on October 10 ("Told the boss to pass the word to Bill that I'm fit for duty with an active unit"), linked here with reasonable confidence given the direct thematic match and Lindsay's established authority over exactly this kind of posting decision. Three further mentions of "Bill" or "Big Bill" making rounds of the yard that November and December (November 12, November 21, December 1) are plausibly the same man (a Chief Engineer inspecting engineering works fits the pattern), but nothing in those three entries directly ties the name back to "Lindsay," so they're linked here with a clearly lower degree of confidence than the October 10 or earlier full-name mentions.