Archive for May, 2005

The soldiers pulled on their camouflage parkas, packed their guns onto the bus and went north to test themselves against the winter. They went seeking a hostile environment where they could practise winter warfare in the kind of high-pressure survival situation that toughens leaders and forges units. The soldiers weren’t alone in this test. For the first time in Canadian Forces history the remarkable natives of the 3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol [...]

The battle for the Belgian crossroads village of Passchendaele was one of the bloodiest battles of all time. Winston Churchill called it “a forlorn expenditure of valour and life without equal in futility.” The sad part is that it never would have happened if Canadian Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie had been successful in having it [...]

They look like something out of Star Trek, massive doughnut-shaped contraptions that swallow you up, scan your body and churn out detailed images of what’s going on inside. They can show the brain at work, detect cancers invisible to other machines, and assist in zapping tumours, all through the use of sound, a magnet and a computer. Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI machines are not new—they’ve been around since 1982—but demand for this life-saving diagnostic [...]