Archive for July 1st, 2006

In an era when a woman in New York City was arrested for smoking and Canadian women were denied the right to vote, Mina Hubbard single-handedly assembled and led an expedition through the wilds of Labrador and northern Quebec to a remote Hudson’s Bay outpost on Ungava Bay. Her mission–fuelled by allegations that her husband’s 1903 expedition had failed due to incompetence–was to become the first person to accurately map the waterways of one of the [...]

Throughout the Italian Campaign senior Allied commanders were able to obtain a running commentary on German intentions, courtesy of Ultra. By 1943, the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, the British government’s communications headquarters [...]

By the time Commodore Percy Walker Nelles, the first cadet ever to enter the Royal Canadian Navy, took over as chief of the naval staff in January 1934, the question of whether there would even be a Canadian navy had ceased to be a political [...]

Canada declared war on Germany on Sept. 10, 1939. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) had been expanding in anticipation of this; now it fairly exploded, doubling in size within four months. Meanwhile, on Dec. 17, Australia, Britain, Canada and [...]

When Victoria-bound tourists take the ferry from Vancouver’s Tsawwassen terminal to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island, they travel on a southwesterly route toward a string of slender islands. And just when it seems like the islands form a solid [...]

It wasn’t long after the election of Jan. 23 before a number of differences emerged between the military and defence postures of Paul Martin’s and Stephen Harper’s governments. For one thing, Prime Minister Harper’s first trip abroad was to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the high point coming [...]

Perhaps no other group of people is more aware of the importance of giving blood than those who have served, particularly those who have been wounded. As such, the Canadian Blood Services is formally teaming up with The Royal Canadian Legion and the [...]

On the edge of a junky field in Juba, southern Sudan, there’s a small group of war orphans who sleep in the dirt and work all day to make carvings for the African tourist trade. Among them is a tiny girl of about seven or eight who sweeps [...]

He’d been driving me around Kandahar province for almost an hour before I realized the guy was probably a Taliban spy. Sure, he was friendly, but it just didn’t add up. His long shaggy beard and traditional Afghan clothes were pretty standard for the region, but his [...]

Gertrude Kearns has attracted a lot of press as a war artist over the last few years. Much of it centred on her painting Somalia #2, Without Conscience, which is one of five of her works on display in the Canadian War Museum. This graphic piece [...]