Archive for November, 2006

When World War II was declared in September 1939, Gerald Andrews and his small aerial survey crew were standing on a sandbar in a remote Rocky Mountain stream. The terrible news came to them through the radio in their small float plane. Andrews’s [...]

Walter Hose’s fleet plan was finally completed just as German troops pushed into Poland in 1939 and plunged the world into another world war. Long before that happened, however, the Royal Canadian Navy began to use the [...]

When General Bernard Montgomery began planning 8th Army’s advance to the Valerian Way–the lateral road from Pescara to Rome–he considered the option of attacking directly north from the village of Isernia. But such an operation, begun in late [...]

Newfoundland’s pre-Confederation history is as much a part of Canadian heritage as that of any other province. That applies to its combat record in the air. Military aeronautics did not exist in Canada prior to World War I, although numerous aviation meets had been held in major [...]

My grandfather, Alan Hanchard, was a quiet, reticent man who seldom mentioned World War I. So I was pleased and somewhat surprised when he agreed to provide me with information on the war for an essay I had to prepare for a modern history [...]

As a child I was always fascinated by those grainy pictures in history books of American Civil War veterans who lived well into the 20th century–50, 60 and even 70 years after their war experience. As I looked closely at their faces I wondered [...]

As the sounds of bagpipes washed over the pebbled beaches, the reservists of the Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment, in full highland regalia, began their march from the water’s edge–retracing the steps of their regimental forebears who launched the ill-fated [...]

Photography by Jeannette Greaves Jeannette Greaves says it’s difficult to “put down in writing” a full description of the beauty that surrounds her and her family, especially this time of year in rural Manitoba. “It’s just so much of a feeling,” says the photographer, who farms with her family at a tiny little place called Deerwood, 80 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg in the Pembina Valley. “Deerwood was once a town, but we are the only remaining [...]

The first contingent of Canadian soldiers assigned to duty in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan is now back and a second rotation to that battle-scarred area is under way. Last spring the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper secured a parliamentary [...]

It’s after midnight and we’re surrounded by hostile gunmen at an abandoned mental institution northwest of Kamloops, B.C. We don’t know much about the bad guys or why they don’t like us, but we do know that four choppers full of Canada’s new commandos are coming to [...]