Archive for September, 2007

It’s considered one of the best-kept historical secrets in the country–Partridge Island, also known as Canada’s Emerald Isle.

But unless you’ve got special permission from the Canadian Coast Guard, about the only way you’ll get a good look at this […]

Part 1: The Charge of Charles Company.

Within sight of the infamous white schoolhouse, epicentre of the insurgency in Kandahar province, the hastily assembled Canadian force entered the kill zone. An enemy signal flare shot up across Charles Company’s lead elements and there aren’t […]

Ninety years ago, the young Dominion of Canada was in the midst of one of the most significant years in its history. It was the year in which the Canadian Corps surged up Vimy Ridge in April 1917, a fortress that the Germans had defended […]

Italy, Normandy’s ‘Long Right Flank’, was the theme of University of New Brunswick historian Lee Windsor’s keynote address to the 18th Annual Military History Conference at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. Dr. Windsor, a passionate and […]

An article in the May/June issue described the adventures of aircrew who evaded capture after being shot down over enemy territory. In those situations, air force personnel often had an advantage over soldiers in that–having force-landed or bailed […]

The fall of western Europe to the Nazis by the end of June 1940 changed the nature of the war profoundly. Britain now stood alone in Europe against not only Germany and Italy, but also Germany’s notional ally, the Soviet Union.

It was a formidable array.

Europe, from […]

How do you get a menacing 200,000-ton iceberg out of the way? You lasso it. For captains of offshore anchor handling and supply vessels off Newfoundland’s east coast, it’s just part of the job.

On our landing approach, banking low over St. John’s harbour […]

As I mentioned in an earlier column, the Conservative government quashed the military’s draft of a new Canadian defence policy statement sometime in the late fall of 2006 or early winter of 2007. As of the end of June, no new policy statement […]

The whistle blows and two waves of citizen soldiers advance towards a black horizon that could serve as a metaphor for death or for the colonial shadows from which a young country’s nationhood would emerge. Either way, this indoor depiction […]

Johnnene Maddison wanted to find a way to recognize the contribution of Canadian women on the home front during World War II, and what better way than in quilting, sewing and embroidery– stereotypically a woman’s craft. Her choice of medium lends both truth and […]