Archive for May, 2010

It’s Tuesday morning, 8:25 a.m. to be exact, and seven-year-old Grace Ashworth is standing in the secretary’s office at Donald Fraser Memorial School in Plaster Rock, N.B. O Canada has just been sung throughout the school and so everyone is standing. Glancing down at a small piece of paper between her fingers, Grace, who is in Grade 2, clears her throat and then speaks into the school’s public address system. “Today we are going to honour and remember the following soldier who died while serving our country in World War II. Sergeant Roy Wintfield Vickery, Dec. 15, 1943. Could you please [...]

Myrtle Smith, 103, of Stanstead, Que.; Ottawa residents Dr. Bill Jeans, 91, and Al Sentance, 84; and Bob Cawker, 93, of Surrey, B.C.; have all been driving seven or eight decades, have had their drivers’ licences renewed in the past two years, and intend to continue driving as long as they are capable. They are part of a growing visible minority—senior, senior drivers.

False.  It was British forces that burned Washington in August 1814. e. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1914, Currie worked in both insurance and real estate.  Before becoming a businessman, he had taught at public schools in British Columbia. c. Bishop is credited with 72 “victories” against enemy aircraft.  His total was the second highest in the British Empire. The second battle of Ypres in Belgium.  The Germans attacked the allied lines with chlorine gas for the first time on April 22, 1915. The poppy was chosen as a result of Canadian medical officer John McCrae’s First World War poem, In Flanders [...]

The weather was cool, the welcome warm and the curling hot at the 54th Royal Canadian Legion Dominion Command Curling Championship March 13-19 in Stephenville, Nfld.

“Thank goodness for Sidney Crosby,” exclaims Janice Kirkbright. The NHL star and captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins has done something she and many of her friends and neighbours have been unable to do, despite years of trying. Crosby has proudly told the world that he is from Cole Harbour, N.S., and in so doing has kept alive the name of a once thriving farm community that has all but disappeared in recent years due to urban sprawl from nearby Dartmouth and Halifax. “There used to be a lot of farming in this area,” says Kirkbright, director of the 220-member Cole Harbour Rural Heritage Society, “but it’s all subdivisions now. It’s disappeared as a postal address and a lot of people don’t even use the name anymore. They just say they’re from Dartmouth.”

The drop in membership appears to be levelling off and good financial management has kept The Royal Canadian Legion operating solidly in the black. Still, at their Feb. 27-28 meeting at Legion House, members of Dominion Executive Council made it clear they want Dominion Command to continue working hard to build membership and manage funds carefully and wisely. Dominion Command led by example by offering free one-year memberships to newly retired veterans, resulting in addition of 130 new members between July 2008 and the end of 2009, reported Dominion Command Membership Committee Chairman Paulette Cook. Recruitments in most commands increased over [...]

Fifteen metres above the Gulf of Oman: cargo door open; all senses engaged. Surge of heavy air against arms and legs; vibrations moving from floor to feet to spine; muffled whine of the engine infiltrating your helmet, and best of all—out there—through that wide opening, the rapid rush of blue-silvery water, broken only by fleeting whitecaps and the vanishing trails of flying fish.

Canadians from across the country and overseas took time to send Internet messages and sign special Books of Reflection as the last known living connection to the frightful events of the First World War came to an end. Jack Babcock, 109, the last known Canadian veteran of that war, died peacefully at home in Spokane, Wash., Feb. 18. “The First World War is a defining part of the Canada we know today and it is a legacy that must be preserved for generations to come,” said Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn. “While we have lost our last direct link to the [...]

Every Canadian should have the opportunity to travel to Europe and walk in the footsteps of those who served in the First and Second World Wars. There, part of our history is somehow more tangible; it is found in the cemeteries and on the faces of the people who tend them and remember. For one lucky artist, that opportunity came her way as part of National Defence’s Canadian Forces Artists Program (CFAP). Karole Marois was chosen to paint the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands for CFAP. The impact of that trip was so deep that five years later she is doing it again—creating an even bigger and bolder series to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation.

This is the second part of Legion Magazine’s series on the men of 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry as they go headfirst into their new mission to secure the town of Salavat, deep in the heart of Kandahar province’s infamous Panjwai district. Stationed in a small, commandeered school compound, 1st Platoon now comprises what is known as a ‘Platoon House,’ the linchpin in a new strategy emanating from Kabul to get NATO soldiers off their big bases and out into the villages.