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Membership Still A Challenge On The Island Rolling west along Highway 2 well beyond Charlottetown, you follow a twisty highway past postcard villages framed by narrow rivers, green fields and swaths of rich, red farmland. “This is good potato country,” says Jim Ross, first vice-president of Prince Edward Island Command. “It’s a busy time for the farmers.” It’s a busy time for Legionnaires as well. Ross is heading to Summerside for Prince Edward Island Command’s 60th convention hosted by George Pearkes VC Branch. While scanning the road ahead of his pickup truck, Ross talks about his time in the Legion, the friends [...]

The following timeline on the D-Day invasion and Normandy Campaign  represents a rough sketch of how the fighting progressed during the summer of 1944. More specific details can be found in many fine books on the subject. August 1943: The plan to invade France is endorsed during the Quebec Conference attended by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. PHOTO: NATIONAL FILM BOARD/LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA August 1943. May 8, 1944: General Dwight D. Eisenhower settles on June 5, 1944, as the date of the cross-Channel Normandy invasion. It is also decided that in the event of bad [...]

Early morning, Nov. 25, 2008: One by one the large tour buses stop in the tight laneway running parallel to the Adriatic’s western shore. It is cold and windy with the threat of rain hanging in the air above the stone archway linking the church of San Donato to the Moro River Canadian War Cemetery. For a few precious seconds between arrivals there is nothing but silence, just the wind rustling southward through the olive trees and vine-covered pergolas. Five kilometres to the north—on a plateau overlooking the sea and a quiet river valley—is the ancient but rebuilt town of Ortona with [...]

One second. That’s about all you’ve got after you hit the buzzer. If you hesitate or begin to waffle, the question will go to the other team. And that’s not cool because the other team could get it right and score a point. And so here’s your question: What was the code name for an offensive launched on Feb. 8, 1945, preceded by a crushing air and artillery attack on the enemy positions? The remarkable thing here is that you’re not a military historian—although you may be some day. You’re a junior high school student, born in 1995—50 years after the [...]

This story doesn’t begin during the Second World War; it begins this year, on the first Sunday in May, with a bespectacled Arthur Taylor—now 85—standing on the portside of His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Sackville with one hand resting on the rail and the other clutching a red rose and part of a small bouquet. The old sailor from Newfoundland did not come aboard the wartime corvette with the flowers. Instead, they were given to him by people he had just met—people who were pleased to meet him and show respect for what he and thousands of other sailors did during the [...]

While The Royal Canadian Legion conducts a major review on governance and structure, Newfoundland and Labrador Command has gone on record to say it would oppose “any and all forms of amalgamation” that involve the command. Newfoundland and Labrador Command’s opposition took the form [...]

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 [...]

In seconds the classroom in Red Deer, Alta., erupts into a loud and prolonged burst of “Ewwwww!” followed by a short, but audible, “That’s gross!” Tucked in between those expressions–and originating from somewhere near the back of the class–is a [...]

In April, Legion Magazine travelled with a group of high school students to Vimy Ridge for the 90th anniversary of the historic battle, and the rededication of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. The students, mostly from Port Perry, Ont., [...]

Cold silent names inscribed on sunlit stone, facing outwardly across a ridge through time–towards a congregation of youthful promise. It was the perfect meeting of past and present: the ghosts and distant memories of a historic battle cast with [...]