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Seventy years ago, on Dec. 7, 1941, Imperial Japan began its war against the West, attacking Pearl Harbor, Malaya and moving against Hong Kong. In the Crown Colony’s garrison were almost 2,000 Canadian soldiers, only recently arrived and scarcely acclimatized. For the next 18 days, they would fight for their lives against well-trained, well-equipped Japanese troops. For almost four years after the capitulation, the survivors would struggle to survive in brutal conditions as prisoners of war.

John Gray, an intelligence officer, was one of the first Canadian liberators to enter Rotterdam after the German surrender. He came out of the city hall where he had been inquiring where he could find the city’s resistance leaders, and saw a dozen or so Dutchmen around his jeep. “As I was about to climb in I saw the cardboard box with the remains of our lunch—sandwiches and pie. If these men were hungry—would it be resented?” Gray then asked one man if the food was of interest. The Dutchman “stared at me incredulously—any use? He climbed onto the bonnet of the jeep and began to break the sandwiches into little bits and to give each man a small handful.

The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada touched down on Juno Beach at 8:12 a.m. on June 6, 1944, almost a half-hour late. The sea was very rough, many of the riflemen seasick, but the men, with two companies in 10 assault boats in the first wave, hit the beach in front of the seaside town of Bernières-sur-Mer running. “Ten boats stretched out over 1,500 yards is not really a whole lot of assault force,” Company Sergeant Charlie Martin wrote later. On the maps, the Queen’s Own was shown as a battalion, almost one thousand strong. But on the beach at [...]

For Canadians, the Second World War in Europe continued almost to the last moment, to May 8, the official day of victory. At sea, convoys continued to cross the North Atlantic ready to fight off the U-boats until the final Kriegsmarine surrender. Only when the Nazi submarines surfaced and began to steam to Allied ports was the war truly ended. In the air, the bombing of German targets continued until late in April while Typhoons [...]