Memoirs & Pilgrimages

The shooting this summer of a South Korean tourist cast an uncomfortable shadow over the Veterans Affairs Canada delegation that had come to Seoul to mark the 55th anniversary of the Korea Armistice Agreement signed on July 27, 1953.

Park Wang Ja, a 53-year-old housewife from Seoul, was walking on a beach at a tourist area in North Korea when, according to North Korean officials, she strayed into a restricted military area and was shot twice. This was after failing to acknowledge shouts and a warning shot.

The killing, coupled with North Korea’s refusal to allow South Korean authorities to examine […]

I can remember the wounded, coming out of battle in Europe. We—the members of 14th Field Ambulance of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division—were among the first to treat them. There were men from all ranks, and sometimes friend and foe would arrive in the same ambulance. Some wept while others were silent, suffering from shock. Many waited quietly, and often we would be with them for only a few minutes—intensely close as men ever get to men—before they would slip away and be gone. Part of them became part of us, and through the years I have found myself […]

It is bright and clear and the air is crisp as the first people arrive, many laden with blankets and cushions, more than two hours early to stake out their positions for the Remembrance Day ceremony at the National War Memorial. In the end, one […]

It was the sound of applause that struck members of the 2007 Royal Canadian Legion Youth Leaders’ Pilgrimage of Remembrance when they reached the small, French town of Buron–not far from Caen.

The group of 26 was on the Legion’s biennial pilgrimage to […]

The bur oak stands on land that has been in my husband’s family for more than a century. Its roots are deep and strong and its branches spread in all directions. The trunk has been made solid by sunshine […]

My father, Gunner Robert Vincent Waddy, died three years ago–on July 1, 2004. He was 83, and had survived the horrific Dieppe raid of Aug. 19, 1942. I remember hearing him talk about the failed raid and his incarceration at various […]

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 […]

“In any national story there are moments and places, sometimes far from home, which in retrospect can be seen as fixed points about which the course of history turns—moments which distinguish that nation forever. Those who seek the […]

Like heaven only knows how many other older Canadians, I have my own tiny war museum. I inherited it from my father, Charles Bruce. He was not a fighting man during World War II, but he saw some action.

As chief of the London bureau of the Canadian Press […]