Legion 08-2017

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA! Looking back at 150 years PAGE 18

Hill 70

JULY/AUGUST 2017

P LU S

ESCAPE OF THE

DIEPPE RAIDERS PAGE 54

CANADA’S TRIUMPH AFTER VIMY WAS EQUALLY HEROIC

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BATTLE OF THE TANK COMMANDERS CAMP X: CANADA’S SPY SCHOOL FOOTSTEPS OF THE FALLEN, FROM YPRES TO VIMY

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C

Capturing Hill 70 The successful but costly Canadian Corps assault on a well-defended hill overlooking the French town of Lens in 1917 was of vital strategic importance.

See page 30.

Soldiers of the 22nd Battalion rest in a captured German trench following the Battle of Hill 70.

DND/LAC/PA-002045

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Features 18 CANADA AT 150

A selective look back at the people and events that made us

By Don Gillmor

42 MY DAD, THE AIR FORCE DOCTOR

Physician and flight lieutenant Edward Thorne served with the RCAF from 1941 to 1945, and treated hundreds of grateful flyers Memoir by Stephen J. Thorne

30 ASSAULT ON HILL 70

Four months after Vimy, Canada’s next triumph was equally heroic

By Serge Durflinger

36 FOOTSTEPS OF THE FALLEN

A tour from Ypres to Vimy culminates in a touching ceremony of remembrance

Story and photography by Stephanie Slegtenhorst

50 THE SECRET LIFE AT CAMP X

Life was far from normal for those who worked in the clandestine Camp X, Canada’s school for spies

By June Coxon

54 ESCAPE OF THE DIEPPE RAIDERS

Canadian valour didn’t stop at the beach in Dieppe

By Hugh A. Halliday

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COLUMNS 12 MILITARY HEALTH MATTERS More study needed on medical marijuana

By Sharon Adams THIS PHOTO Canadians who fought in the Battle of Hill 70 in France march to a rest camp prior to their transfer to the Ypres sector.

ON THE COVER Canadian soldiers enjoy coffee at a soup kitchen near the front during a break in the fight for Hill 70 in August 1917.

14 FRONT LINES General takes a new approach

By Stephen J. Thorne

16 EYE ON DEFENCE No boost for defence spending

By David J. Bercuson

28 FACE TO FACE Should Newfoundland have joined Confederation?

By Wayne Johnston and Michael Winter

DND/LAC/PA-001977; PA-001596

88 CANADA AND THE COLD WAR To draft or not to draft?

By J.L. Granatstein

90 HUMOUR HUNT Blustering on air

By Terry Fallis

92 HEROES AND VILLAINS Radley-Walters and Wittmann

By Mark Zuehlke

94 ARTIFACTS The Caterpillar Club

By Sharon Adams

96 O CANADA John A. Macdonald’s rocky road to Confederation

By Don Gillmor

DEPARTMENTS 4 7 10 59 69 87 87 87 87

EDITORIAL LETTERS ON THIS DATE IN THE NEWS SNAPSHOTS LOST TRAILS REQUESTS UNIT REUNIONS CLASSIFIED

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EDITORIAL

The importance of anniversaries

T

his issue of Legion Magazine is filled with stories acknowledging anniversaries: Canada’s 150th, Vimy’s 100th, Hill 70’s 100th, Dieppe’s 75th. And, as in every issue, members of The Royal Canadian Legion who have served the organization for 60, 65 and 70 years are recognized on the Honours and Awards page. Each issue also contains a twopage spread aptly titled “On this date.”

2017 is a rich year when it comes to anniversaries, Canadian and military: a century and a half since Confederation, when the colony became a dominion; ANNIVERSARIES a century since Vimy ARE PIVOT POINTS and Hill 70, when our soldiers achieved AROUND WHICH MEMORIES CLUSTER. what the French and British could not; and three-quarters of a century since the raid on Dieppe, one of our darkest military moments. This issue recognizes all of those, and more.

Like cenotaphs, anniversaries are pivot points around which memories cluster, on which life-changing and direction-shifting events are recorded and remembered. They help us contend with the passage of time.

Remembrance and celebration of milestones in military history are invariably tied to a single date: the day a conflict started; key days in a battle sequence, and of course, the day on which hostilities ended or peace treaties started. April 9, July 1, August 19, September 11, November 11— these dates evoke sombre or celebratory or distressing sentiments, and they serve to ensure that our collective memory does not

4

fail those who fell, achieved or suffered.

Military anniversaries marking victories are bittersweet, tempered by the sadness of the sacrifice, the glory of triumph darkened by the vileness of war. Fittingly, the ceremonies on April 9—early morning at the National War Memorial in Ottawa and late afternoon on the ridge itself—were sombre…and just a little bit celebratory.

Depending on when you read this, all of Canada will be preparing for, or recovering from, a huge nationwide party, a fully completely celebratory day. Canada Day, after all, is our most important anniversary, and this is a big one.

Once it’s over, though, keep in mind that other anniversaries are imminent: people will cluster around memorials at a modest park (below) in the tiny hamlet of Mountain, Ont., on Aug. 15, and on chert-laden Red Beach at Dieppe, France, on Aug. 19.

May this issue make a modest contribution to those expressions of our collective memory. L

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U.S. Postmasters’ Information United States: Legion Magazine, USPS 000-117, ISSN 1209-4331, published six times per year (January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October, November/December).

Published by Canvet Publications, 866 Humboldt Pkwy., Buffalo, NY 14211-1218. Periodicals postage paid at Buffalo, NY. The annual subscription rate is $9.49 Cdn. The single copy price is $5.95 Cdn. plus shipping and handling. Circulation records are maintained at Adrienne and Associates, 866 Humboldt Pkwy., Buffalo, NY 14211-1218. U.S. Postmasters send covers only and address changes to Legion Magazine, PO Box 55, Niagara Falls, NY 14304.

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Subscribe now at legionmagazine.com/subscribe or call 613-591-0116 We acknowledge the financial support of the Govern­ment of Canada, through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF), for our publishing activities.

On occasion, we make our direct subscriber list available to carefully screened companies whose product or services we feel would be of interest to our subscribers. If you would rather not receive such offers, please state this request, along with your full name and address, and e-mail magazine@legion.ca or write to Legion Magazine, 86 Aird Place, Kanata ON K2L 0A1 or phone 613-591-0116.

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JULY/AUGUST 2017 > legionmagazine.com

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LETTERS

Rifle was of interest

I

read with interest “Canada’s First Foreign War” (May/June). Of particular interest was the photo of the Boer fighters on the cover and inside.

The two Boer fighters front and centre in the photo are both armed with Lee-Enfield Mk I rifles, which would suggest that they had both seen action and had successfully engaged either British or Canadian troops.

When I was 16 years old, a LeeEnfield Mk I was my first full-bore rifle, which I purchased for $15.

RAY ELLISTON, APPLETON, ONT.

Comments can be sent to: Letters, Legion Magazine, 86 Aird Place, Kanata, ON K2L 0A1 or e-mailed to: magazine@ legion.ca

Lancaster memories One of my fondest memories of early childhood was when my father put me on his shoulders to show me the ferry flights of hundreds of bombers, fighters and yellow training planes, all in Vic formations on their final flight to a storage area for disposal. A few years later, I had my first encounter with a Lancaster. Dad and I were in his small workshop one cold, calm morning when we heard a thunderous roar approaching from the north. It passed so close I swear I

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could see the pilot. The sound from those engines was unforgettable.

After reading “Museum marks air gunner’s place in history”

by Stephen J. Thorne (January/ February), one must wonder why we, as a nation, don’t restore the Greenwood and Nanton, Alta., Lancasters to airworthy condition and fly all three aircraft on a crosscountry tour to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation.

RONALD KENNEDY, SIMPSON, SASK.

Heroic work appreciated I was delighted to read of the heroic work of the French Resistance during the Second World War (“Hush-hush heroes,” March/ April). My husband Robert was one of the many evaders hidden by French patriots when his Lancaster was shot down over Normandy in 1944.

Immediately after the war, the Air Ministry in England organized the Royal Air Force Escaping Society (RAFES) with the purpose of locating French

partisans who had hidden airmen or organized escape routes to get them back to England. Branches of RAFES were organized in Canada and Australia as well.

Every year, the Canadian group invited four or five of their helpers to an all-expenses-paid two-week trip to Canada to the annual meeting—in gratitude to those who risked so much.

MARION SHERIDAN, WOODSTOCK, ONT.

Enjoyed special publications All involved in the writing, editing and publishing of the series of informative books on Canada’s military and other heritage, such as O Canada, are to be congratulated. I have three other special interest publications—The Somme, Vimy and The Fight for Italy (where I served and, as a result, am a proud D-Day Dodger).

Besides being involved in this series of books, you are consistently producing the excellent Legion Magazine.

WILLIAM NICHOLSON, LANGLEY, B.C.

Corrections The March/April “O Canada” column states that Michael Mountain Horse was among the Canadian troops who attacked Vimy Ridge. This is incorrect: he was at Vimy, but not until after the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

The article also says he marked captured German artillery with designs of the Blackfoot Confederacy. He did, but not at Vimy. This occurred in the Battle of Amiens in August 1918. He was with the 191st Battalion.

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle took place in 1915, not 1914 (“On this date” March/April). L

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CHANGES TO MEMBER BENEFITS PACKAGE Effective May 15, 2017, Starkey Labs Canada Co. will no longer be a partner in The Royal Canadian Legion (RCL) Member Benefits Package (MBP).

Any member who purchases products from them will no longer receive The RCL MBP discount.

The other partners are Medipac Travel Insurance, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Best Western International,

IRIS Eyeware, SimplyConnect, Canadian Safe Step Walk-In Tubs, Revera Inc., Arbor Memorial Services Inc., Philips Lifeline Canada and MBNA Canada Bank. Look for their listing on page 6 of this issue and for more information and links to savings please check them out at https://legionmagazine.com/ en/member-benefits-package/

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SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending for Legion Magazine @PhotoEdCanada Tweeted: @Legion_Magazine Don’t be sorry—you are awesome!!! Wow! Amazing design/die-cut goodness! @ejmma Tweeted: I picked up my copy of @Legion_Magazine #VimyRidge #Vimy100 #LestWeForget Thank you for continuing their honour!

Soldier On / Sans Limites This week’s edition of “Military Health Matters” from Legion Magazine comes in time, appropriately, for the start of #MentalHealthWeek If you need help, seek care. Read #SoldierOn member Dan Mather’s stirring story of illness and survival. Shared “Reclaiming his life.”

Andy Clark Very nice piece and proud to hear Shatner quote my grandfather Lt. Gregory Clark regarding this battle.

He served with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry at Vimy. Comment on Military Moments | Battle of Vimy Ridge video. @Legion_Magazine We were at the MagNet 2017 conference in April representing Legion Magazine and Canada’s Ultimate Story! @InvictusToronto Very moving! #IG2017 #IAM #InvictusGames Tweeted Legion Magazine’s “The wounded.”

@YourMorning You haven’t heard the story of #VimyRidge until you’ve listened to @WilliamShatner tell it. Tweeted Military Moments | Battle of Vimy Ridge video. @RoyalCdnLegion From wounded veteran struggling with physical and mental wounds to @InvictusToronto athlete. Read his story. Tweeted Legion Magazine’s “Defeating two big ills.”

Naz C McLawrence Cheers to the queen! #QueensBirthday Comment on Legion Magazine’s Royals special issue posted for the Queen’s 91st birthday.

Follow Legion Magazine on social media to keep up to date with the latest

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2017-05-25 3:24 PM

ON THIS DATE

July 2017

1 July 1867 The first four provinces enter Confederation.

2 July 1940 HMCS St. Laurent rescues 861 German and Italian PoWs from a torpedoed ship bound for Canada.

8 July 1944 The Highland Light Infantry liberates Buron, France.

9 July 1945 A total eclipse of the sun is photographed from an RCAF Spitfire.

10 July 1943 The 1st Canadian Infantry Division lands with the Allies in Sicily.

11 July 1916 Minister of Militia Sam Hughes reviews troops at Camp Borden, Ont.

3 July 1964 Four FLQ terrorists receive eight-year sentences for armed robberies.

4 July 1812 The first American PoWs are received at Melville Island Prison in Halifax.

13 July 1993 Citizens of Lahr, Germany, hold a ceremony to bid Canadians farewell, as CFB Lahr closes after 42 years of NATO service.

5 July 1950 HMC ships Cayuga, Athabaskan and Sioux depart for Korea.

14-17 July 1916 Battle of Bazentin Ridge, part of the Somme offensive in France.

6 July 2012 CFB Borden gets its first female base commander, Col. Tammy Harris.

7 July 2011 Canada hands over command of Kandahar, Afghanistan, base to the U.S.

10

12 July 1943 RCAF Beaufighter pilot FO J.H. Turnbull shoots down three bombers over Sicily.

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15 July 2015 Lt.-Col. Jill Bishop takes over command of No. 400 Tactical Helicopter Squadron at CFB Borden in Ontario.

16 July 1945 Canadian uranium is used in the detonation of the first atomic bomb.

17 July 1812 British forces capture U.S. Fort Mackinac, which was unaware war had been declared.

18 July 1960 RCAF drops food supplies to the UN contingent in the Congo during a civil war.

19 July 1943 HMCS Huron begins 20 years of service with the Royal Canadian Navy.

20 July 1871 British Columbia joins Confederation, on the promise of a rail link and representation in Parliament.

20-21 July 1944 Calgary Highlanders are in an all-night firefight near Verrières Ridge in France.

LAC; RCAF; UN Multimedia; Wikimedia

2017-05-25 1:58 PM

July 22 July 1940 The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan begins training students.

30 July 1918 The first of 100,000 Canadian troops begin congregating for the Battle of Amiens in France.

31 July 1942 The Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service is founded, attracts 6,500 by 1945.

23 July 1916 The Battle of Pozières Ridge, also part of the Somme offensive, begins in France.

24 July 1927 The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing is inaugurated in Ypres, Belgium.

25 July 1943 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is ousted.

26 July 1758 The French fortress at Louisbourg surrenders to the British.

27 July 1953 The Korea Armistice Agreement is signed.

28 July 1884 The Settlers’ Union in Prince Albert, Sask., issues a manifesto of grievances; the Northwest Rebellion heats up.

29 July 1982 The CF-18 Hornet reaches Mach 1.6 on its first test flight in St. Louis, Mo.

AUGUST On This Date Events Visit legionmagazine.com. The items will appear August 1. Here’s a taste of what to expect.

19 August 1942 Canada suffers more than 3,000 casualties in the disastrous Dieppe raid.

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MILITARY HEALTH MATTERS

By Sharon Adams

More study needed on medical marijuana

M

ore and more veterans with PTSD are seeking relief through medical marijuana. Veterans report it reduces sleeplessness, alleviates pain, diminishes intrusive memories and flashbacks, curtails anxiety and improves sex drive and appetite.

Because it was illegal for so long, medical marijuana research is

relatively sparse, even though its medical use dates back millennia. And research into veterans’ use of marijuana is even more rare.

Advocates point out that veterans with PTSD symptoms who switch to medical marijuana usually do so when the prescribed psychoactive drugs they are on prove to be ineffective or are causing side effects. Some veterans advocates worry about health risks and addiction; others claim it masks symptoms rather than treating the disorder. Some critics have difficulty separating potheads seeking a recreational high from people prescribed medical marijuana to control medically documented symptoms.

Many doctors are reluctant to

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prescribe it due to lack of peerreviewed research demonstrating effectiveness, identifying side effects and interactions, and assigning appropriate dosages, according to a Canadian Medical Association spokesperson.

“Any treatment can have side effects, and medical marijuana should be considered with the same care and prudence that we give other treatments. This cannot happen without adequate research and evidence,” said Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent, adding that more research would also reduce the stigma for veterans using medical marijuana.

Two groundbreaking studies are about to add to the knowledge base of veterans’ use as a therapy for PTSD. A two-phase, placebo-controlled study involving five U.S. universities and research institutions will assess four strains of marijuana in managing veterans’ symptoms.

One aim is to determine if it alleviates or masks PTSD symptoms.

A randomized controlled trial is needed to determine this distinction, says principal investigator Sue Sisley of the Scottsdale Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.

Veterans are involved in a study by the University of British Columbia and licensed marijuana producer Tilray, comparing a placebo and two potencies of medical marijuana in managing PTSD symptoms.

“This trial will allow us to build on the anecdotal evidence supporting the potential use of medical cannabis to treat PTSD,” said principal investigator Zach Walsh, an associate professor in Kelowna.

Many questions remain. For example, of the various strains with differing concentrations of active ingredients, which is best for what symptoms?

Medical marijuana can be smoked or vaporized, ingested in a pill, incorporated into food, absorbed from transdermal patches, taken as oil drops or tinctures. Which

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Is it the same for everyone? What are the risks of long-term use?

Much of the research so far has been done on animals—is it applicable to humans? And does research on people using medical marijuana for other medical conditions apply to people with PTSD? For instance, is the dosage effective in mitigating the unpleasant side effects of cancer treatment adequate for PTSD symptoms?

It was only in the 1990s that researchers uncovered why marijuana has such an effect on humans, with the isolation of the neurotransmitter anandamide (AEA). Brain cells are studded with receptors shaped for specific neurotransmitters, each fitting into its receptor like a key in a lock, turning some process on or off. AEA works like a volume-control knob on its receptors in the brain, which are located in areas associated with pleasure and pain, sleep and mood, memory and forgetfulness, and appetite.

Nicknamed “the bliss molecule” from the Sanskrit word ananda, meaning joy, bliss or delight, AEA intensifies happiness and such

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pleasures as eating. It is involved in consolidating memories to allow for learning, and in forgetting memories no longer relevant. It plays a role in releasing neurotransmitters influencing mood and pleasure.

(Some believe AEA found in dark chocolate explains the intense enjoyment some derive from the treat.)

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), marijuana’s most common active ingredient, is similar in shape and fits into AEA receptors in brain cells.

But while AEA dissipates quickly, THC sticks around longer. THC is responsible for the “high” sought by recreational users, by spiking the release of dopamine and serotonin, the neurotransmitters affecting mood stabilization and pleasure.

PET scans of volunteers in a 2013 study revealed people with PTSD have more AEA receptors in their brains—particularly in regions associated with fear and anxiety— but lower concentrations of AEA. But does this cause or result from PTSD? Other research has shown marijuana use reduces AEA receptors—in some regions up to 20 per cent with chronic use, though the effect begins to reverse after participants stop using. This could explain why marijuana reduces anxiety for some and induces it in others.

But it also raises questions about long-term use affecting the body’s ability to produce or use AEA. Given the state of research now, it will be years yet before we have definitive answers to some questions about veterans’ use of medical marijuana. L

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2017-05-25 2:00 PM

FRONT LINES

T

By Stephen J.Thorne

General takes a new approach

he chief of the defence staff has a theory: happy retirees make for more and better recruits.

Appearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, General Jonathan Vance said recruitment, training and treatment of Canadian Armed Forces personnel is “at a turning point.” It has to be.

“I think it’s a truism that if you leave well, content, satisfied and looking back on your career,” he said, “then you will provide more of a positive reinforcement to those who may wish to join.

“If people don’t think that they’re being treated well, that we are not looking after them, then they won’t come and work for us and they won’t willingly risk their lives. If we

cannot attract and retain the talent we need, then we won’t have success on operations. It’s that simple.”

Treating military retirees right is also the right thing to do, he added.

“If our policies aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is to properly support and administer those people who defend our country, then the policies need to change and we’re going to change them.”

Canada has faced plenty of criticism over how it treats its veterans.

Aside from the issues of longterm compensation for the ill and injured, retiring military members have been facing crippling delays in the transition between their military paycheques and their pensions.

This came to a head with the story of retired air force sergeant

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Tricia Beauchamp, a two-time cancer survivor and single mother who was evicted from her home while she was fighting with bureaucrats for her military severance, pensions and benefits.

Her case highlighted a military pension backlog that CBC reported peaked at some 13,000 files last year and prompted a flood of complaints.

Vance told the Conference of Defence Associations’ annual symposium in February that he planned to change the way military careers are managed and concluded. Now he appears to be putting meat on the bones of that promise.

“When I hear stories from my people about how they’ve gone for weeks or even months without the pension they’ve earned through their service, well, senators, disappointed doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel,” he said.

“DND, the Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs are working on converging these two systems.

We have direction and intent from both of our ministers to close the seams and that’s what we will do.”

Promises, promises. Forgive jaded veterans and prospective retirees if they claim to have heard it all before. But there are a couple of reasons why, this time, the promises to improve their collective lot might be different.

Cpl. Michael MacIsaac/Canadian Forces Support Unit (Ottawa)

DND

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General Jonathan Vance addresses the audience during a progress report on Operation Honour in August 2016.

Between his Operation Honour initiative aimed at eliminating sexual harassment, and efforts to change the way the CAF recruits and treats personnel, Vance has made revamping military human resources his primary mission, the one area in which he can leave a legacy.

He wasn’t given much of an option. The federal government has deferred spending on military equipment, ensuring that any significant changes in defence capability are years away, well beyond his reach.

With the traditional three-year window of his tenure already more than half closed, Vance has limited time to achieve the impact he wants.

Veterans’ rights have received a lot of lip service over the past century—more, some argue, than concrete action. Without a constant presence in the public spotlight, it is relatively easy for successive

governments to sweep veterans’ issues under the rug or defer them to another day. Governments change; news comes and goes; priorities ebb and flow; policies shift.

But recruitment—fundamental to a viable military—is barely keeping pace with attrition, and women aren’t enlisting in the numbers anticipated. And those may just be the incentives needed to turn Vance’s proposals into reality.

In March, the federal government budgeted $624 million more for veterans’ programs over the next five years, most of it aimed at easing outgoing soldiers’ transitions to civilian life.

Vance told the senators he is now “professionalizing” the system by which members are retired, closing gaps between responsible departments and agencies, and streamlining the process.

He is phasing out the Joint Personnel Support Unit, which now

performs many discharge functions after it was created during the Afghanistan war to address the needs of ill and injured soldiers. And he is reviving the Forces’ defunct personnel administration branch.

“From the moment one of my service members is ready to retire or must medically retire, this [new] unit will have them well in hand,” said the general. “And if an individual member’s situation doesn’t fit the policy, then we’ll work with that member and we’ll customize the solution to that individual.

“This support will vastly improve what our joint personnel support unit provides to our ill, injured and wounded members now, but it will do the same for all retiring members.”

Vance has a little more than a year left to make lasting change.

Veterans will be happy or not with his legacy. Governments will measure it by the numbers. L

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2017-05-25 2:01 PM

EYE ON DEFENCE

By David J. Bercuson

No boost for defence spending Finance Minister Bill Morneau (left) is joined by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before delivering the 2017 budget speech.

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hen Finance Minister Bill Morneau delivered the Liberal government’s 2017-18 budget in March, the surprise to many observers (and incurable optimists) was that there was, fundamentally, nothing new for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. Despite some fuzzy hints from the defence minister and friendly meetings between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump that suggested a willingness of the government to increase defence readiness, there was nothing. In fact, there was less than nothing.

The Trudeau government removed some $8.5 billion set aside to build defence capital equipment and infrastructure and shifted it from six to about 20 years down the road. The finance minister gave hints that his document may not be the last

word on the defence budget, given the defence review which was expected to be released on June 7.

But clearly, any effort to raise the defence budget will await the fall budget update at the least, if not the next full budget for 2018-19.

Canada has become one of NATO’s lowest contributors to defence spending, not only with respect to its NATO obligations, but also to North American defence spending and international expeditions to prevent war, such as significant UN missions. As of May, the government had still not selected a robust UN mission to join, although it announced last year that it would do so.

Rather than complain that Canadian governments almost always disappoint the military and Canadian citizens who want an adequate military, I’m going to try to explain some hard realities about Canadian defence.

Adam Scotti/Office of the Prime Minister

2017-05-26 3:05 PM

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There is no solid constituency for increased defence spending.

An Angus Reid Institute poll released before the budget revealed that although a slim majority of Canadians felt NATO countries should match their defence spending to two per cent of their GDP, many fewer Canadians favoured doing so within Canada.

That should not be surprising.

Despite terror attacks, wars against terrorist groups and dangers of war in far-off places, Canadians feel very safe. In 1924, Canadian Senator Raoul Dandurand declared that Canadians “live in a fireproof house, far from inflammable materials” and most Canadians today would probably agree with him. The tragic reality is that within 15 years of his declaration, Canada was in a total war alongside its partners in the greatest military conflict in history. With the exception of the two world wars, Canadians feel safe because Canada is, fundamentally, safe.

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE TWO WORLD WARS, CANADIANS FEEL SAFE BECAUSE CANADA IS, FUNDAMENTALLY, SAFE. Short of actual war, Canada’s defence policy is to send troops, or planes, or ships, simply to be there. Where is there? Wherever the Canadian government believes it is important to wave the Maple Leaf for whatever intangible (though sometimes tangible) result that Canada can earn. We’ve heard it all before: a seat at the table; a chance to make our voice heard when key international

decisions are being made; a chance to convince our allies to “take us seriously” after wars end and we played a role, important or not, in an allied victory.

That was not true of the two world wars, but it has been true almost ever since. From where comes the physical threat to Canadian territory today? From Russia, which is building a formal military presence on its side of the Arctic Ocean? Is it going to seize islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago? Nonsense.

Or from China, which pokes the odd Arctic research vessel into the Arctic Ocean? China has far more pressing problems in the South China Sea, East China Sea and, possibly, the Indian Ocean.

Canada takes part in military actions when Canadians get their blood up—such as after 9/11—or when we believe there is something to gain from joining our traditional allies.

We have a token military because Ottawa always has “better” things to spend its money on and doesn’t really believe Canada can make a meaningful contribution to diplomatic/military crises anywhere.

The current government’s policy of sending small packets of Canadian military resources to trouble spots allows it to answer complaints about Canadian defence spending the same way: “Don’t look at how much we spend; look at what we accomplish with the scarce dollars we do spend.”

It is possible to forecast what the defence review will actually recommend and it’s hard to expect any deviation from decades of Canadian defence policy spending. In fact, the only real threat to our national sovereignty will come when Washington washes its hands of our feeble effort and begins to take over virtually the entire role of North American defence. As Winston Churchill once said, everyone has an armed force–its own or someone else’s. L

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2017-05-25 4:03 PM

Canada at 150 A selective look back at the people and events that made us

By Don Gillmor

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Aboriginal peoples were justifiably wary of the arrival of European explorers. Samuel de Champlain established the Quebec colony in 1608; his ship was the Don-de-Dieu (gift of God).

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2017-05-25 3:09 PM

C

ANADA WAS FORMED Canada’s most eloquent politician and had by a combination of hope and fought the British in the 1837 Rebellion— fear; hope that something Brown referred to him as “that damnable great could be created in the little French Canadian.” Thomas D’Arcy wilderness, and fear of American imperialMcGee was an Irish Catholic who once ism and Fenian raiders. At 150, we are no described himself as a “Traitor to the longer young, but compared to our aging British Government.” parents (England is 1,146 years old, if you These unlikely allies arrived in count Alfred the Great as its first king, Charlottetown in September 1864 to conFrance a creaky 1,531), we remain youthful. vince the Atlantic colonies to join their bold When we look back at our plan of creating a country. shared mythologies—the They were armed with their Most voters people, politics and events considerable eloquence and “would rather that made Canada, we $13,000 worth of champagne. have a drunken After a week of speeches, the see heroism, occasional chaos and the overcomparty moved to Quebec and John A. ing of long odds, starting weeks of negotiation, bullyMacdonald with Confederation. ing and drinking. By the end than a sober Confederation brought of the process, a constitution together four men who George Brown.” was drafted, most of it by were divided by religious, Macdonald. The idea was political, linguistic and regional animosisold to the people in the colonies using the ties. John A. Macdonald dominated Upper fear of Fenian raiders and an imperialist Canadian politics, a Conservative Scot who America; if they didn’t unite, they would distrusted the English and was often drunk. be overtaken by some foreign evil. On George Brown was the Liberal publisher of March 29, 1867, Queen Victoria signed The Globe, a sober Presbyterian and one of the British North America Act, and on Macdonald’s harshest critics. When he critiJuly 1 the Dominion of Canada was born. cized Macdonald’s drinking, Macdonald The early reviews were mixed. In Halifax, responded that most voters “would rather the British Colonist celebrated the union. have a drunken John A. Macdonald than a “The days of isolation and dwarf-hood are sober George Brown.” Which turned out to past; henceforth we are a united people, be true. George-Étienne Cartier was Lower and the greatness of each goes to swell the

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G.A. Reid/LAC/C-011015; LAC/C000733

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Delegates from Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island met in Charlottetown to discuss Confederation in September 1864.

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2017-05-25 3:09 PM

greatness of the whole.” The Morning Chronicle was less thrilled. “Died! Last night Borders shift, at 12 o’clock, the free and populations grow enlightened Province of Scotia.” An effigy and become more Nova of Charles Tupper, the diverse. Power Nova Scotia premier who had supported Confederation, changes hands, was burned on the watershaping the front, along with a live rat. nation. Countries D’Arcy McGee eloquently defended Tupper in what aren’t static. would be his last speech in the House of Commons.

When he walked home at 1 a.m., he was followed Canada’s bestby a suspected Fenian named Patrick known assassinaJames Whelan. When McGee reached tion victim, the boarding house of one Mrs. Trotter, Irish-Canadian where he was staying, Whelan shot him politician Thomas in the head, killing him instantly.

D’Arcy McGee The country was born in tentative was shot on alliances, persistent hangovers, negotiaApril 7, 1868. tion and blood. So, a difficult birth.

A Fenian sympathizer hanged for it.

Ships from the Hudson’s Bay Company anchored in Hudson Strait in 1819 to barter with Inuit for blubber and bladders of oil.

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But countries aren’t really born. They evolve; borders shift, populations grow and become more diverse. Power changes hands, shaping the nation.

Countries aren’t static.

The country that was proclaimed in 1867 had always existed in some form.

The aboriginal peoples had been here for thousands of years. Leif Erikson visited briefly around 1000 AD. Five centuries later, the Europeans began to arrive in earnest—John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Humphrey Gilbert, Martin Frobisher. They all held a different version of what Canada was (China, a source of gold, a route to India), though it would be years before anyone considered what it could be.

Initially, the land offered little more than resources, specifically beaver pelts.

The beaver hat was all the rage in Europe because of its strength and malleability, and this created a thriving fur trade. In the 1840s however, Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria, began wearing a silk hat, which started a new trend. Silk was cheaper and became more stylish, and the beaver hat fashion died, as all fashions do.

But the fur trade did more than enrich a handful of investors; it led to the exploration and mapping of the West.

Its greatest cartographer was David Thompson, who worked for both the Hudson’s Bay Company and later, its rival, the North West Company. During his life, he walked and canoed more than 80,000 kilometres, mapping not just the

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land, but the flora and fauna, as well as the languages and customs of the First Nations. He married a Métis woman, Charlotte Small, and she and their children often accompanied Thompson on his travels. He was called “the greatest land geographer who ever lived,” and like many geniuses, he died in poverty and obscurity.

The West was owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and in 1869—under pressure from Great Britain which feared the United States would try to claim it—the company reluctantly sold the vast territory to Canada for $1.5 million. No thought had been given to the inhabitants.

“No explanation it appears has been made of the arrangement by which the country is to be handed over,” Macdonald told Cartier. “All those poor people know is that Canada has bought the country from the Hudson’s Bay Company and that they are handed over like a flock of sheep to us.”

They weren’t sheep. Western First Nations had seen their numbers decrease due to smallpox, whisky and the ongoing decimation of the buffalo, but they were still numerous and a potential military threat. To the south, the U.S. government was fighting vicious wars with the native Americans, and Macdonald hoped to avoid similar bloodshed in Canada. He was worried that some of them might join the Métis leader Louis Riel and there could be war.

Two of the strongest Plains Indian chiefs, Big Bear, leader of the Cree, and Crowfoot, representing the Blackfoot, had gone south to Montana, chasing the last of the buffalo.

There they found Riel, who had been teaching school near Fort Carrol since his release from a mental asylum in Beauport, Que., in 1878.

Riel tried to convince them to join his planned rebellion, telling them the government wouldn’t honour the treaties. This turned out to be true, although neither chief joined Riel.

Others did, however. When Riel returned to Canada, it was like Moses coming down from the mountain, and he did exhibit flashes of the religious mania that had driven him to the asylum. He also had a legitimate grievance and a receptive audience. John A. Macdonald, who was something of an expert on charisma, was wary of Riel’s and what it could lead to.

D. Hurley/LAC/C-015369; R. Hood/LAC/C-040364; Wikimedia; LAC/PA-012854

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Hats of felted beaver fur were de rigueur among the fashionable, including these gentlemen in Boise City, Idaho, in 1886.

The provisional government of the Métis Nation convened in Manitoba in 1870. Louis Riel is in the centre row, third from left.

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From nowhere we came; into nowhere we go.

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in winter time.

It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

—C rowfoot, the most powerful

Plains chief, on his deathbed in 1890

Crowfoot, chief of the Siksika First Nation, addressed Governor General John Campbell during a powwow at Blackfoot Crossing on the Bow River in 1881.

Lord Donald A. Smith hammered the last spike to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway near Craigellachie, B.C., on Nov. 7, 1885.

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Macdonald had been having trouble raising the money and support he needed for his idea of a transcontinental railway.

Faced with two crises, he used one to solve the other. The railway was necessary, he argued, to get troops to the West to put down Riel’s simmering rebellion.

When the rebellion was quelled and Riel captured, there was political pressure from English Canada to hang him for treason. At the time, treason wasn’t a hanging offence, so Macdonald and his justice minister invoked a British law from 1342 and charged him with high treason, which did carry the death penalty. The trial was a travesty, a foregone conclusion, and Riel was hanged. He became a martyr, and further divided the country, pitting First Nations and Métis against the

‘

government, Protestants against Catholics, and French Canada against English.

But Macdonald got his railroad, that symbol of unity and perseverance. In 1886, he boarded the first transcontinental train, and in the Alberta foothills he met with Crowfoot, who told him, “My chiefs fear for their children, that food would not be given them. I ask you Sir John to help banish these fears.” The Plains people had seen the treaty promises unfulfilled and many of them starved. Macdonald gave Crowfoot a new suit, and William Van Horne gave him a lifetime pass for the CPR. Some of Crowfoot’s children did in fact starve. Of his 12 children, only four made it to adulthood, then they succumbed to tuberculosis or starvation. In 1890, Crowfoot himself lay dying of tuberculosis in a tent near Gleichen, Alta. Among those present was his mother, almost 100

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years old, witness to all the dismal changes the century had brought to her people.

Little more than a year later, Macdonald died. Intemperate, energetic, articulate and endlessly political, Macdonald personified the new country in many of its graces and some of its sins. He saw the demise of a native way of life and vanquished his enemy Riel, but more than a century later, those ghosts remain vivid and potent.

Now the country was bound by the railway, but there was still the problem of populating the Prairies. This Herculean task fell to Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. It was Laurier who announced in 1904 that “the twentieth century shall be the century of Canada.”

His prediction was off by a hundred years, but his optimism was contagious. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “sunny ways” philosophy of governing was taken from Laurier, who coined the phrase.

Laurier was the first francophone prime minister, a man of tremendous charm and political skill. The country’s linguistic divide narrowed slightly under his leadership; some anglophones thought him

too French, while certain francophones felt he was too British—a perfect balance for Canada’s linguistic complexities.

Canada had abundant natural resources, but it needed people to exploit them. Given the challenge of bringing immigrants to farm the Prairies, Sifton first tried to attract British and Americans. When they weren’t enough, he widened the search to include Poles, Finns, Icelanders and Ukrainians. He sent agents to Europe to spread the word, offered free land and distributed more than a million pamphlets extolling the virtues of the Canadian West. The pamphlets were poetic (“building Jerusalem in this pleasant land”) and often misleading (“the frontier of Manitoba is about the same latitude as Paris”), but they were effective.

During Sifton’s tenure, the population of the West went from 300,000 to 1.5 million. This policy of aggressively courting immigrants ended abruptly in 1914 when 352 immigrants from Punjab, British India, aboard the Komagata Maru were turned away from Vancouver harbour. The country—and much of the world—was mired in an economic depression, and our largesse was at an end.

S.P. Hall/LAC/C-121918; LAC/C-003693; LAC/PA-034015; LAC/C-000688

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The Japanese steamship Komagata Maru carried 376 Indian passengers with hopes of immigrating to Canada in 1914.

Twenty-four were admitted, but 352 were forced to return to India under Canadian exclusion laws.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier was Canada’s first francophone prime minister.

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A truckload of "Byng Boys"—named for LieutenantGeneral Julian Byng, commander of the Canadian Corps in April 1917— returned victorious from Vimy Ridge.

Medical officer John McCrae composed “In Flanders Fields” in 1915.

Canadian soldiers trained with gas masks known as PH helmets (for phenate and hexamine) at Shorncliffe Army Camp in Kent, England, in 1917.

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In Europe, a greater danger loomed. On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. As a result, Austria declared war on Serbia, Russia mobilized, and Germany declared war on Russia and France.

Germany invaded neutral Belgium, which drew Britain into the mess; on August 4, it too was at war.

As a colony, we were automatically at war when Britain was. Tens of thousands enlisted, the majority of them British-born Canadians. There remained a romantic view of war. One of the people who had a prescient view of what was coming was John McCrae, who wrote to a friend, “It will be a terrible war.” McCrae had seen the carnage and inhumanity of the Boer War, and expected worse for this one. He would be proved right.

On April 22, 1915, it was clear that this war wouldn’t be like those that had preceded it. At Ypres in Belgium, a heavy cloud of chlorine gas invaded the Allied trenches; the age of chemical warfare had begun. The battle resulted in more than 6,000 Canadian casualties. It was here McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields.”

“The general impression in my mind is of a nightmare,” McCrae wrote to his mother. “We have been in the most bitter of fights…gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for 60 seconds.… And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way.” McCrae was reassigned to a hospital on the northern coast of France, and this is where he died.

At home, the war drew new divisions. The German and Ukrainian immigrants who had been wooed were now viewed with suspicion.

“Enemy aliens” were forced to register, and by the end of the war, there were 80,000 of them.

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The war intensified, and in 1916 there came the horrors of the Somme.

In that five-month battle, the Allies gained 13 kilometres of decimated land, and suffered 623,907 casualties. The Germans lost 660,000 and termed it das Blutbad (the bloodbath). Any remaining sense of romance about war vanished.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 also took a toll (3,598 Canadians killed and 7,004 wounded) but it was seen as a great Canadian victory, the battle that moved Canada away from colonial status toward nationhood. But it wasn’t enough to unite the country on the issue of conscription. Francophones argued that it wasn’t their war, and rural anglophones said they needed their sons to work the farms.

Aboriginals were the most willing to fight, oddly, given their history of neglect and oppression; of the 11,000 eligible to fight, a third signed up, a proportion that was twice the national average. When the war ended, on Nov. 11, 1918, there was tremendous relief, but new fault lines had formed in the country.

Thousands of veterans returned home, expecting a reward for their sacrifice. At the very least, they expected jobs. Instead, war factories were shutting down and there was unemployment, inflation and a housing shortage. The unrest resulted in the Winnipeg

DND/LAC/PA-001270; Wikimedia; C.M. Johnston/LAC/PA-056171; LAC/PA-183773; Glenbow Museum/NA-4548-5; Winnipeg Free Press

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Compounding the homecoming problems was the f lu pandemic, which killed more people than the war had.

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General Strike in the spring of 1919, which culminated in “Bloody Saturday,” when two strikers were killed in a Winnipeg demonstration. Compounding the homecoming problems was the flu pandemic, which killed more people than the war had.

The 1920s offered relief, but were followed by the desolation of the Dirty Thirties. The stock market crash and the Dust Bowl on the Prairies combined to produce the Great Depression, with unemployment reaching 27 per cent.

William Lyon Mackenzie King was prime minister in 1935, at the height of the Depression, a dull, reliable man, a lifelong bachelor with few friends and strong political instincts. He was our longest-serving prime minister and likely our oddest, regularly communicating with the spirit world—talking to his deceased mother, his dead dog, Philip the Apostle and Leonardo da Vinci, among others.

As the Depression dragged on, there was

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a new worry: the growing militarization of Germany. In 1937, King went to Germany to assess the situation for himself. Like Britain’s Neville Chamberlain, he came back believing peace was at hand. He also thought Hitler was a fellow spiritualist who talked to his dead mother. “I believe that the world will yet come to see a very great man—mystic, in Hitler,” King wrote in his journal.

What the world saw was the imperialist ambitions of a nationalist fanatic, and on Sept. 10, 1939, Canada was once more at war. We were ill-prepared—the army largely untrained and its equipment outdated—and the Second World War once more raised the divisive issue of conscription. King wasn’t an inspirational leader; in many ways, he was the opposite of Winston Churchill, whose fiery speeches galvanized Britain.

But King had a gift for finding a middle way (“Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary”) and had a steady, if wildly eccentric, hand on the tiller.

Canadians suffered the disaster of Dieppe; 5,000 Canadians landed, and within hours there were 3,367 casualties. It was intended as an opportunity to test amphibious equipment and invasion strategies. After that, there was the bloody Italian campaign and the liberation of Holland. In the end, Canada once more distinguished itself in battle.

In 1918, Alberta’s Provincial Board of Health issued this poster warning of the influenza epidemic.

Troops wounded in Operation Jubilee, the 1942 Allied raid on Germanoccupied Dieppe, France, were rescued by navy ships in the English Channel.

Strikers overturned a streetcar in front of city hall in the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919.

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Richard’s suspension was seen by francophones as one more example of English oppression.

It has been said that Canada is separated by language and geography and held together by hockey. On March 17, 1955, these ideas came together in the Richard Riot in Montreal. In a game against the hated Boston Bruins, the beloved Canadiens star Maurice “Rocket” Richard retaliated against a high stick by breaking his stick over his opponent.

When a linesman intervened, Richard punched him, knocking him unconscious.

He was suspended for the rest of the season by league president Clarence Campbell.

When Campbell showed up at the Forum in Montreal for the next game, he was pelted with vegetables and punched by a fan. The game was suspended and fans rioted in the streets, resulting in 37 injuries and 100 arrests. Richard’s suspension was seen by francophones as one more example of English oppression, and the Richard Riot was viewed as a precursor to the Quiet Revolution that gathered force a few years later.

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Maurice “Rocket” Richard was the first NHL player to score 50 goals in one season, in 1944-45.

John Diefenbaker was Canada’s 13th prime minister, from 1957 to 1963.

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Canada was formed, to a degree, in opposition to the Americans.

They became our most trusted ally and remain our biggest worry, as they periodically lurch between their highest ideals and lowest instincts.

Our long-running relationship is given

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to periodical flare-ups and personal antagonisms. The relationship between Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and American President John F. Kennedy was rocky.

The aging Prairie populist had nothing in common with the young charismatic eastern Brahmin. Diefenbaker thought Kennedy was shallow and privileged; Kennedy referred to Dief as an “SOB” in a memo.

This dysfunctional relationship came to a head over the threat of nuclear war. Canada was committed to the North American Air Defence agreement, which called for 56 Bomarc missiles armed with nuclear warheads to be stationed on Canadian soil.

Diefenbaker decided not to allow nuclear warheads in the country at a time when the Cold War was heating up, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world was held in thrall for two tense weeks. Within a year, Diefenbaker, who now looked, and occasionally sounded, like an addled prophet, was washed away by the powerful riptide of the 1960s, replaced by Lester Pearson’s Liberals.

Pearson had already made his mark on the global stage with his plan to defuse the Suez Crisis. When Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser seized control of the canal, Israel immediately invaded and British and French planes bombed Egyptian airfields. The Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev backed Nassar, threatening nuclear attacks if France and Britain didn’t withdraw. Again, the world was on the brink of war.

Pearson proposed that the French and British withdraw, replaced by a United Nations force that would stabilize the situation. It was the first peacekeeping force, a concept that came to define Canada’s military role in successive decades.

LAC/MIKAN-4871465; G. Lunney/LAC/C-006779

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In 1968, Pierre Trudeau When we look back, took over the leadership of there have been the Liberals and was elected in the era when television great changes, was having an impact on even though much politics. Americans had chosen Kennedy’s cool grace would be familiar over Richard Nixon’s sweaty to the Fathers furtive presence during the first televised presidential of Confederation. debate. Now Canadians were given the choice between Robert Stanfield’s earnest gawkiness or Trudeau’s hip persona. The result was Trudeaumania. zeal and strident nationalism. First nations In 1980, Trudeau was faced with the treaties are still being negotiated, and existential threat of Quebec’s sovereignty apologies issued for past wrongs. The West referendum. He and the country weathered experiences periodic alienation, Quebec that crisis with a last-minute victory, despite is occasionally aloof, and the Maritimes early polls showing a majority of Quebecers often feel neglected. We are constantly would vote to leave. Trudeau alienated reminded that democracy is a process, that Quebec sovereignists with his tough talk, nationhood isn’t to be taken for granted. and that same year he angered Westerners There is much to cheer. In 1971, Canada with the introduction of the National Energy was the first country to adopt an official Program. Bumper stickers appeared on multiculturalism policy. It is now one of the Calgary trucks: “Let the Eastern Bastards most multicultural societies in the world, Freeze in the Dark.” National unity, always and one of the safest. In an age when so many a challenge, was especially strained. Yet he countries are erecting barriers, when nationwas our third-longest-serving prime minister, alists are becoming dangerously shrill, next to King and Macdonald. And now his when inequality and intolerance are on the son is prime minister, an unlikely ascent. rise, Canada is a beacon of tolerance and When we look back, there have been great functioning democracy. We still possess changes, even though much would be familthe resources that caught the Old World’s iar to the Fathers of Confederation. Once eye, but now we offer a pluralistic model for more, the Americans represent a threat, the 21st century. In our quiet Canadian way, driven by their president’s protectionist we are sauntering toward greatness. L

It’s Canada’s birthday and we’re celebrating! This instant national bestseller is NOW AVAILABLE in our SHOP. From acclaimed author Don Gillmor and with an introduction by Canada’s own Rick Mercer, O Canada: The history of our home and native land is a visual treasure and celebration of our great country. Order online at legionmagazine.com/shop or call 1-844-602-5737 today! Only $14.95 + tax & shipping

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FACE TO FACE

Should Newfoundland have joined Confederation?

Wayne Johnston says

T

hose Newfoundlanders who voted for Confederation in the 1948 referendums did so for pragmatic, unsentimental reasons. The country, especially that part of it beyond the Avalon Peninsula, was indigent, isolated, poverty-stricken, dependent on the whims of a fickle fishing industry.

Most of these people had never been to Canada, had never met anyone who had been there and did not know anything about it. They could not feel patriotism for a country of which they knew nothing. They voted, understandably, for Canada because to do so, as Joey Smallwood explained to them, might mean some extra money in their pockets from Canada’s social “welfare” programs, including the baby bonus, a stipend from the country awarded on a per-child basis.

NEWFOUNDLAND HAS BECOME THE POOREST PROVINCE IN THE FEDERATION. Most of those who, in the same referendums, voted for a return to independence, did so for patriotic reasons. You can feel patriotic about a country that you know from having lived in it all your life. You can love such a country without glossing over its geographically determined shortcomings. You can be justified in thinking of it as your country. If you happened

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NO

to live in the most prosperous part of that country, as was the case with most of those who voted for independence, your material sacrifice was far less than your isolated countrymen. Small wonder, then, that the vast majority of people from St. John’s voted for a return to independence.

Many other factors were involved in the referendums, far too many to enumerate here. But I’ll say that the question boiled down to patriotism versus pragmatism—and pragmatism won, if just barely.

However, the question “Would Newfoundland be better off if it had never joined Canada?” can only be answered “Yes.” Since joining Canada, Newfoundland has become the poorest province in the federation, chronically so except for a brief boom when oil was selling at more than $100 a barrel. Combining the unemployed, those who no longer look for work, and those on welfare, Newfoundland’s true unemployment rate approaches near-Third World levels. Its hydroelectricity, most of it from Labrador, enriches the province of Quebec and fills the federal coffers while Newfoundland gets next to nothing—in the case of the Churchill Falls and Muskrat Falls hydroelectric projects, and even in that of oil, Newfoundland has had to negotiate with its hands tied by dint of it being part of Canada. In a place as traditionally poor as Newfoundland, there is, or so it seems, only one way to develop a megaproject: give the

natural resource (hydro, oil) away to some foreign country or corporation that can afford to exploit the resource in exchange for short-term jobs building infrastructure.

How has this worked out for Newfoundland? The province has a debt of more than $12 billion, an annual deficit of nearly $2 billion and a crippling annual interest payment that will balloon the debt to more than $20 billion within five years— an unsustainable number. Without a resurgence in oil prices, yet another bankruptcy is a near certainty.

In an independent Newfoundland, the cod fishery, a sustainable, nonpolluting resource, would have been managed by Newfoundlanders, not by federal politicians, scientists and civil servants who allowed foreign freezer trawlers to vacuum our ocean floor for years at a time, destroying the northern cod stocks.

An independent Newfoundland would have a fishery that was viable on every coast of the island and Labrador. It would not be rich, perhaps not as well off as mainland provinces are now—but then, much worse is true of the confederate Newfoundland of today.

An independent Newfoundland would not be a dependent Newfoundland, forever going cap in hand for handouts from the feds and foreign corporations. And independent Newfoundlanders would not have to put up with the mockery, scorn, condescension and bigotry that is inherent in the term Newfie. L

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WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in Goulds, N.L. He is the author of several novels, including The Divine Ryans, Baltimore’s Mansion, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York.

MICHAEL WINTER’s family moved from England to Newfoundland when he was three years old, eventually settling in Corner Brook. His novels include This All Happened, The Big Why, The Death of Donna Whalen and Minister Without Portfolio.

Michael Winter says YES

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onfederation. I too dislike it. Although it has its advantages.

I live in Toronto now, but I grew up in Newfoundland.

When I was a kid, the neighbours were an old couple named Shears.

Mr. Shears, born in 1909, had come to work in the paper mill.

He chose the pensioned life of a millworker over the perils of the fishery. He began work as a Newfoundlander and retired as a Canadian. And on the wall in his basement, where he showed me how to fill snowshoes, was a Canadian flag and a Union Jack pinned side by side.

Here in Toronto, there is a house I pass while I walk the dog. On the veranda is draped a pink, white and green Newfoundland flag. The province’s official flag has a yellow arrow that brims with the precise volume of a diminished status. But this unofficial tricolour possesses the simple confidence of a nation.

I won’t talk of social insurance or pensions or job prospects or education or transfer payments, the introduction of soda pop, the repercussions of religion or the toil and trade that sears the shore. Set aside how we cry over the plight of our Beothuk and yet are frustrated at the predicament of the Innu in Labrador. Let’s not examine powers and obligations written into the terms of union which Ches Crosbie refused to sign, or the effects of a cod fishery which his son John closed down. I will forego any comparison to Iceland or Cuba.

Illustrations by Greg Stevenson/i2iart.com

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I am for confederation because nation-building is an overstressed notion. The only reason to have Canada—the least nationalistic country on Earth—is to share the risk of a capitalist economy on the edge of a continent. If we were independent, our politicians would have sold Labrador to the highest bidder, guaranteed.

I am a regionalist. I believe a person loves a mountain or a lake or a river. They love an island. It is hard for an individual to fall in love with a continent.

A continent will never be loved the way a hill is, or a migration of birds. Confederation does not dilute the love one has for a valley.

Confederation prevents, through shame, a small government from depriving a dead soldier’s widow a pension. It halts a multinational firm from dumping toxic tailings into a river system. It prevents a return to a culture with fixed values. Or at least, it should.

I’m for romance, and land doesn’t change nor do the people because of a contract.

Confederation hasn’t flattened what makes Newfoundlanders alive. Percy Janes’ novel House of Hate starts, “Hate is the child of fear, and Saul Stone had been afraid of one thing or another all his life.” The pressures of hunger, despair and religion: that’s what confederation has lessened.

I will accept, as my neighbour Mr. Shears did, the safety net that Canada provides and

the buffer a federal government offers over the risk of the mercantile, political and religious classes that put people in the predicament of Saul Stone.

There is an acre of land in the mind of the every Newfoundlander. That imagined acre is Newfoundland. And I support the independent nation of the mind—there is truth in a pastoral work of fancy. Let us cultivate our dreamt-up gardens, offer a reproach to the political thinkers who confuse dreams with reality, accept how lucky we are to keep our borders and yet be generous enough to offer

CONFEDERATION HASN’T FLATTENED WHAT MAKES NEWFOUNDLANDERS ALIVE. Canada and the world any surplus when we generate a living.

Let us please our souls with the joy of the life of the mind enacted in a physical space, celebrate a shared connection, either through language or love or the ages, on the east coast of this smiling, frozen, windswept land. L

> To voice your opinion on this question, go to www.legion magazine.com/FaceToFace. legionmagazine.com > JULY/AUGUST 2017

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FOUR MONTHS AFTER VIMY, CANADA’S NEXT TRIUMPH WAS EQUALLY HEROIC

BY SERGE DURFLINGER

ASSAULT ON

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The year is 1917 Pause in the action Canadian soldiers and German prisoners receive coffee and biscuits from a YMCA hut less than a kilometre from the front line in 1917. The bitter fight for Hill 70 included vicious hand-to-hand combat and German counterattacks using mustard gas and flame-throwers.

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and the place is northern France. The meticulously prepared Canadians sweep up the commanding heights in the face of determined German resistance and win the day. Sound familiar?

No, it’s not Vimy Ridge, Canada’s most celebrated battle, but rather the attack on Hill 70, near the northern edge of the French coal mining town of Lens, barely 10 kilometres up the road from Vimy.

The name Hill 70 refers to the feature’s height in metres above sea level. In 1917, it was a gradually rising, chalky, treeless slope about half Vimy’s height and less than half its length. It had been in German hands since 1914 and it was well fortified.

The fight for Hill 70 in August 1917 was a large-scale and shockingly grisly battle, considered an epic Canadian victory by contemporaries. Yet, a century later, the battle

has been largely forgotten. The men of the famed Canadian Corps who fought in the bloody engagement at Hill 70 deserve better.

The first major post-Vimy attack by the Canadian Corps proved a striking tactical victory in support of a broader strategic purpose. The immediate goal of the assault was to seize the dominating high ground north of German-occupied Lens, oblige the enemy to withdraw, and threaten its control of Lille, a major transportation centre.

More importantly, the Canadian attack was intended to pin down German forces around Lens and draw others away from the major British offensive in Flanders, which began on July 31. The Canadian attack was also intended to cause severe German casualties, the replacements for which would be unavailable for deployment to Flanders.

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In June, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie had become the first Canadian promoted to the command of the Canadian Corps. The attack on Hill 70 would be his first major operation in that position. On July 7, his immediate superior, British General Sir Henry Horne, commander of First Army, instructed Currie to prepare plans for the seizure of Lens, a shattered urban landscape of wrecked brick houses and barely recognizable streets surrounded by a labyrinth of slag heaps and destroyed mining installations, rail sidings and buildings.

It was understood that capturing Lens against the tenacious, well-concealed and dug-in defenders would prove difficult and undoubtedly very costly. Currie personally reconnoitered and studied the terrain. It made little sense to the seasoned Canadian commander to attack Lens without first seizing Hill 70, since the Germans otherwise would observe the Canadians’ advance into Lens and direct devastating artillery fire on them. The town would become a deathtrap.

Currie boldly and successfully petitioned Horne for the seizure of Hill 70 instead of Lens itself, expecting the Germans to withdraw from the town once this dominating feature was in Canadian hands. Currie planned to fortify Hill 70 right after its capture, knowing that the enemy’s doctrine of instantaneous counterattacks would provide an opportunity to inflict massive casualties on them with concentrated artillery and machine-gun fire.

Canadian and British planning staff worked to identify objectives and readied the assault, while training and rehearsals with battlefield models familiarized officers and men with every aspect of the plan.

Ammunition was moved to the gun lines and supplies of every kind were brought forward by trucks and narrow-gauge rail lines, which snaked their way as close to the front as possible. Heavy rain and Currie’s insistence on careful preparation delayed the attack until Aug. 15, probably beyond the time when it would make the most effective diversion from the Flanders offensive.

At 4:25 a.m., just before dawn over a hellish shell-cratered landscape, the uphill attack began.

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In the days before the attack, nearly 500 Canadian and British guns fired almost 800,000 shells, which steadily degraded German defences, cut barbed wire, hampered communications and collapsed trenches.

Counter-battery fire knocked out 40 of 102 identified German artillery emplacements in positions that would disrupt the assault.

Heavy guns and howitzers unleashed a deeper bombardment to disrupt German artillery and saturate rear-area enemy troop concentrations. This, combined with indirect fire from 160 Vickers machine guns, inflicted thousands of casualties on the Germans. Millions more machine-gun rounds would be fired during the battle itself. The Royal Engineers delivered 3,500 drums of burning oil and 900 gas shells into Lens, creating havoc and, just prior to the assault, causing a massive smokescreen.

Currie’s plan was to attack with two of his four divisions on a roughly 3,700-metre front to a depth of 1,400 metres, hurling the enemy back from Hill 70. Three objective lines guided the Canadian assault: first was the German front-line trenches on the forward slope, second was the crest of the hill, and third was low on the reverse side.

At 4:25 a.m., just before dawn over a hellish, shell-cratered landscape, the uphill attack began. More than 200 18-pounder field guns and 48 4.5-inch howitzers launched a dense creeping barrage of fire and steel to shield the advancing Canadians.

The 1st Canadian Division, on the left, attacked Hill 70 proper; the 2nd Division on the right swept along its southern slope and through the ruins of some industrial suburbs of Lens. Each division attacked with two brigades forward, the initial assault force comprising 10 battalions—about 7,000 men—reinforced and leapfrogged by other battalions as the attack progressed.

Simultaneously, the 4th Division’s 12th Brigade launched a feint attack against the southern perimeter of Lens, which successfully drew German artillery fire away from the main battle at Hill 70.

In his diary, Arthur Lapointe of the 2nd Division’s 22nd Battalion described the assault: “Zero hour! A roll as of heavy thunder sounds and the sky is split by great sheets of flame…. I scramble over the parapet and… am one of the first in no man’s land…. The noise of the barrage fills our ears; the air pulsates, and the earth rocks beneath our feet….

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We reach the enemy’s front line, which has been blown to pieces. Dead bodies lie half buried under the fallen parapet and wounded are writhing in convulsions of pain.”

Even though the Germans had accurately predicted the time and location of the attack, many first-line objectives were captured in a mere 20 minutes. But the speed of the advance belies the ferocity of the fighting. Some men reached the second line about one hour after setting out, while others had already pushed to their third-line objectives. Some German positions held out stubbornly and casualties mounted as Canadian troops stormed machine-gun positions, seized stoutly defended shell craters, or picked their way through urban rubble.

As soon as the first objectives were secured, fatigue parties brought up ammunition, entrenching tools and supplies, signal linesmen laid wire to the new positions, and stretcher-bearers working in dangerously exposed positions evacuated the wounded.

One of them, Irish-born Private Michael O’Rourke from the 7th Battalion, brought out wounded men almost constantly for 72 hours, despite nearly being killed by shell bursts at least three times. O’Rourke received the Victoria Cross, one of six awarded to Canadians at Hill 70 and Lens.

The Canadians swiftly built defences by repairing captured German trenches and reversing the direction of the firing steps and parapet. They set up barbed wire and filled

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thousands of sandbags on the new front, and dug strongpoints in the chalky ground in carefully sited positions for 48 Vickers guns and as many as 200 Lewis light machine guns.

The Germans mounted four counterattacks early that morning, and with the help of accurate massed Vickers and artillery fire, each was repulsed with heavy German losses.

The artillery was directed by observation officers atop Hill 70, using field telephones and, a first for the Canadian artillery, wireless radio. The Germans were decimated.

“Our gunners, machine-gunners and infantry never had such targets,” Currie wrote in his diary. It was a “killing by artillery,” recounted Lieutenant-Colonel A.G.L. McNaughton, the Canadian senior counter-battery officer.

But the Germans kept coming. They threw in seven reserve battalions from two divisions, including the crack 4th Guards Division, joining the eight battered battalions already facing the Canadians. By the end of the battle’s first day, the Canadians had suffered 1,056 killed, 2,432 wounded and 39 taken prisoner.

The enemy pressure was nearly unbearable: for the next three days, the Germans counterattacked in various strengths and at different locations along the Hill 70 front.

They doubted their ability to retake the hill early on, but at least their counterattacks destabilized the Canadians and prevented

Walking wounded Members of a Canadian Scottish battalion near the front during the Battle of Hill 70 in August 1917. The 10 days of combat cost Canada 8,677 casualties, a quarter of them fatal.

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further advances. This bitter fighting was perhaps the most vicious hand-to-hand combat experienced by Canadians during the war, involving small arms, grenades, bayonets, clubs, fists and anything else that was handy. The Germans also deployed a terrifying new weapon: the flame-thrower.

No quarter was given by either side during these grim days. A few of the German attacks resulted in temporary gains, but all 21 of them were defeated. The Canadians suffered a further 1,800 casualties from Aug. 16 to 18, but Hill 70 remained theirs.

Adding to the misery, the battlefield was dangerously toxic, thanks to both sides’ liberal use of poison gas. Not previously used against the Canadians, the German mustard gas, so-called due to its odour, was especially gruesome. It blinded, burned lungs and hideously blistered and deformed flesh. Even those Canadians behind the lines were not immune: the Germans fired some 15,000 gas shells, mainly mustard gas, attempting to disrupt the devastating Canadian artillery fire. When the Canadian gunners donned their awkward gas respirators with foggy eye pieces, they were unable to properly lay the guns or quickly respond to appeals for support. Many in the gun lines removed their gas masks and 183 gunners became casualties.

Theirs were among the most heroic actions of the 10-day struggle for Hill 70 and Lens.

The fight for Hill 70 was a largescale and shockingly grisly battle.

Aftermath Canadians pass destroyed German gun pits on the western outskirts of Lens, France, in September 1917.

German forces held the bombarded town until their final retreat in 1918.

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Currie should have quit while he was ahead, but he wanted the Germans out of Lens as planned. A lull of several days ended on Aug. 21, when the 4th Division, with the 2nd in support, launched a probing attack into the southern and western outskirts of Lens.

The attack was a worthwhile attempt to convince the Germans to evacuate the town. But the 4th Division’s staff work was rushed and incomplete and its attacks hasty and poorly judged. This marred Currie’s enormous success at Hill 70, and the Canadian commander himself must shoulder the blame.

Weathering a heavy artillery barrage, the Germans remained alert and shelled the Canadians’ start line with devastating effect.

Then they launched a spoiling attack of their own. The two sides met in no man’s land and another fierce hand-to-hand struggle erupted in the pre-dawn gloom. Without much cover, losses climbed rapidly and the Canadians were obliged to break off the attack. Few objectives were gained, and because of the urban and industrial rubble, it was difficult to dig in and consolidate even these. German machine guns decimated British Columbia’s 47th Battalion in the shattered urban landscape.

It should have ended there, but in the early hours of Aug. 23, a haphazardly planned night assault by Manitoba’s 44th Battalion against a heavily defended slag heap known as the Green Crassier proved disastrous, with German artillery and machine guns exacting a very heavy toll in Canadian lives. Against all odds, the resolute Canadians managed to scale the Green Crassier, but they could not hold it against sustained German counterattacks.

The 44th suffered 257 casualties, nearly half of its strength. Minor operations on Aug. 25 ended the battle for Hill 70 and Lens. The entire fight, from Aug. 15 to 25, cost 8,677

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Canadian casualties—5,400 at Hill 70 and 3,300 at Lens. There were nearly as many Canadian casualties during the 10-day battle for Hill 70 and Lens as at Vimy, although fewer men were involved. German casualties are estimated at 12,000 to 15,000.

No German forces left Lens and some reserve forces were sent there rather than be dispatched to Flanders. The Germans considered the Canadians the best assault force available to the British and admitted that at Hill 70 “the Canadians had attained their ends” and that the “plan for relieving the troops in Flanders had been upset.”

Still, Lens remained in German hands.

Hill 70 had been a brilliant tactical victory and a partial strategic success. FieldMarshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, recalled Hill 70 as “one of the finest minor operations” of the entire war, while Currie recalled it as the Canadians’ “hardest” battle to that point but a “great and wonderful victory.”

Press accounts in Canada in August 1917 hailed Hill 70 as comparable to Vimy in achievement and significance. A Calgary Daily Herald headline on Aug. 17 blared: “Hill 70 Runs Red Today with Blood of German Army.”

The battle’s resonance with Canadians has been long overshadowed by Vimy. The only memorial in Canada recalling the Canadians’ deeds at Hill 70 is a modest monument and park that was laid out in the eastern Ontario hamlet of Mountain in 1925. In recent years, it was rededicated and renovated. But on Aug. 22, the Hill 70 Memorial Project, a Canadian charity, plans to unveil a dramatic, privately funded obelisk in a beautifully landscaped setting straddling the 1917 start line at Loos-en-Gohelle, France. The Battle of Hill 70 will finally get the recognition it has long deserved. L

DND/LAC/PA-001817; A.A. McEvoy/CWM/19710261-0410

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For bravery UkrainianCanadian soldier Filip Konowal received the Victoria Cross after mopping up cellars, craters and machine-gun emplacements.

He killed at least 16 enemy soldiers.

“

He himself bayonetted three enemy

”

SIX VICTORIA CROSSES were awarded to Canadians who fought at Hill 70 and Lens, two more than at Vimy.

A 29-year-old Ukrainian immigrant to Canada, Filip Konowal had previously served as a bayonet and hand-tohand fighting instructor in the Imperial Russian Army. He arrived in Canada in 1913 and worked as a logger in British Columbia. He enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915 and served overseas in the Canadian Corps with British Columbia’s 47th Battalion. He served at Vimy Ridge in April 1917 and distinguished himself in the fighting at Lens on Aug. 22-24.

Acting Corporal Konowal gallantly led his section of men in fighting among the shell craters and shattered houses, fiercely attacking several German machine-gun posts and killing their crews. His Victoria Cross citation reads, in part: “In one cellar, he himself bayonetted three enemy and attacked single-handed seven others in a crater, killing them all…. This non-commissioned officer alone killed at least sixteen of the enemy, and during two days’ actual fighting carried on continuously his good work until severely wounded.”

Following the war, Filip Konowal settled in Hull, Que., and died in 1959, at the age of 70.

The other five VC recipients are: • Private Harry Brown of the 10th (Canadian) Battalion • Company Sergeant-Major Robert Hill Hanna of the 29th (Vancouver) Battalion • Sergeant Frederick Hobson of the 20th (Central Ontario) Battalion • Acting Major Okill Massey Learmonth of the 2nd (Eastern Ontario) Battalion • Private Michael James O’Rourke of the 7th (British Columbia) Battalion

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Southeast of Ypres, Belgium, is Maple Copse Cemetery, the final resting place of 154 Canadian soldiers from the First World War.

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of the A tour from Ypres to Vimy culminates in a touching ceremony of remembrance STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE SLEGTENHORST

As One of 3,600 pairs of boots placed on the grounds of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, representing each Canadian soldier who fell during the four-day battle.

we walk through the arched entrance to Maple Copse Cemetery, the tranquility immediately makes me pause. Located five kilometres southeast of Ypres, Belgium, the cemetery is one of many stops on a week-long journey marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Aside from our small group of camera-toting journalists, the cemetery has only two visitors this day—a stark contrast with the busy days ahead at Vimy.

The site of an advanced dressing station in the spring and summer of 1916, Maple Copse contains 308 burials, half of which are Canadian.

It is surrounded by maple trees, many of its headstones are decorated with Canadian flags, and the Canadian Hill 62 (Sanctuary Wood) Memorial can be seen in the distance.

Memorials dedicated to Canadians are found throughout Flanders, the

Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium. Canada is well represented here, and with good reason.

At the centre of Ypres, whose population of 35,000 remains immensely grateful to Canada for its service during the First World War, the spire and turrets of the Cloth Hall define the skyline for miles around. The medieval building was destroyed during the war, rebuilt prior to the Second World War (which it survived), and now houses the In Flanders Fields Museum, which presents visitors with the story of the First World War in West Flanders.

There are 231 steps to the top of its bell tower, which offers a panoramic view of what was, during the war, the Ypres Salient, an outward bulge in the military line.

“You can see the salient there,” says guide Erwin Ureel, gesturing to the east. “It was quite small, and it

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clockwise: Symbols of remembrance are left among the bunkers at Essex Farm Cemetery, where John McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields.” The St. Julien Memorial commemorates Canada’s participation in the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915; it faces the direction from which the first large-scale German chlorine gas attack was launched. Honourary Lieutenant-Colonel Lionel Goffert of Toronto stands proud following the Vimy ceremony. A boy dressed as a soldier sits at the base of the Vimy memorial. The Cloth Hall in Ypres was destroyed in the First World War, then rebuilt. A Last Post ceremony takes place daily at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres.

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moved back and forth in the four years of the war…but never more than six or seven kilometres.”

To the north is Passchendaele, a town that was at the heart of another monumental Great War battle. The view puts everything into perspective: four years of fighting, hundreds of thousands killed here, all for such a small tract of land.

A short walk from the Cloth Hall is the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, a triumphal arch that contains the names of 54,396 fallen Commonwealth soldiers who have no known grave. Row on row, names are inscribed on almost every surface. Each night, rain or shine, a Last Post ceremony takes place here, in salute to those whose names are on its walls.

Some of those names belong to those who died near here on April 22, 1915, when the Germans released more than 150 tonnes of chlorine gas downwind onto a section of the front line held by two French divisions, forcing them to flee or suffocate.

This exposed Canada’s left flank and threatened other Allied positions in the salient. Canada’s 10th and 16th battalions were ordered to counterattack a position called Kitcheners’ Wood, and with extraordinary courage, they pushed the Germans out, but at a cost of nearly 800 casualties. It was the first major offensive

by Canadian troops in the war.

Not far from Kitcheners’ Wood is the St. Julien Canadian Memorial, commonly known as the Brooding Soldier and one of the most impressive monuments in the Ypres Salient. This is where the Canadians themselves endured gas attacks 0n April 24, 1915. The soldier’s bowed head faces the fields across which the gas crept, and he is resting at arms reversed—leaning on a weapon pointing down—symbolizing respect for the fallen. Canada suffered more than 6,000 casualties in the Second Battle of Ypres, a third of its force, but held the ground until the British relief came. Canada’s reputation as a daring, fearless force was beginning to form.

North of Ypres is Essex Farm, where medical officer and then-Major John McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields” in memory of a friend who was killed nearby on May 2, 1915. At the time, the farm was an advanced dressing station and McCrae was the second-in-command of his brigade.

Bunkers at the site today are from later in the war and were restored by students, but they still give a sense of the conditions in which McCrae worked: dark, dank and confined— hardly ideal for practising medicine.

France. By the time we arrive, there are already thousands of people at the site—students, teachers, cadets, veterans, families of veterans. When the attack started at dawn 100 years ago, sleet and snow chilled the battlefield and the Canadians had the wind at their backs. Today, the sun is shining, it’s hot and the 25,000 Canadians gathered here form a sea of red and white, not khaki.

“I’m here for two reasons,” says Tom Rolfe of Toronto. “My stepson is here with a school group from Toronto. And my grandfather—also Tom Rolfe—fought here and won the Military Medal.” Rolfe’s grandfather was gassed in another battle and sent home, but he survived and went on to serve in the Second World War and, remarkably, survived that too.

Betty Cunningham travelled here with a group from Georgetown, Ont., to remember Dr. Claude Williams.

“Williams fought at Vimy and was awarded the Military Cross,” she says. “There are four generations of his family here. He was a very special man and we’re glad he came home.” Williams survived the war and practised medicine in Georgetown for 50 years.

Some 100,000 Canadian soldiers fought in the four-day battle, which marked the first time all four of our divisions were engaged side by side. Canada had 7,004 wounded and 3,598 killed in the battle.

Today the monument and its surrounding lawns have an extra, and poignant, appointment—the Boots of the Fallen pathway. Canadian and French youth have placed 3,600 pairs of military-issue boots worn by members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Each pair represents a soldier who died here.

A 21-gun salute signals the start of the formal ceremony, and as the dignitaries enter, a formation of five replica First World War biplanes flies past the monument’s twin

“TODAY, 100 YEARS LATER, WE HONOUR THEIR ETERNAL SACRIFICE. WE MOURN THEIR LOSS. AND WE REMEMBER THEM.” Wherever we go in the salient, Canadian flags and poppies adorn headstones and memorials. Located on Canadalaan—Canada Lane— the Canadian Hill 62 (Sanctuary Wood) Memorial is no exception.

The battles for Mount Sorrel and hills 61 and 62 were fought over several months in the spring of 1916, a prelude to the Battle of the Somme.

The objectives were fiercely contested many times, most notably in June. In the first days, the Germans launched vicious attacks, capturing their targets and nearly wiping out the Canadian Corps. But the Canadians would not give up, and after a fourday artillery bombardment, Canada recaptured the lost ground. The Hill 62 Memorial is an inscribed granite block at the centre of a stone tile plaza atop Mount Sorrel, commemorating 8,430 casualties. The view from here is striking, and embedded in the plaza around the block are nameplates and arrows pointing outward to places of significance in the war.

The sun is piercing through the fog as we leave Ypres early on April 9 en route to Vimy Ridge in

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The moon rises over the Vimy memorial at the end of a poignant day of commemoration.

pylons (which represent Canada and France). The ceremony is a tasteful combination of traditional memorial protocols and contemporary artistic performances.

“Victory was achieved through incredible struggle, determination and bravery,” says Governor General David Johnston in his address.

“Today, 100 years later, we honour their eternal sacrifice. We mourn their loss. And we remember them.”

Much has been made of how the victory at Vimy was the catalyst for the birth of a nation, the moment when Canada forged a new identity as a strong, independent nation committed to peace. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reflects on this in his address: “For their ultimate sacrifice...men of the British dominion fought for the first time as the people of one country. In that sense, Canada was born here.”

“They fought bravely and with great ingenuity,” says Charles, Prince of Wales. “They succeeded in seizing the vital high ground of Vimy, a task in which many others before them had failed. However, victory came at an unbearably heavy cost.”

The ceremony is interspersed with actors portraying the lives of soldiers on the front lines and of wives, mothers and fathers on the home front and performances of songs, including “L’hymne à la Beauté du Monde,” “Dante’s Prayer,” “Salluit,” “The Lament,” “Dedicated to You,” “In Flanders Field” and “Crier tout bas.”

Three Canadian veterans, representing Canada’s English, French and aboriginal peoples, read the Act

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of Remembrance before Sergeant Guillaume Damour’s “Last Post” bugle call ushers in one minute of silence.

The governor general, Prince Charles, the prime minister and President François Hollande of France place wreaths at the monument’s base and the national anthems—God Save the Queen, O Canada and La Marseillaise— reverberate across the ridge, replaced by the roar from French Armed Forces fighter jets flying past.

“I had to come,” says Harry Watts of Kitchener, Ont. He is a Second World War veteran and Royal Canadian Legion member. “I’ve never been here. I’ve been to every other place in Europe: Italy, Holland, but never here. I decided it was time.

“I have tears in my eyes looking at all these young people. I’m very emotional about it because they want to come and check it out as part of their history. It’s wonderful.”

With the ceremony completed, people from the audience swarm the memorial for an up-close appreciation of its sheer enormity and the battle it represents. Again, as at the Menin Gate, there are row on row of names inscribed on the limestone walls, this time for the 11,285 Canadian soldiers missing and presumed dead in France.

TODAY, THE SUN IS SHINING, IT’S HOT AND THE 25,000 CANADIANS GATHERED HERE FORM A SEA OF RED AND WHITE, NOT KHAKI.

On the flight back to Canada, I reflect on my remarkable time in Belgium and France, where I stood

on many of the same fields on which Canada’s soldiers spent four years fighting—and dying.

I think of Maple Copse and how the original cemetery was destroyed by more battles after the fight for Mount Sorrel in 1916. Only 78 of the graves known to exist at the cemetery have been located, and only 26 have been identified. On the headstones of 230 graves that were destroyed beyond recognition are the words “Known To Be Buried In This Cemetery.”

Among them is the grave of 15-year-old Private Frederick Freeman Laing of Halifax. Too young to join the war effort, Laing was only 14 when he stowed away on SS Caledonia in August 1915. He surrendered himself and was taken on strength by the Royal Canadian Regiment, trained and sent to the front line. He was killed in action on May 11, 1916, one of the youngest Canadians killed. To me, Laing represents every Canadian whose final resting place is in the Ypres Salient or France: youth, determination, courage, sacrifice. Every Canadian should have such an opportunity to visit this hallowed ground. L

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AIR FORCE DOCTOR PHYSICIAN AND FLIGHT LIEUTENANT EDWARD THORNE SERVED WITH THE RCAF FROM 1941 TO 1946, AND TREATED HUNDREDS OF GRATEFUL FLYERS

By STEPHEN J. THORNE

t

he nooks and crannies of my parents’ red-brick house in Halifax held many secrets and, as a child, my insatiable curiosity took me into closets, drawers, attic and basement, most often in search of my father’s past.

Edward Lefferts (Ted) Thorne III was born on Friday, June 13, 1913, and some might say he was cursed. He’d likely tell them otherwise.

He had survived tuberculosis, and lost his mother—a First World War nurse— and brother to the same dreaded disease.

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He had seen his father lose all in the Depression and his first wife drop dead from a brain hemorrhage. He would lose a daughter to breast cancer.

But in his 90 years on this earth, Dr. Thorne—my dad—delivered hundreds of babies, saved hundreds of lives and, by the time he retired from general practice at 87, he had cultivated hundreds of relationships, mostly good.

He witnessed the rise of the automobile, the airplane, television and the Internet—although he never touched a computer. He watched, spellbound,

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Edward Thorne was a medical officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1941 to 1946.

Courtesy of Thorne family

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Thorne and his wife Edith exchanged 476 letters while he was overseas.

This canvas bag labelled “First Aid Outfit (Aircraft)” was stocked with his medical equipment.

as America and the USSR embarked on the space race, culminating in Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk.

Yet the central event of my father’s life, the experience that stayed with him until the day he died and changed him perhaps more than any other, was the time he spent as a medical officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force between 1941 and 1946.

He rarely talked about it and, when he did, it was with such nostalgia, deep emotion and soaring reverence for those with whom he served that he sparked my curiosity and captivated my imagination from childhood to this very day.

Those five years were, as Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, the best of times and the worst, “it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

He left my mother Edith as a strapping, youthful air force officer and returned to her 31 months later a broken man who, like so many of his time, had lost friends and seen horrors. But somehow he managed to press on to live a

44

full and productive life despite the demons that haunted him.

His past fascinated me and, as a child, I would crawl into the back of his bedroom closet, find the stacks of shoeboxes filled with letters, mementoes and loose photographs and sit there, behind the hanging clothes, enthralled.

Hanging in a musty basement closet was his flight jacket, with air force caducei on the collar and “June ’44” written inside (he dated everything his whole life—clothes, books, tools). His officer’s hat was propped on an overhead pipe in his workroom.

A khaki brown “First Aid Outfit (Aircraft),” still stocked with vials, pills and wraps, hung from a post—not to be touched under any circumstance. (I touched it.)

He kept a photo album in the bottom drawer of his dresser, alongside his service revolver and two knives, their blades and part of their handles fashioned by an aircraftman from the damaged propeller of a Spitfire. The rest of the ringed handles were made of glass taken from Spitfire and Messerschmitt cockpits.

He’d been with two vaunted Spitfire squadrons, 401 and 416, in Scotland and the south of England, as well as 422—a Coastal Command squadron—in Northern Ireland and Bomber Command in northern England.

He was a meticulous man, and on the backs of the hundreds of photographs he took with his Kodak folding camera were detailed notes identifying his subjects, the locations and the dates. Sometimes, there would be additional information.

“R.J. (Paddy) Turp Dec ’42 Redhill, Surrey,” said one, a halffaded shot of a 416 pilot in full kit, his parachute slung haphazardly over his shoulder, oozing the swagger and bravado of the classic air warrior, roguishly grinning through an Errol Flynn moustache. “Shot down with 3 others returning from France, Feby ’43.”

Indeed, Flying Officer Robert Jack Turp of Aurora, Ont., the records show, trained in Summerside, P.E.I., and was killed in action, shot down

by FW-190s on an escort mission near Calais on Feb. 3, 1943, the only one of the four to die that day.

There were pictures of a pilot friend, Flt. Lt. Thomas Karl Ibbotson of Radisson, Sask.,

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on his motorcycle. One image showed my dad at 401 Squadron dispersal, Redhill, in June 1943.

He’s seated on a bicycle holding onto the roof bracket of a Willy’s jeep.

“Jeep of two Americans attached to us,” it says on the back. “Later ran into Ibbotson on his motor bike and killed him.”

A diary entry dated Aug. 3, 1943, notes “Ibby killed on motor bike on Saturday, Delbridge. Today—sorted his things. Funeral Ibby and Dal at Brookwood at 3 p.m. Abbott and Costello picture, not much.”

FO Ralph Balkwill Delbridge from Exeter, Ont., the records show, crashed and died at Underhill Farm, Bucklands, Surrey.

Relations with our American cousins, it seemed, were not always all sweetness and light. On April 21, 1944, my dad noted: “F/O Wright jaw fractured in three places

by Americans.” There is at least one other reference to a broken jaw; whether Americans were involved may never be known.

My dad often spoke of “Studholme”—Flt. Lt. Al Studholme, it turned out, a great friend. Dad had fond memories of them hoarding care packages from home and getting together periodically, combining their takes and feasting.

His diaries—there are two, covering 1943 and 1944-45— make numerous references to “cribbage with Stud.” There’s a picture in his album of “Bill Tew and Erks looking at a flak hole in Stud’s wing; flak from a train in France. 401-126 AF, Oct ’43.”

Studholme was lucky that day.

It missed his ammunition bay by inches. His luck, however, wouldn’t last. Or would, depending on how you look at it.

One day, Studholme and his wingman, Flt. Lt. Harry Deane Macdonald of Toronto, headed off in their brand-new Spits to link up with a B-17 mission returning from

Courtesy of Thorne family; Stephen J. Thorne

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Germany. They never came back.

My dad noted on Nov. 30, 1943: “MacDonald lost. Studholme?”

A couple of weeks later, on Dec. 11, 1943, he “wrote Mrs. Studholme.”

He never knew what happened to his friend. At least, he didn’t remember. On Jan. 21, 1944, however, his diary recorded a “letter from Mrs. Studholme. Al p of w.”

THE TWO OLD MEN— BOTH WOULD HAVE BEEN IN THEIR 80S AT THE TIME— SPOKE WARMLY FOR A WHILE AND THAT WAS IT. A half-century later, I was covering the last reunion of Canadian PoWs for The Canadian Press in Halifax. I ran into a pilot from 401 Squadron. He didn’t know my dad but he knew guys who did, including Al Studholme, who was living in Toronto.

I looked up my father’s old friend and called him, eventually linking him to my dad over the phone and recording their conversation as the wartime buddies caught up on 50 years of life.

My dad’s first question: What happened???

Studholme said he and his wingman reached the German border.

Fuel capacity at the time allowed fighters to go no farther. They could see the bombers coming when both their engines inexplicably quit.

Macdonald, Studholme said, turned out to sea and was never seen again (see sidebar on page 47).

Studholme got his engine restarted, only to have it quit again. He bailed out and was captured, spending the rest of the war in a German Stalag.

The two old men—both would have been in their 80s at the time— spoke warmly for a while and that was it. For all his fond memories, Dad never attended reunions nor, as far as I could tell, did he maintain ties with any wartime mates.

His role as medical officer put him in a difficult position with some pilots. He sometimes had to ground a man, never a popular decision. He told of a disagreement he’d had with one commanding officer over a pilot who was showing signs of mental distress. My dad wanted to ground the guy, at least temporarily. His CO refused it, saying his pilot would be fine. A few days later, that pilot got in his Spit and flew it into the sea.

Still, the pilots of the RCAF overseas had much to be thankful for in Flt. Lt. E.L. Thorne. His bedside manner was impeccable—warm, receptive, charming. Being sick in the Thorne household was one of the few times he diverted from his medical practice and gave his children his undivided attention and tender, loving care.

No doubt, the pilots he nurtured felt a similar bedside manner. His diaries reference daily sick parades, inoculating 300 air force personnel against typhus in one day, and collecting dead and wounded aircrew from the English countryside.

On Nov. 22, 1944, he was “up 12:30-5 a.m., to pick up parachutist with broken foot, crawled 3 mi.”

On Jan. 17, 1945: “Crash 9 bodies.”

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He talked of using tweezers to pick dozens of pieces of shrapnel out of a pilot’s back. I still wear the Movado watch given to him by an American pilot out of gratitude for his care.

“A thoroughly competent medical officer, very well liked by all personnel in the squadron,” Wing Commander L.P. McCullagh wrote in 1944.

His diaries tell of kites, prangs, Jerries, dos and rhubarbs. There are trips to the theatre, books he read, bombing raids and endless parties. Jan. 14, 1943: “Jackie Ray’s wedding. Two accidents. Big party.”

The following day: “Quiet recovery.”

This was, in fact, Jackie Rae, politician Bob Rae’s uncle and a renowned Canadian entertainer.

He married Assistant Section Officer Susanna Mitchell of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

Squadron Leader Lloyd Chadburn, the Canadian ace known to my dad and American bomber crews as “The Angel,” was groomsman.

It would not be Jackie Rae’s last wedding, and Chadburn would die in a mid-air collision with another Spit over France on Dad’s 31st birthday, one week after D-Day. His diaries recorded victories (July 6, 1943: “Sweep over St-Omer. Score 8-0!”) and defeats (Jan. 29, 1944: “Crashed Fort and Lib. 1 dead at 3 p.m.). On Jan. 24, 1944: “Shep bailed out. Picked up in 40 minutes by launch 10 mi off Boulogne Harb at noon.”

My dad spoke bitterly of an incident in which Germans bombed a theatre full of kids. A plane was shot down and my dad was sent to collect the dead, retrieving the pilot’s pelvis from a treetop. He references the incident on July 9, 1943: “Felt awful. Dornier 2[17] crashed near Bletchley after bombing theatre.”

Entries in my father’s diaries were often punctuated with a number—145, 103, etc. They were counting the letters to and from my mom. On D-Day, June 6, 1944: “D-Day! At Castle Archdale.

144 and 147 from Edith. 176.”

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Her letters generally took a month to reach him. In the two years the diaries covered, he wrote her 273 letters and received 203. She also sent him care packages, often with cigarettes. He sent her cables. And gifts.

In the back of one diary is a touching list of my mother’s 28-year-old measurements and sizes: 5’2”; Size 6AA shoes; hand 6”; head 221/2, etc.

BY THE END OF THE TWO YEARS THE DIARIES COVERED, HE HAD WRITTEN HER 273 LETTERS AND RECEIVED 203.

Castle Archdale was in Northern Ireland, home to 422 and 423 Squadrons. It sounded like the end of the Earth—a cold, barren, windswept place. Posted there in March 1944, my father had a fireplace in his room and waged constant war with mice, who kept him up at night. He got traps and kept a tally: 21 at last count.

The day he arrived at the castle, on March 10, 1944, he spent 34 shillings on taxis and tips and noted that “422 got sub tonight.”

This was U-625, sunk with all 53 hands west of Ireland by depth charges from a Sunderland flown by Flt. Lt. Sydney William

Butler, DFC. The U-boat captain, Oberleutnant zur See Siegfried Straub, and many of his crew made it to life rafts but were lost in a storm the following night.

On April 24, 1944: “423 kite attacked sub this afternoon—probable. Pretty badly shot up, nobody injured.” The records show an attack on U-672, skippered by Oblt.

Ulf Lawaetz. The Sunderland flown

by Flt. Lt. G. Fellows launched the attack southwest of Ireland at 1:39 p.m. The U-boat was severely damaged, and so was the aircraft after a depth charge detonated prematurely, almost bringing it down.

According to 423’s Operations Record Book, “the force of this explosion was such as to throw up the entire moveable contents of the aircraft—floorboards, I.F.F. [Identify Friend/Foe] set, crockery, eggs and oven, forming a new variety of omelet.”

It knocked out electrical circuits, severed cables, opened wing seams and disabled the port flaps. “But the principal damage was to the elevator which needed all the skill and strength of the Captain assisted by the Second Pilot to counteract.”

The crew were moved forward of the main spar to help maintain trim. Still, they stayed on-station for 36 minutes after the attack.

As Allied forces approached Rome, my father noted that six aircrews out of Castle Archdale were patrolling the Norwegian coast. Just three in 20 U-boats were getting out undetected.

He moved on to Bomber Command in northern England, from which he recounted the tale of a fresh young recruit who took the tail-gun position of a B-17 the morning after he arrived, only to return ankle-deep in shell casings and needing help to peel his fingers from his .50-calibre machine gun.

One of Dad’s last diary entries came on Feb. 15, 1945: “Collected body RM Ward. Any day now.

Walked with Orp and packed.”

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The hole in this Spitfire’s wing was caused by “flak from a train in France.” The aircraft was piloted by 401 Squadron’s Flt. Lt. Al Studholme, one of Thorne’s best friends during the war.

My father left the air force in 1946 and was in and out of the army and air force reserve for the next two decades, finally retiring from military duty a major in 1968. He spent his postwar life in the endless pursuit of learning. He read constantly.

He researched developments in medicine, tinkered with his beloved cars, experimented in carpentry and mechanics, listened to symphonies and operas on the radio.

Somewhat eccentric, he was a collector of things, born of the Depression-era mentality that everything must be saved, from corks and string to elastic bands and twist ties. He kept jars full of salvaged nails, screws, nuts and bolts. He was into recycling before recycling was even a thing.

Rationing was a way of life in our household. Occasionally, my dad would break out a banana and a box of Baker’s brand semi-sweet

dark chocolate. He would cut a few squares and present me with two, sometimes three, insisting I take a bite of banana with each bite of chocolate.

One September day in 1998, I was heading back to The Canadian Press office in Halifax after spending nearly 24 hours at the scene of the Swissair Flight 111 crash off Peggy’s Cove, N.S. I was driving past my dad’s office when I saw him crossing the street. I pulled over, opened the passenger-side window, and told him I’d spent the day aboard a small fishing boat out on the water, at the crash site.

I didn’t need to tell him what we found there. He knew. He nodded, pursed his lips and studied my face: “I know, son,” he said. “I know where you’ve been.” There was a silence and then I headed off.

It was probably the most poignant moment we’d ever had.

I returned to the newsroom and wrote the words: “The lives of the 229 passengers and crew who died aboard Swissair Flight 111 float by in 100,000 tiny pieces.”

My life would never be the same again. L

MACDONALD’S FATE In his book Lucky 13, Hugh Godefroy, another colleague of my dad’s, had the answer to what happened to Flight Lieutenant Harry Deane Macdonald, DFC with bar, who was lost while flying to link up with a B-17 mission returning from Germany after the Spitfire he was flying lost engine power: “Two of his squadron flew with him while he glided back,” wrote Godefroy. They were in heavy cloud before coming out 1,500 feet above the water.

“Dean tried to bail by pushing the stick forward to throw himself out over the top. The two fellows who were with him said he landed astride the aircraft, impaled on the radio mast and rode it into the sea.”

—S.J.T.

Flt. Lt. E.L. Thorne/CWM; RCAF/acesofww2.com

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This myth probably originated in the U.S., where reverse-mortgage lenders haven’t been tightly regulated and have commonly charged $10,000 or more in fees. Certainly there are fees in Canada too, because in order for the bank to process your reverse mortgage it must conduct title searches, prepare documents and retain legal services.

But here, these administrative costs are fixed, and don’t usually exceed $1,500 at the most. Your home also needs to be appraised, but that shouldn’t cost more than $400.

Before signing the mortgage documents, all homeowners are required to get independent legal advice (usually costing $300 to $600) to ensure they understand the terms and are protected.

MYTH A Reverse Mortgage Only Makes Sense As A Last Resort It depends on your financial situation, but there are several reasons why a reverse mortgage may be an ideal solution for you.

If you’re holding credit card debt at a much higher interest rate, for example, a reverse mortgage allows you to clear that debt. It may benefit you if you’re trying to avoid the costs associated with moving or downsizing – realtor fees, home staging, movers and condo fees, for instance. The cash provided to you by a reverse mortgage is tax free, lower risk and long term. It can be a valuable tool to help you stay in your home in your retirement and conserve your savings.

It’s your Home, your Cash Use your cash any way you wish*: • To supplement your retirement income • To make a special trip or purchase • To pay off debt, or for medical expenses • To remodel or retrofit your home • To help your kids or grandkids

No Monthly Mortgage Payments • Unlike a conventional mortgage or a home equity line of credit, a reverse mortgage requires no monthly mortgage payments as long as you live in your home.

You are always in control • You retain title, control and ownership of your own home during the life of the loan.

• You can sell your home or condo at any time; just meet your obligations of maintaining your home, paying property taxes and homeowner’s insurance.

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HOME FRONT

Life was far from normal for those who worked in the clandestine Camp X, Canada’s school for spies

X

Camp THE SECRET LIFE AT

BY JUNE COXON

was 1942 and one evening 20-year-old Winnifred Davidson, known as Davey to her friends, was whisked away from Toronto in an unmarked maroon car and driven to an undisclosed location. When she arrived there, she was instructed, “Don’t tell anyone where you are or what you’re doing here.”

That’s how Davidson began her career at a top-secret training school for spies known by many names but commonly called Camp X. She was part of the first contingent of women allowed into that men’s training facility.

According to Davidson, the camp, located on a wooded 110-hectare site on the northwestern shores of Lake Ontario near Whitby, Ont., “looked much like any army base, but nicer and quieter. There were a number of barracks where we slept, a onestorey office building where we worked that included a canteen, and not much else.”

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What was different was that there were no stores, telephones or cars at Camp X, the area was enclosed by a fence, and all mail sent to staff went first to an address in Toronto. Also out of the ordinary were the subjects taught to the secret agents training there, such as how to interrogate prisoners, safe blowing, information gathering and how to kill with the thrust of a knife.

Davidson worked in the communications section as a keyboard operator. “After arriving at Camp X, we had one week to learn Morse code and Murray code [which used punched tape ribbons to transmit messages] before pitching in to translate incoming and outgoing calls to and from Britain,” Davidson said. “We used a Kleinschmidt teletype machine and messages came in via high-speed Morse code and went out on punch tape. The office ran 24/7.

We worked eight-hour shifts.”

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X

Camp X was born after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed British Security Co-ordination (BSC) chief, Winnipeg-born, First World War fighter pilot William Stephenson, to create “the clenched fist that would provide the knockout blow” to the Axis powers. To the British, Camp X was known as STS (Special Training School) 103; the Canadian military called it Project J; to the RCMP it was S25-1-1.

The camp was run by Britain’s Strategic Operations Executive (SOE). One of its roles was to train Americans in intelligence gathering, but couldn’t do so on American soil because the United States had not entered the war. Camp X solved the problem. It opened on Dec. 6, 1941, one day before Pearl Harbor was bombed, forcing the U.S. into the war. Designed as a top-secret training school, it was the first official site for British, Canadian and American intelligence officers during the Second World War, and the first such purpose-built facility in North America.

The location “was chosen with a great deal of thought,” according to historian Lynn Philip Hodgson’s website, Inside Camp-X. “[It was] a remote site on the shores of Lake Ontario, yet only 30 miles straight across forged visas, passports and currency the lake from the United States. It was ideal created on typewriters smuggled out for bouncing radio signals from Europe, of countries where agents would land.

South America and, of course, between Davidson’s work was part of an London and the BSC Headquarters in New important telecommunications network York. The choice of site also placed the camp between Britain and Canada known by only five miles from DIL (Defence Industries the code name Hydra. Raw data came Limited), currently the town of Ajax.” in via Hydra and flowed through to the The website also reveals that, during the communications building where Davidson war, scientists and seamstresses operated worked. There it was printed in code. secretly from the basement of Davidson worked with about Toronto’s Casa Loma museum nine other Canadian Women’s There were for an arm of Stephenson’s Army Corps (CWAC) members, no stores, organization called Station M but noted that most of the staff telephones or (for magic), manufacturing were civilians. “That meant,” items secret agents needed cars at Camp X, she said, “no army discipline. once behind enemy lines We didn’t need to be concerned the area was (Artifacts, March/April 2016). about things like having our They created compasses conenclosed by a room inspected or attending cealed in combs and silk church every Sunday. Such fence, and all scarves printed with detailed rules couldn’t be enforced on mail sent to maps of the country where the civilian workers–or on us. agents’ missions took them.

“I loved my experience at the staff went first Also designed there were camp,” she said. “But my situato an address clothes made with cloth and tion was different than others in Toronto. buttons from those countries, there. My brothers, sister and

Courtesy of Winnifred Gardner; Wikimedia; Whitby Archives/D2013_008_001

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Winnifred “Davey” Davidson and her brother Harold, both served during the Second World War; Davidson’s medals; tape with Murray code punch marks.

An aerial view of Camp X on the shore of Lake Ontario.

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Camp X was a communications hub between London and the British Security Co-ordination office in New York.

The camp was secret but it had its own badge.

The buildings at Camp X had restricted access by order of the Department of National Defence.

I were raised in Toronto by our single mother. When I was 15 and almost finished Grade 11, our mother died suddenly. After that I quit school, the family split up and I had to find ways of earning a living and looking after myself.”

Davidson worked briefly as a mother’s helper then taught roller skating before joining the CWACs when she turned 18. That gave her a job plus a place to eat and sleep. By then her sister, Marion, and brother, Harold, were contributing to the war effort too: one as a “bomb girl,” working in a munitions factory, the other serving with Canadian troops in Europe.

“There wasn’t much to do socially at Camp X,” Davidson recalled. “But we were usually too tired after the day’s work anyway.”

One activity they did enjoy was pool. Across the road from her office was the headquarters, the commanding officer’s house and a pool table that, at first, only the men could use. But women eventually were allowed to play, too.

They could also attend the movie theatre in Oshawa on weekends, but were driven there and picked up right after the show ended and taken back to the camp.

Charles “Chuck” Gardner served in the Canadian Armoured Corps during the Second World War. After returning from England, he was posted to Camp X, becoming sergeant responsible for communications.

He and Davey were married in September 1945, just as the war ended. A month later, Davey was discharged, although her

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husband’s job there didn’t end. So, while he continued to live at Camp X, she lived with her mother-in-law briefly before getting permission to rejoin her husband at Camp X. A year later, their son, Don, became the first baby born at the spy camp. Their daughter, Janet, was born there a few years later.

After the war, the camp remained in operation as Hydra continued to be an essential communications link between London, Washington and Ottawa.

“Camp X remained open after the war ended,” said Davidson, “[In part] because Igor Gouzenko, a cypher clerk at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, had defected to Canada after disclosing the Soviet’s espionage operation and a secure place was needed for him and his family.” The Gouzenko family and RCMP escort arrived at Camp X in September 1945 and remained there until arrangements were made for them to live safely under a new identity in Mississauga, Ont. In 1947, the Canadian government assumed responsibility for Camp X, operating it as a military signals station until 1969. At that point, some buildings were demolished and others moved.

Today, Camp X is remembered by a public park on Boundary Road in Whitby, Ont., where the camp once stood. It’s called Intrepid Park, after Stephenson’s telegraph address which was, incorrectly, believed to have been his code name. A monument erected there in 1984 is surrounded by the flags of Canada, Britain, the U.S. and

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PASSING THROUGH CAMP X Today, Camp X is remembered by a public park on Boundary Road in Whitby, Ont., where the camp once stood.

Bermuda, where Stephenson died.

There is also a Camp X mural on the Public Utilities Commission building at the north end of the park and a former barracks is located at the Humane Society of Durham Region in Whitby.

Camp X artifacts are scattered.

For more than 30 years, history buff Robert Stuart had a large private war memorabilia collection at the Ontario Regimental Museum. It included Camp X artifacts, such as a camera that shoots bullets, a sword disguised as a cane and a lipstick tube concealing a dagger. But after Stuart’s death, his daughter inherited the items and put them up for sale. In 2010, the Canadian War Museum acquired 15 items with verifiable histories from the collection, including commando overalls, a British suitcase radio and a half-metre length of railway track used for demolition training.

In 2012, a permanent exhibition opened at the Durham Regional Headquarters in Whitby. There you can see maps, forged currency and signs. Another collection of items, entitled The Station M Collection, are at Casa Loma, although some were stolen in 2014.

Other artifacts can be seen in the Richard Brisson Collection at the Military Communications and Electronic Museum in Kingston, Ont. The British Archives in London has a manual from the camp entitled How to be a secret spy. It was written by notorious British double agent Kim Philby and film critic and author of spy films, Paul Dehn.

During the Second World War and decades after, those connected with Camp X were sworn to secrecy. Now that the stories of the camp can be told, Canadians finally can discover the important role Camp X played in Canada’s history. Those who were part of that facility are being recognized, too. The Canadian Senate acknowledged the contributions of Davidson and Gardner in 2005, the International Year of the Veteran, which coincided with their 60th wedding anniversary. Davidson has many thank-you letters, a medal recognizing her years of service and a Canadian Volunteer Service Medal. Although Gardner died in 2007, Davidson only recently left the Leitrim, Ont., home they moved to after Camp X closed. L

Whitby Archives; Lynn Philip Hodgson; Whitby Archives/29-005-001; Robert T. Bell/Flickr

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It is believed approximately 500 people trained at Camp X. Many notable figures were known to have been there in various capacities, including: IAN FLEMING, the author of

12 James Bond novels based on his own knowledge of the intelligence community.

PAUL DEHN, a British film critic who also wrote screenplays including Goldfinger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Planet of the Apes. He won an academy award in 1951 for the original story for Seven Days to Noon.

ROALD DAHL, the award-winning

British author, wrote numerous children’s books, including James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, plus adult books.

DAVID OGILVY, the founder of the Ogilvy and Mather Advertising Company who wrote three books on the basic principles of advertising.

STIRLING HAYDEN, the

American film actor who ran a network during the war assisting American and Allied aircrew escape occupied Yugoslavia.

KIM PHILBY, the British SOE operative who would later be revealed as a double agent for the Soviet Union.

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2017-05-26 10:39 AM

ESCAPE OF THE

DIEPPE R AIDERS Canadian heroics didn’t stop at the beach in Dieppe

BY HUGH A. HALLIDAY

T

HE DISASTROUS

Dieppe Raid of Aug. 19, 1942, is most commonly remembered by a grim statistic—the greatest one-day losses sustained by the Canadian Army during the Second World War. There was ample heroism on the beaches. Less well known are the heroics displayed by a small group of men who were captured by the Germans that day but managed to escape.

Even when they were decorated for their exploits, the stories were shrouded in wartime secrecy to protect the lives of European helpers and preserve nascent escape organizations.

The soldiers taken prisoner at Dieppe were initially detained in France. Many were hospitalized. Those who weren’t wounded or were only lightly wounded were held

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at Verneuil, west of Paris, until the end of August, when they were moved to Germany.

Not surprisingly, most of the successful escapes took place while the men were still in France. They had to weigh the hazards of travelling through German-occupied France as opposed to moving through the part of the country controlled by a French government (headquartered at Vichy) which was collaborating with the enemy—a distinction that vanished in November 1942 when German forces invaded even that part of the country that had been nominally governed by their Vichy puppet.

Four of the earliest Dieppe prisoners to escape were members of Les Fusiliers MontRoyal—privates Guy Joly, Conrad Lafleur and Robert Vanier, plus Warrant Officer Lucien Dumais. All managed to escape

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E

before being transported to Germany.

The story of Dumais is the best known because of the books he wrote: Un canadien français à Dieppe and The Man Who Went Back, with Hugh Popham. A street-smart reservist even before the war, he proved a brave, even reckless soldier at Dieppe.

While still training in Britain, he attended lectures on escape and evasion. They included advice about approaching civilians when seeking help: not in the morning but at the end of the day. Women in preference to men.

Old rather than young. Poor rather than rich. Country people rather than city people.

Priests and doctors rather than merchants or shopkeepers. In his books, Dumais describes the atmosphere of fear that permeated France in 1942—particularly fear of neighbours who might report would-be helpers to the Gestapo or collaborating gendarmes. His military haircut and Quebec accent made him as much an object of suspicion as empathy.

Dumais had been wounded at Dieppe, but still resolved to escape. Within 36 hours of capture, he leaped from a moving train at night, followed by two other soldiers—Corporal E.J. Vermette and Private M.P. Cloutier (both Fusiliers Mont-Royal). They had intended to link up by whistling the opening bars of “Un Canadien Errant,” but failed to connect. His two companions were recaptured on Aug. 27 and spent the rest of the war in captivity.

Dumais had intended to make his way to the coast, steal a boat and row his way back to England. He was soon advised by sheltering civilians that this was impossible—too many guards and obstacles, every boat watched— and was persuaded to turn south. By Aug. 24, near Poitiers, he had made contact with an escape organization that consisted chiefly of people in different towns who were linked by family or friendship. Joining this network actually slowed him, as he had to spend several days in various hiding places. He eventually reached Perpignan, near the Mediterranean coast, and from there was evacuated by boat to Gibraltar with about a dozen other escapees. By Oct. 21, he was back in England.

Dumais was awarded a Military Medal.

In November 1943, he went back, parachuting into France. He spent months organizing the movement of downed Allied airmen back to Britain—a story outlined in The Man Who Went Back and told in greater detail in Un Canadien français face

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à la Gestapo. He was commissioned while still in France and awarded a Military Cross.

TWO OF THE MEMBERS of Les Fusiliers

Mont-Royal—Lafleur and Vanier—had been seriously wounded during the battle. The third, Joly, pretended to be ill and was placed in the same hospital as the other two. The trio resolved to escape, but time was running out. On Aug. 24, they were put on a hospital train bound for Germany—15 coaches, 30 beds per coach, and one coach at the end of the train with 15 armed guards.

A single German orderly was assigned to each hospital coach. The man in their coach was either stupid or lazy; they persuaded him to leave the care of the wounded to them. He said, “Gut, gut, Kanada,” gave them some tobacco, and went away. The windows were locked, but Joly, Lafleur and Vanier disposed of the concertina fabric between the coaches and, around midnight, jumped from between the coaches as the train slowed on a gradient east of Amiens. They landed on hard ground, which jolted the two wounded escapees, but they were on their way to freedom.

Tangles of barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles fortified the beachfront at Dieppe, France, on Aug. 19, 1942.

Of almost 5,000 Canadians in the raid, 907 were killed, 586 were wounded and 1,946 were captured.

Not surprisingly,

MOST OF THE SUCCESSFUL ESCAPES

took place while the men were still in France.

They were extremely fortunate in making immediate contact with heroic civilians.

The first people they approached—a farming couple—promptly took them in, provided food, baths and civilian clothes, photographed them for false documents, and summoned a doctor who dressed their wounds.

On Aug. 26, they started their journey, which

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took them by car to Amiens, by train to Paris and Bourges, on foot to Saint-Germaindes-Bois, by car to Montluçon, and by train to Lyon, which they reached on Sept. 1.

At one point, French gendarmes, hovering between loyalty to Vichy and dislike of the German occupiers, nearly arrested them. At Lyon, they passed from the hands of relative amateurs to a well-organized escape system that took them to Marseilles, Toulouse, Perpignan, through Spain and finally to Gibraltar. By Oct. 5, they were back in Britain.

All three were decorated with the Military Medal. They subsequently declared their willingness to return to France to assist in escape operations. Vanier did so—and narrowly escaped recapture in circumstances that would almost certainly have led to his execution had he been taken. He was awarded a Bar to the MM for his 1943-44 underground activities, as well as a French Croix de Guerre and an American Medal of Freedom. Lafleur also returned to organize escape routes. At one point, when he was about to be taken prisoner, he shot four Germans and escaped again. This necessitated his immediate evacuation back to England. His underground tour brought him a Distinguished Conduct Medal and a Croix de Guerre.

Masson squeezed through a window WHILE THE TRAIN SLOWED DOWN

to pass through a tunnel.

ESCAPE wasn’t the sole province of non-

commissioned ranks; three Canadian officers succeeded in escaping in France against overwhelming odds. Captain George Browne (Royal Canadian Artillery), Lieutenant Augustus A. Masson (Les Fusiliers MontRoyal), and Capt. John Runcie (Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders) all escaped before the enemy could move them to a German camp.

Runcie was the first. He faked an attack of appendicitis, was transferred to a hospital in Paris, and escaped in pajamas through a

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window on Sept. 5. His subsequent journey was a remarkable feat, for although he enlisted the help of successive French civilians, he didn’t link up with any organized escape group, and had to improvise his transportation and route.

Warned that the border between occupied and unoccupied France was heavily guarded, he chose to move through occupied territory to reach Spain. At first he travelled by night, but changed his schedule when he discovered that bridges and highway checkpoints were less rigorously guarded in daytime. Most of the trip was on foot, although he received occasional lifts from French truck drivers and on two occasions from German ones. To the Germans, he represented himself as a Basque mechanic, en route home, but to the French he was always candid about his identity. The most difficult part of the trek was two days spent between Bordeaux and Bayonne in a pine forest with no farms and no accessible water—“as bad as the Sahara,” he described it.

Using a crude map supplied by a hotel waiter, he managed to enter Spain without a guide.

Masson, wounded in battle on Aug. 19, was held at a camp near Verneuil, where he and other officers were segregated from non-commissioned ranks and interrogated.

On Aug. 28, they were put aboard a train for transfer to Germany. East of Paris, Masson squeezed through a window while the train slowed down to pass through a tunnel. This

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was especially dangerous because the distance between the coach and the tunnel wall was less than half a metre. He quickly linked up with Browne, who had jumped at the same time, and they travelled together with civilian help until Sept. 10, when they were arrested and separated by French police as they tried to cross into the unoccupied zone.

Masson and Browne had similar adventures.

Technically interned by Vichy authorities, their situation changed dramatically in November, when the Germans and their Italian allies occupied the territory hitherto governed by the collaborating Vichy regime. On Nov. 27, Masson, detained at Chambarand, was released with other prisoners by a French commandant who abandoned his loyalty to Vichy. Once free, Masson quickly linked up with an escape organization and slipped into Spain. He departed Gibraltar for England on Jan. 21, 1943.

In the meantime, Browne had made another escape but was recaptured and transferred

LAC/PA-200058

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to Chambarand about Nov. 8. However, he was not liberated by the commandant, who in any case was soon replaced by an Italian officer. Prisoners were loaded into two buses on Dec. 7 and taken away. Presumably the destination was Germany. At Moirans, the vehicles stopped close to dusk. PoWs stretched their legs while drivers and guards put water into radiators before starting up again. The guards were boarding by the front door of his bus just as Browne was exiting by the back door. He was missed immediately, but evaded searchers in the gathering darkness. He spent two weeks making his way across southern France, receiving help from some civilians, refused it by others, until he was smuggled into Spain via Andorra. He reached Gibraltar on Jan. 17 and arrived in England on the same day as Masson.

Browne was awarded a Distinguished Service Order; Runcie and Masson received Military Crosses. In all cases involving

Guarded by German soldiers, Canadian troops are marched through the streets of Dieppe following Operation Jubilee.

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these escapes, the reasons for the awards were shrouded in wartime secrecy with the minimum of fanfare and no published explanations as to why they had been honoured.

Soldiers of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, the main assault force for Operation Jubilee, were captured by Germans after being pinned down on the beach in the illfated Dieppe raid.

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ESCAPING FROM prison camps in Germany itself was far more difficult. Getting “outside the wire” was just the beginning; the greatest difficulty was staying at large in a hostile environment and finding a way out of the country. Three Canadian soldiers managed this task—Pte. John H. Kimberley (Royal Hamilton Light Infantry), Sergeant Seneca MacMullen (Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders) and Cpl. Gustav A. Nelson (The Calgary Regiment (Tank)).

In all three cases, the men had endured months of imprisonment and the humiliation of shackling for weeks. When they finally escaped, it was the culmination of numerous escape attempts.

In March 1943, Kimberley, then held at Stalag 344 near Lamsdorf, exchanged identities with another prisoner and was assigned to a work party employed at Breslau. He eluded his guards and boarded a freight train, only to be discovered in Dresden. Five months later, he escaped again using the same tactics (identity switch for a work party outside the regular camp). He and a companion reached Czechoslovakia and were sheltered by Czech Partisans for three weeks. When they attempted to continue alone (with Switzerland as their goal), they were identified as escapees and interrogated by the Gestapo for a month.

In March 1944, the Canadian PoWs were transferred to Stalag II-D near Stargard.

Kimberley escaped again, this time posing as a French civilian in German employ. He reached Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), on June 2, but discovered he needed something to bribe his way aboard a ship. He returned to Stargard and virtually broke back into the camp to obtain cigarettes that could be used as barter for sugar that in turn might buy co-operation. Just as

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he was leaving the camp once more, he was arrested and placed in solitary confinement for a month. Despite this, he managed to join another outside work party and escape from it on Aug. 3, 1944. He was back in Stettin the next day.

Three days later, Kimberley succeeded in boarding a Swedish ship where he and another PoW hid in a dry tank. While the ship was passing Dalarö, Sweden, the two fugitives swam ashore and were sent by the local police to Stockholm. Early in September, Kimberly was flown back to Britain. He was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal in March 1945.

Nelson was involved in tunneling work at Lamsdorf, but he failed to get outside the wire until he escaped with MacMullen near Teschendorf. The latter had managed to escape twice before but had never been at large for longer than a week. MacMullen and Nelson volunteered for a work party, and although they were lodged in a wire-ringed compound, security was less vigilant than that of the main camp.

On June 9, 1944, having loosened bars on their barracks, cut the wire and eluded patrols, they escaped. They carried papers that identified them as Swedes working in Germany. These forgeries stood up to numerous inspections by occasional police constables and numerous railway agents, guards and inspectors. They reached Swinemünde (now Świnoujście, Poland), on June 11 and found shelter with an underground contact until June 14, when they boarded a ship bound for Sweden. They too were flown back to England and eventually received Distinguished Conduct Medals.

THE DIEPPE RAID is remembered chiefly as a tragedy and a failure, occasionally justified on dubious grounds of “lessons learned.” The battle itself was marked by great sacrifice and bravery on the part of many Canadians; the aftermath of escape and evasion, though less studied, nevertheless merits inclusion in records of the event. L

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IN THE

Cadets stand guard overnight before the morning ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

NEWS IN THE NEWS

59 VIMY ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATED IN THE CAPITAL

By Stephen J. Thorne

60 NEW BUILDING GIVES BRANCH NEW LIFE

By Stephen J. Thorne

61 V AC FREEING UP BEDS IN VETERANS’ WINGS

By Sharon Adams

61 SERVING YOU 62 S USPENSE BUILDS DURING CRIBBAGE CHAMPIONSHIPS

By Sharon Adams

64 N EW BRUNSWICK TEAM TAKES THE DARTS TROPHY

Vimy anniversary commemorated in the capital

By Stephen J. Thorne

66 M EMBERSHIP INITIATIVES BECOME A PRIORITY 67 ALSO HEARD AT DEC 68 D ISABILITY AWARD IMPROVEMENTS COME INTO EFFECT

By Sharon Adams

68 O BITUARY FRED MOMBOURQUETTE

Stephen J. Thorne

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By Stephen J. Thorne

IN

Ottawa, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge was marked by army cadets standing guard overnight at the National War Memorial.

The vigil began with an evening ceremony during which 3,598 candles were placed at the memorial—one for each Canadian killed. A light show projected images of the Vimy Memorial onto the cenotaph until midnight.

The overnight watch by the Army Cadet League of Canada commemorated the night soldiers spent waiting in the trenches before going over the top at Vimy on April 9, 1917.

It was followed by a Sunday morning ceremony. Sentries were posted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The official commemorative ceremony included readings, musical performances and a smudging ceremony.

“We have a duty, 100 years later during Canada’s 150th

anniversary of Confederation, to remain committed to remembering those who answered the call to serve and, by doing so, helped to build our country’s legacy,” said Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna.

“Their sacrifice helped ensure every Canadian today would have a future. We will remember them.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Don Perrin was attending the ceremony two days before he retired from a 43-year career in the Canadian Armed Forces. The Winnipeg-born combat engineer is fourth-generation military. His grandfather, Cecil Perrin, fought at Vimy. He was also a combat engineer, or sapper.

Perrin had his grandfather’s First World War medals, including a Volunteer Medal and a Service Medal with “Sapper C. Perrin” engraved on the edge. He was there, he said, to pay tribute to “those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to recognize what they did for us.” L

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2017-05-26 8:51 AM

New building gives branch new life

By Stephen J. Thorne

President Bill Cox stands outside North Calgary Branch’s new building.

T

he Royal Canadian Legion’s North Calgary Branch has a new building, three new revenue streams and a steady influx of new members—and it hasn’t cost a cent.

This happy turn of events took root six years ago when the branch recognized that, like many urban Legions, it was cash-poor and assetrich. Its 50-year-old building, sitting on an oversized plot of prime urban real estate, was falling apart and underutilized. The roof was leaking, the sewers were backing up and the membership rolls, which peaked at 5,000 in the 1970s, were depleted.

The branch decided to make a trade: swap two-thirds of the property with a developer in exchange for a new building.

But not just any new building.

This has a restaurant open to the public on the first floor—the 1918 Tap and Table, its name a coincidental combination of the First World War’s end and its new address near Calgary’s Kensington

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Road NW—a members’ lounge on the second, and commercial office rentals on the third and fourth.

Instead of 15,000 square feet, North Calgary Branch now has more than 36,000. And instead of a single revenue stream, it now has three. Annual branch surpluses are expected to approach $1 million— money for the branch, community programs and other Legions alike.

With news of the Truman Developments project, membership applications started pouring in, 60 per cent of them from the local neighbourhood, said President Bill Cox. The buzz alone brought in 304 applications in four months, most of them from younger prospects.

With construction complete, the developer is now turning its attention to the building of 204 condominium units and retail space on its newly acquired share of the lot—and purchasing two Legion memberships per unit as part of the residents’ welcome package.

With the building’s opening at the

end of May, the branch expects the trend to continue, if not accelerate.

“What people are seeing is that there is new life in our community through our new building,” said Cox, noting that a lot of the brick and mortar of the old building has given way to an award-winning design with magnificent windows and light. “It’s far more open and the community likes that openness.”

It was not without its trials and tribulations, said Cox. Two developers walked away from the project before George Truman took up the cause and ran with it. The process of acquiring permits was a monumental challenge to the uninitiated, but Cox said the city was on board early.

The entire concept, he admits, is “out of the box.” But Cox and Dominion Treasurer Mark Barham, who as a trustee took the proposal to the branch executive in 2011, have every confidence it will work, not just on Kensington Road but elsewhere.

Barham says the model could work for many urban branches, and smaller ones, too. A branch in Canmore, Alta., is already launching a similar redevelopment.

“Similar things could happen in many urban centres because you’ve got other branches that are cash flow-poor and asset-rich,” said Barham. “Most of our facilities across the country are more than 50 years old and they’re really not that attractive.

“So if you have a newer facility, I think that starts to create enough community buzz that people are going to say, ‘Hey, I want to get involved over there; I want to go in there and see that.’” L

Stephen J. Thorne

2017-05-26 8:53 AM

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VAC freeing up beds in veterans’ wings

By Sharon Adams

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eterans Affairs Canada is negotiating with 18 former federal veterans’ hospitals to open access for some modern veterans to longterm care beds that were restricted to traditional (Second World War and Korean War) veterans.

“I’m happy to say we’ve had initial discussions with all of the facilities,” said VAC Acting Senior Director Sandie Williamson. At press time, agreements had been reached with Camp Hill Veterans Memorial Building in Halifax and three facilities in Ontario: London’s Parkwood Hospital, Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Ottawa’s Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre.

“We are pleased to see

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(negotiations) to provide access to long-term care beds for a broader group of veterans,” said Dominion President Dave Flannigan of The Royal Canadian Legion.

Over the decades, as federal veterans’ hospitals have been transferred to provincial control, VAC negotiated a funding arrangement that would reserve a number of “contract beds” for traditional veterans, resulting in veteran-only units served by medical personnel experienced with the veteran culture.

The provinces cover medical costs, and VAC, with some exceptions, picks up the cost of accommodation, meals and veterans’ programs.

Post-Korean War veterans eligible for VAC financial benefits and in need of long-term care have been

supported in community beds.

As the population of traditional veterans has decreased, contract bed vacancies have appeared. These beds can be used as preferredadmission beds for a broader cohort of veterans, said Williamson.

These new beds may speed the process for veterans on waiting lists for community beds.

VAC now supports about 6,200 veterans in some 1,500 nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the country. About a third of them are in contract beds in about 125 facilities.

Though many modern veterans prefer to remain in community facilities close to friends and family, some do want access to facilities with other veterans. L

SERVING YOU is written by Legion command service officers. To reach a service officer, call toll-free 1-877-534-4666, or consult a command website. For years of archives, visit www.legionmagazine.com

New site, new connection

CAFconnection.ca is a new Canadian Armed Forces website that brings the contents of the FamilyForce and CF Community Gateway websites under one URL. It connects CAF members and families to local Military Family Resource Centres (MFRCs) and personnel support programs under the Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services through one single site. It improves and modernizes the way military members and their families access information and resources about local Canadian Armed Forces

morale and welfare services.

Family members who used to go to CF Community Gateway to access local recreation schedules, mess hours and registration for programs, and then had to go to FamilyForce to find local MFRC programming can now go to a single destination. The site is easy to navigate, full of images of Canadian Armed Forces members and their families, with plenty of news and events. It uses a platform that lends itself to mobile technology, allowing for additional development of the site with new functionality and

options. The site automatically adjusts to whatever size screen you are looking at, including smart phones, tablets, laptops and PCs. The content is organized in two ways: by large audience groups, such as military personnel, veterans and families, parents and caregivers and families of the fallen; and by programming areas, such as deployment, child care, health care, housing and recreation.

CAFconnection.ca is now live and content is regularly added. Comments on the new site can be sent to cafconnection@gmail.com. L

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2017-05-26 8:54 AM

Suspense builds during cribbage championships

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By Sharon Adams

he excitement at the 2017 Dominion Cribbage Championships, hosted by Norwood-St. Boniface Branch in Winnipeg April 28-30, lasted right to the end of the awards ceremony, as players in the team event agreed not to post scores during play, nor have the winning team announced until the closing banquet.

It is common for scores to be posted at the end of each two-game set during round-robin play at the national championships. As it becomes clear which teams are vying for top spot, players and spectators mill around the scoreboard hashing out possibilities under which those coming from behind could come out on top.

And thus it was during the 2017 singles and doubles matches.

But when the team competition began Sunday, tournament co-ordinator Faye Lavack asked teams if they would agree to keeping mum on the winners. They did.

The suspense heightened camaraderie, since no one knew exactly how well their team was doing, said Nova Scotia/Nunavut’s Lewis Conrad, from Mersey Branch in Liverpool.

“Waiting until tonight…it’s good, it’s fun,” agreed Lorne Wihnan from Robert Combe VC Branch in Melville, Sask. “You’ve gotta have fun…that’s why we’re here.”

Team players noted several advantages. Players could concentrate on games without fretting over ranking.

Enthusiasm lasted the whole day.

Players on the four-person teams, which are divided into two sections, did not know how they were doing against other teams, nor how the

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other half of their own team was faring. And finally, it sped up play; the team competition was the only one to finish in the time allotted. “I really liked it,” said Paul Calhoun of team New Brunswick. “It made us really concentrate more.”

Calhoun and his daughter Sandra LeBlanc, Roger LeBlanc (no relation) and Dean McLaughlin from Marysville Branch in Fredericton, won the team competition with 35 points, 20 of which were won by the father-daughter pair.

“We couldn’t have done much better,” Calhoun said. “We had an amazing day, couldn’t do anything wrong,” said Sandra.

But at the start, Roger LeBlanc and McLaughlin were trailing badly. “The first four games were something else altogether,” said LeBlanc. “We got double skunked by Nova Scotia and lost by 84 points.”

They proved a bad start does not necessarily signal a bad finish.

The runner-up, with 24 points, was Nova Scotia/Nunavut: Bruce Clattenburg, Gwen and Lloyd Lowe and Lewis Conrad of Mersey Branch in Liverpool.

Saturday, when play kicked off shortly after opening ceremonies, players and spectators were able to follow every change in fortune.

Play was round robin, two games per set, one point for a win, an extra point for a skunk (not passing the three-quarters mark) and two points double skunk (not passing the halfway point).

It took four sets for leaders to emerge in the doubles match.

Arnie MacAskill and Dwight Baird from Lacombe, Alta., Branch, in their second nationals, were in

Ron Moore (top) of Gibsons, B.C., Branch wins the singles title in his first dominion championships. Rick Falle (left) and Barry Dillon of Prince Edward Branch in Victoria win their fourth doubles title in five years.

the lead with eight points, thanks to two skunks against Dwight Moore and Leslie Watson from Kenora, Ont., Branch in ManitobaNorthwestern Ontario Command.

But Barry Dillon and Rick Falle of Prince Edward Branch in Victoria and Roger LeBlanc and Dean McLaughlin of Marysville Branch were only one point behind.

“It seemed every time we lost the cut, we won the game,” said MacAskill. “And then we started winning the cut.” And losing games.

Sharon Adams

2017-05-26 8:55 AM

CRIBBAGE RESULTS TEAM: N.B. (Marysville Br.,

Team champions from Marysville Branch in Fredericton, (from left) Roger LeBlanc, Dean McLaughlin, Sandra LeBlanc and Paul Calhoun, are congratulated

by Faye Lavack, president of host Norwood-St. Boniface Branch and chair of the Local Arrangements Committee.

Skunks in sets five and six put B.C./ Yukon in the lead, while MacAskill and Baird stalled at 11 points.

Coming out of set eight, New Brunswick, with 14 points, was only two behind B.C. But in the final set, the team scored but a single point, while B.C. pulled off a skunk to count three.

“In first place is B.C./Yukon, with 19 points,” announced Lavack, who was also Local Arrangements Committee chair and is branch president. Then she added: “I need to take that back,” she joked, “because everybody knows there’s no 19 in crib.”

It is the fourth time in five years that Barry Dillon and Rick Falle of Prince Edward Branch in Victoria have walked away with the doubles title.

“We’ve been playing together seven, eight years,” said Falle. “We play the same style of cards, so that’s why we win,” Dillon said.

But he looked at the board and added: “No goose eggs, that’s the trick; if you look at the scoreboard, everybody got goose eggs [zeros] except New Brunswick and us.”

There were plenty of goose eggs from the start of the singles competition Saturday afternoon.

Ron Moore of Gibsons, B.C., Branch and Clattenburg of Mersey Branch both scored a healthy four, thanks to two skunks against their

opponents in the opening set. For most of the match they were either tied for lead or within one point of one another. After six sets, they were tied at 12, their nearest competitor, Dave Lane of East Toronto Branch, trailing by three points.

In set seven, Clattenburg pulled ahead by two points when Moore blanked against Lane, but in the next set, Moore pulled off two more skunks to surge ahead to 16.

Clattenburg was still within range of a win, if he could score two skunks while Moore blanked or scored one.

But it was not to be. Final score: Moore 17, Clattenburg 14, tied with New Brunswick’s Sandra LeBlanc.

Moore, 81, was elated. “This is the very first time I’ve played the Dominions,” he said.

“They are pretty competitive here. They are very good.”

Competitors ran the gamut in experience. Theresa Gallant, who was tournament co-ordinator for the 2016 championships held in Charlottetown, and her husband Paul, both of Wellington, P.E.I., Branch, were also competing nationally for the first time.

Doreen Rourke of Montcalm Memorial Branch in Rawdon, Que., was enjoying her second trip to Winnipeg; she emerged a 1999 team champion after her first visit, but has had no wins in four other dominion competitions. “This is my third time, and I’m still not a winner,” said her teammate, singles and team competitor John Garner. “Together we have more than 300 years of experience,” he joked at the banquet, “but it didn’t help as I’d hoped.”

Good food and fellowship marked the closing banquet.

Fredericton) 35; N.S./Nunavut (Mersey Br., Liverpool, N.S.) 24; Alta.-N.W.T. (Lacombe Br.), Sask.

(Robert Combe VC Br., Melville) 22; P.E.I. (Wellington Br.) 21; N.L. (Stephenville Br.), Ont. (East Toronto Br.) 19; Man.-N.W.O. (Fort Garry, Br., Winnipeg) 18; Que. (Montcalm Memorial Br., Rawdon) 17; B.C./Yukon (Lumby Br.) 15.

DOUBLES: B.C./Yukon (Prince Edward Br., Victoria) 19; N.B. (Marysville Br.) 15; Sask. (Carrot River Br.) 14; Alta.-N.W.T. (Lacombe Br.), Ont. (East Toronto Br.) 11; P.E.I. (Wellington Br.) 10; N.S./Nun. (Mersey Br., Liverpool, N.S.) 9; Man.-N.W.O. (Kenora Br., Ont.) 8; Que. (Montcalm Memorial Br.) 7; N.L. (Stephenville Br.) 6.

SINGLES: B.C./Yukon (Ron Moore, Gibsons Br.) 17; N.B. (Sandra LeBlanc, Marysville Br.), N.S./Nunavut (Bruce Clattenburg, Mersey Br.) 14; Ont. (Dave Lane, East Toronto Br.) 12; Man.-N.W.O. (Barry O’Donnell, St. James Br., Winnipeg) 9; N.L. (Lorraine Pittman, Stephenville Br.) 9; P.E.I. (Bernice Gallant, Wellington Br.) 8; Alta.-N.W.T. (Andy Gauthier, Lacombe Br.) 8; Sask. (Shiral Brown, Elrose Br.) 7; Que. (John Garner, Montcalm Memorial Br.) 6.

Lavack thanked her hard-working committee and kitchen staff. Dan Kidd brought greetings from Manitoba-Northwestern Ontario Command President Mel Willis.

“There are more than 20,000 crib players in the Legion, and you are the cream of the crop from right across Canada,” said Dominion Command Sports Committee Secretary Danny Martin, bringing greetings from Chair Angus Stanfield. “We want to congratulate everybody here.” L

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2017-05-30 2:36 PM

New Brunswick team takes the darts trophy

It

was an emotional moment for Mark Hebert after he threw the winning dart for his team from Blacks Harbour, N.B., Branch at the Dominion Command Darts Championships on May 5-7.

Besides the darts, the entire weekend hosted by Eastern Irrigation District Branch in Brooks, Alta., was full of high spirits and old-fashioned camaraderie.

The four-man teams from New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador were locked in a tie at 19 points after two days of roundrobin play. New Brunswick took the first game in a best-of-three playoff to decide the winner and both teams were sitting on doubles to take the second.

“When I walked to the line, all I said was, ‘Dad, help me,’” said Hebert. “Just hit that one double—that’s all I was hoping for. And I hit the double-six.”

Hebert’s father, a merchant mariner and later a mechanic at the former Lantic Sugar refinery in Saint John, N.B., died 19 years ago. Hebert couldn’t hold back the

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By Stephen J. Thorne tears amid the hugs, cheers and celebrations of teammates Ike Mullin, Derek Hanley and Scott Tracy that followed the swift victory over a steady team from Channel Branch in Port aux Basques, N.L. “My team has been so incredible,” he said. “We’ve got two seconds and a third in the last four years and we just wanted to get lucky on one of them. We got fortunate, we hit the double and we went on from there.”

The Manitoba-Northwestern Ontario team of Scott Allan Sansom and Dean Corlett from Elmwood Branch in Winnipeg took the doubles title and Ontario’s Jim Long, hailing from Newbury Branch, took the singles.

“The competition was very stiff,” said Long, an autoworker from Ingersoll, Ont., who joined the Legion in

1998. “Then there’s the added pressure to do well for the guys you’re representing. But it was fun. They did an amazing job.”

The players from Port aux Basques—Tom Brake, Guy Bobbett, Paul Osmond and Danny Cormier—led most of Sunday but couldn’t come up with one last win in the round-robin’s final game against Saskatchewan, to clinch the team title, forcing the playoff.

The Sunday afternoon drama, followed by a prime rib banquet, wrapped a weekend of collegial competition, laughter and comaraderie for 50 players from 15 branches representing all 10 commands of The Royal Canadian Legion.

Singles champion Jim Long from Newbury Branch in Ontario.

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2017-05-26 8:56 AM

National team champions Ike Mullin (left), Mark Hebert, Scott Tracy and Derek Hanley from Blacks Harbour Branch in New Brunswick.

DARTS RESULTS TEAM: N.B. (Blacks Harbour Br.) 21; N.L. (Channel Br., Port aux Basques) 19; AltaN.W.T. (Jubilee Br., Calgary) 16; Ont. (Thamesville Br.), Que. (Terrebonne Heights Br., Mascouche Heights) 14; Man.N.W.O. (Elmwood Br., Winnipeg) 13; N.S./Nunavut (Westville Br.) 12; B.C./Yukon (Kamloops Br.) 11; P.E.I. (Miscouche Br.) 10; Sask. (Nipawin) 7.

Doubles champions Dean L. Corlett (left) and Scott Allan Sansom from Manitoba-Northwestern Ontario’s Elmwood Branch in Winnipeg.

It also represented the culmination of a lot of hard work by President Lloyd Hasper and his team of some 50 volunteers that began with price negotiations and room reservations 18 months before, then expanded out into the community and beyond. “The city was behind us 100 per cent,” said Hasper.

Dozens of sponsors signed on, providing food and support for the local Legion situated in the heart of oil, cattle and irrigation lands a 90-minute drive southeast of Calgary. Other branches chipped in. Chapelhow in Calgary and Vulcan Branch provided vans and drivers, while Redcliff Branch stepped up with a van.

Local media furnished free publicity. The Brooks air cadet squadron provided the colour party and catered Sunday’s banquet.

“This was a big deal around here,” said Hasper, who has belonged to six different Legion branches and served on the executives of four of them over the past 40 years. He wore a blue volunteer shirt and got down and dirty like everyone else.

“This Legion has got one of the best volunteer-based groups that I’ve been involved with.

When push comes to shove, they’re all here to help us.”

Stephen J. Thorne

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Started by First World War veterans, Eastern Irrigation District Branch will be celebrating its 90th birthday next April. The town population was about 1,200 in 1928, but it would grow—and so would the Legion. It peaked at around 800 members before numbers fell off as the pictures with poppies attached began to take up more and more of the wall near the front door.

Home of the cutter bee—which pollinates area alfalfa crops— Brooks itself, population now 14,000, has faced hard times.

Wells are only just getting back online after low oil prices forced shutdowns all over the region.

Elsie Bunney, 86, has been a member of the branch for 60 years.

She came to the prairie town from Leader, Sask., to waitress at age 23 and oversaw branch dining staff for years. She was ladies auxiliary president twice and served as the branch’s assistant manager—briefly.

“I didn’t like it,” she says. “I like to be out here with the people.”

Bunney has seen all the ups and downs. With the town’s growth came more competition for the dollar. These days, the branch is climbing back up. Thursday beer bag nights and Friday steak nights are bringing people in again.

DOUBLES: Man.-N.W.O. (Elmwood Br.) 20; N.B. (Blacks Harbour Br.), N.S./Nunavut (Westville Br.) 17; Alta.-N.W.T. (Jubilee Br.) 16; Que. (Terrebonne Heights Br.) 14; Ont. (Bay Bridges Br., Pickering) 13; B.C./Yukon (Grandview Br., Vancouver), P.E.I. (Miscouche Br.) 12; N.L. (Channel Br.) 8; Sask. (Moose Jaw Br.) 6.

SINGLES: Ont. (Newbury Br.) 20; B.C./Yukon (Grandview Br.), N.B. (Blacks Harbour Br.) 19; Alta.-N.W.T. (Jubilee Br.) 18; N.S./Nunavut (Westville Br.) 17; N.L. (Channel Br.) 13; Man.-N.W.O. (Flin Flon Br.) 9; Sask. (Moose Jaw Br.), Que. (Terrebonne Heights Br.) 7; P.E.I. (Miscouche Br.) 6.

Membership is at 400, and growing.

“We’ve got good food here,” she said.

Besides giving the branch a boost, Hasper noted, the tournament brought people together from across the country.

“We made a lot of good friends this weekend—and a lot of good friends leading up to it,” he said.

“I’ve been talking to branches for months. So when they come in here, you feel like you know them and you can sit down and talk. You have good conversations about what other Legions do to make money.

“Our aim, as a branch, was to put on the best time we could for everybody, to make it a class act.

And I think we’ve done that.” L

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Membership initiatives become a priority

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egion members will receive a new plastic membership card after paying their 2018 dues, Dominion Executive Council (DEC) learned at its April 29-30 meeting at Legion House in Kanata, Ont. The new red card, featuring an image of the National War Memorial, will be reusable, with stickers added to indicate paid membership each year.

It is all part of a strategy to knock down the barriers to recruiting and renewing members. DEC agreed to streamline the recruitment process by having the initiation process become part of the application form to join The Royal Canadian Legion. This would be within the General By-laws with the branch retaining the power to hold a ceremonial initiation at a later date.

“This revised member application would leave further initiation processes at the discretion of the local branch,” said Membership Chair Tom Irvine in his report. In addition, DEC agreed to task the Ritual and Awards Committee with a more streamlined branch initiation for those branches that still want a ceremony.

“The Membership Committee is about to embark on an extensive change management exercise

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which will primarily occur over the next two years. These efforts focus on many elements, including membership administrative initiatives such as a new processing web portal, new membership cards and the creation of new member renewal payment options combined with simpler membership enrollments and a branch hospitality program,” said Irvine. “These endeavours will require strong command, branch and member support, if we are to maximize our organizational member renewal and retention efforts, all with a focus and goal of stabilizing Legion membership for future years.”

Dominion Treasurer Mark Barham reported that 2016 had finished well for Dominion Command with a surplus of $465,871. This was in part due to a banner year in supply sales and a membership decline less than expected.

Veterans, Services and Seniors Committee Chair Dave Flannigan reported that the Dominion Command Service Bureau continued to experience a significant increase in the number of first applications, handling 374 cases in 2016, up from 310 in 2015 and 273 in 2014. Requests for benevolent fund assistance decreased slightly to 430 in 2016, from 439 in 2015.

Liam Jackson

MEMBER SINCE | MEMBRE DEPUIS 1996

Command | Dire ction XX

Branch | Filiale XXX

Member No. | No de member XXXXXXXX

Status | Statut Associate Member

On the advocacy front, Flannigan said the committee met the day after the federal budget was released.

“Budget 2017 did not deliver on many of the [Veterans Affairs] minister’s top priorities,” said Flannigan, “It checked off a couple more but did not address the lifetime financial security for ill and injured veterans. We will continue to press the government to ensure that all of the top priorities come to fruition for our veterans and their families.”

Flannigan reported that a final draft has been prepared for standards for service dogs to help veterans suffering from operational stress injuries and other medical problems.

Poppy and Remembrance Committee Chair André Paquette said that last year’s virtual poppy drop, projected on the Centre Block on Parliament Hill, was very popular. DEC voted to support the virtual drop again during the remembrance period in 2017.

A few changes to the poppy manual were passed, including adding a section that says residual

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2017-05-26 8:58 AM

Status | Statut Associate Member

New Brunswick Command President Harold Harper (left) accepts a Certificate of Appreciation from Dominion President Dave Flannigan. opposite: DEC members listen to reports.

poppies and wreathes are to be retained by the branch for future campaigns. Another change set a maximum of $15 per unit for gifts donated to deployed troops and RCMP members for Operation Santa Claus and Canada Day. Sports Committee Chair Angus Stanfield reported that the Legion’s National Track and Field Championships will be held in Brandon, Man., in 2017 and 2018 and in Sydney, N.S., in 2019 and 2020. Eight ball has also returned to the member sports program and this year will be hosted by Sturgeon Falls, Ont., Branch.

Ritual and Awards Committee Chair Ron Goebel said that DEC had voted to authorize the wearing of a Vimy 1917 commemorative pin. It can be worn on the right lapel along with the We Support Our Troops lapel pin from April 1 to Dec. 30, 2017.

Goebel also noted that the committee was active in making applications for the new Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers. Government House has informed the committee that it is currently dealing with a large volume of applications and processing them will take some time.

The Constitution and Laws Committee was asked to clarify the eligibility of males to join the ladies’ auxiliary. There are approximately 350 males in the L.A. even though provincial commands have not enacted a provision for male eligibility. The practice has been permitted on the grounds of antidiscrimination legislation. However,

Tom MacGregor

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the committee concluded— based on the General By-laws and a human rights case in British Columbia involving males who were not allowed to join an all-women’s gym— that males are not eligible for membership in the L.A. Glynne Hines, president of the Operational Stress Injury Special Section, reported that the section had less than 200 members but an executive has been put together since the section was approved at dominion convention last year and most provincial representatives have been appointed.

In provincial command reports, British Columbia/Yukon Command President Marc Tremblay said the command was unable to get the provincial government to accept the Legion’s definition of a veteran in determining who is eligible for a veteran’s licence plate. Approval of plates is handled by the British Columbia Veterans Commemorative Association. As a result, the command now has no say in the issuing of veterans’ licence plates.

Alberta-Northwest Territories Command President Chris Strong said that the Legion had dispersed all the money raised in the Fort McMurray Relief Fund. The money was spent resettling residents. It was also used to purchase books for a school which had lost its library.

Ontario Command President Brian Weaver said the command’s homeless veterans program continues to grow, with more homeless and near homeless veterans being identified every day. “To date we have assisted 486 homeless [veterans and] permanently housed 271 in 111 different communities. More than $1.5 million has been spent on the program.”

Following New Brunswick Command President Harold

Harper’s report, Dominion President Dave Flannigan presented him with a Certificate of Appreciation for how he handled the bad publicity when a branch in the province refused to let an Afghanistan veteran place a wreath on Remembrance Day. His action defused an embarrassing situation and earned the Legion praise from the offended veteran. L

ALSO HEARD AT DEC The following news was also presented at the April 29-30 meeting of Dominion Executive Council.

• The Canada Revenue Agency turned down the Legion’s initial request to establish a national charitable foundation. DEC voted to continue the process.

• A new branch charter was granted in 2016 to Lt.-Col. André Bouchard Branch in Alma, Que. • 13 branches surrendered their charters in 2016: four in Alberta-N.W.T.; three in Quebec; two in ManitobaNorthwestern Ontario and one each in B.C./Yukon, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia/Nunavut.

• The Tuberculous Veterans Section of the Legion is commemorating the 100th anniversary of its founding as the Tuberculous Veterans Association in 1917.

• With the use of medicinal marijuana becoming more prevalent in the veteran community, Dominion Command was asked for a policy concerning its use around Legion branches. Branches should respect local bylaws just as they do for tobacco products. L

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Disability award improvements come into effect

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By Sharon Adams

hanges to benefits under the New Veterans Charter (NVC) will put more money into the pockets of tens of thousands of wounded, ill and injured veterans and their families or survivors.

As of April 1, the ceiling on tax-free disability awards for service-related wounds, illness and injury was raised to $360,000 from $314,723, an increase of about 14 per cent.

The amount of the award, popularly known as the lump-sum payment, is determined by the severity of the condition and how much is attributed to military service, expressed as a percentage.

Veterans can choose to be paid in a lump sum, in annual payments, or a combination of the two.

Disability awards will be topped up to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index retroactive to 2006, when the NVC came into effect. “Every veteran with a

disability award will receive an additional lump-sum payment,” Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr said. VAC expects $700 million will be distributed among 67,000 Canadian Armed Forces members and veterans.

The increase brings the award more in line with private and public insurance plans, non-pecuniary damages awarded by courts and workers’ compensation boards.

“We have been advocating…for quite some time to have the disability award increased to be commensurate with what the civilian court awards for pain and suffering,” said Dominion President Dave Flannigan of The Royal Canadian Legion.

The Legion is also pleased that awards for veterans assessed at one to four per cent will be calculated on the disability award rate, rather than rates under the Pension Act, as had been the case since 2006.

As well, the Permanent Impairment Allowance, a benefit to

help compensate for lost job prospects and career opportunities, has been replaced by the Career Impact Allowance, a taxable monthly benefit paid for life. The new allowance considers diminished earning capacity and provides a taxable supplement for veterans unable to earn at least two thirds of pre-release salary due to a service-related health problem.

“This change increases access to higher…grade levels for some veterans,” said Flannigan.

Veterans and their advocates have argued that some of the most severely disabled veterans were not receiving the highest permanent impairment allowances. A new individual assessment, which will consider years left to serve at time of release and degree of lost earning capacity, is expected to give more veterans access to the highest allowances. By 2020, an estimated 2,700 veterans will be eligible for the increased benefit. L

OBITUARY

Fred Mombourquette Former Nova Scotia Command president Fred Mombourquette died Dec. 3 in the Aberdeen Hospital in New Glasgow, N.S. He was 90.

Born in Sydney, Mombourquette enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1944. Following his service, Mombourquette worked for the Canadian National Railway for 20 years, before beginning a career as a Co-Operative Insurance agent in Pictou County.

Mombourquette joined New Glasgow Branch in 1951, where he served as president. He rose through the ranks

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1926-2016

of Nova Scotia Command, becoming president in 2001.

During his term, the command officially amalgamated with Nunavut to create Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command.

He also served as grand president of the command.

Mombourquette served on the Dominion Executive Council for more than 10 years, and was active in Legion curling, reaching the dominion championships. He was active in veterans issues and was appointed to the Veterans Ombudsman Advisory Council in 2003.

He was involved in many local organizations, and received the Canada 125 Medal for his contributions to the community.

Mombourquette is survived by his wife Agnes, children Beverly, Ann Marie, Patricia, Bill, Joey, Fred and Wayne, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. L

Ray Dick

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SNAPSHOTS Volunteering in the community Europe

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New Brunswick

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British Columbia/Yukon Newfoundland and Labrador

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Alberta-Northwest Territories

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Manitoba-Northwestern Ontario

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Nova Scotia/Nunavut

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Quebec

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Ontario

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Correspondents’ Addresses

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IN THIS

ISSUE Legion branches donate more than

$280,000 to their communities

The colour party for Europe Zone takes its place at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France for ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. MARTIN VAN DE POEL

Caraquet, N.B., Branch President Armel Lanteigne (centre) welcomes 18 new members.

Hampton, N.B., Branch First Vice Gary Hicks (left) and Second Vice William Campbell (right) present Sterling Mercer with the 50 Years Long Service Medal and a 70-year bar. legionmagazine.com > JULY/AUGUST 2017

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Volunteering in the community

Service officer Russell Whitney (left) and President Shelley Burtt of N.W. Miramichi Branch in Sunny Corner, N.B., congratulate first-place provincial-level poster contest winners (from left) Ahna Holmes and Jaida Augustine.

N.W. Miramichi Branch in Sunny Corner, N.B., service officer Russell Whitney congratulates Brooklyn Savage of Natoaganeg School for placing first in the poster contest at both branch and provincial levels.

At Lancaster Branch in Saint John, N.B., provincial junior essay winner Madison Cullinan is congratulated by (from left) poppy co-chair Bob Cobbett, President Larry Lynch, parents Tim and Krista Cullinan and vice-president Allen Stevenson.

At Fredericton Branch, Capital District Commander Daryl Alward awards second-place prizes to Hagar Abdessamie (left) for her senior poem and Amanda Shang for her intermediate essay.

Sackville, N.B., Branch presents $3,000 to the Tantramar air cadet squadron. At the presentation are (from left) poppy chair Victor Sears, Flt. Sgt. Andrew Ollerhead, Lieut. Greg Tracy, President Doreen Richards and bingo chair Susan Melanson.

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Jenna Taylor is awarded top prize for her intermediate essay at provincial level at Chatham Branch in Miramichi, N.B. Presenting the award are (from left) poppy chair Marianne Harris, James Harris and committee member Gerald Mullins.

First Vice Brian Eisan of Kennebecasis Branch in Rothsay, N.B., and Royal District Commander Terry Campbell present command-level prizes to second-place junior colour poster winner Marin Macpherson and first-place senior colour poster winner Ashley Langteigne.

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Spearheaded by Moncton Branch, more than $100,000 was raised by branches in Westmorland/Albert District, along with government, corporate and private donations, for the purchase of a new bus equipped for wheelchair use for the local Veterans Health Centre.

At the presentation are (from left) bus committee chairman Art Cuthbertson, centre nurse manager Isabelle Martin, Westmorland/ Albert District Commander Charlene McCully, Moncton Branch President Robert Dupuis and bus committee member Keith Brewer.

During Vancouver Island ANZAC Day ceremonies, Courtenay, B.C., Branch President Bruce Stewart (right) and Comox Branch Past President Dave Kelly honour Australian and New Zealand troops who fought at Gallipoli in the First World War.

At the presentation of $2,000 from Slocan Valley, B.C., Branch to Slocan Community Library are (from left) President Patrick Ashton, library representatives Michelle Morelli and Barbara Mulcahy, and vice-president Leonard Block.

Janice Perrino of South Okanagan Similkameen Medical Foundation receives $6,000 from Okanagan Falls, B.C., Branch President Wayne Knight, Past President Mary Findlater (second left) and treasurer Lorraine Harrison. Area branches have pledged to raise $90,000 over five years for medical equipment for Penticton Regional Hospital.

Courtenay, B.C., Branch President Bruce Stewart (middle row, right) and poppy chair Kelly Kuzyk (rear, left) present $10,000 to representatives of Comox Valley Healthcare Foundation to help buy physiotherapy and rehabilitation equipment.

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Volunteering in the community

At the presentation of $750 for cadets from Bowser, B.C., Branch are (from left) cadet liaison Rev. Brian Kirby, Lieut. (N) Brittany Thurber of the Esquimalt sea cadets, Admiral Yanow navy league cadet LS Ben Klein-Beekman, PO1 Tara Everett of the Esquimalt sea cadets, branch executive member Carol Robertson and Sgt.-at-Arms Ben Evans.

WO Sarah Battie receives a donation for the army cadet corps from President Tim Murphy of Alberni Valley Branch in Port Alberni, B.C. The branch presented a total of $3,900 to three local cadet groups.

Secretary-treasurer Margaret Abbott and vice-president William Abbott of Bonavista, N.L., Branch present a $1,000 provincial bursary to second-year nursing student Melissa Abbott.

Comox, B.C. Branch Second Vice Gerry Maillet presents $1,000 to Commissioner Christina Tickner of the Comox Valley scouts group.

President Carl Waterman (left) accepts the Legionnaire of the Year award from Beulah Cooper (centre) and vice-president Cynthia Pheifer of Gander, N.L., Branch.

Tara (centre, left) and Juanita Bartsch display a brass plaque commemorating Cpl. Cole Bartsch, a Hilltop High School graduate who died in Afghanistan. The plaque was presented to the school by White Court, Alta., Branch, represented by (from left) Stuart Doyle, Ron Sutherland, Elwood Pickering, Ian McDermid, Ralph Schutte, Doug Ling and President Kyle Scott. This was part of a commemorative program run by CP Rail.

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President Gord Pennycook (rear, left) and Jim Gillespie of Daysland, Alta., Branch congratulate poster and literary contest participants from Daysland School.

Andy Meggitt (left) and Jim Frissell of Beaverlodge, Alta., Branch congratulate winners of the poster and literary contests from Beaverlodge Elementary School.

Pierre Côté (left) and Shannon Matechuk (right) of Edgerton, Alta., Branch present Lana Clark and Sherilea Scheldt of the Provost Long Term Care Facility with $999 for veterans’ comforts.

Students from Beaverlodge Regional High School are congratulated on their winning entries in the poster and literary contests by Andy Meggitt (left) and Jim Frissell of Beaverlodge, Alta., Branch.

L.A. members celebrate their 75th anniversary at Charleswood Branch in Winnipeg.

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Virden, Man., L.A. President Chis Dunning (left) and Virden Branch President Curtis Smith (right) present $10,000 to Lieut. Nicole Day for XII Manitoba Dragoons army cadets. LUKE KNOLL

Life members Morris Clarke (left) and Clare Moir stand in front of the monument refurbished by Oak Lake, Man., Branch, with help of Veterans Affairs Canada’s cenotaph and monument restoration program.

In Thunder Bay, Ont., Past President Robert Cutbush (left) and President Dell Babcock prepare to cut the cake celebrating Port Arthur Branch’s 90th anniversary.

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Inspecting a specialized hospital bed funded by an $8,000 donation from Stonewall, Man., Branch are (from left) chaplain Leonard Oracheski, nurse Sharon Rempel, former branch president Mary Anne Pull and President Tim Williams. The branch intends to fund two more beds for the Dr. Evelyn Memorial Hospital.

Hants County Branch in Windsor, N.S., congratulates Nova Scotia/ Nunavut Command winners in the poster and literary contests (front, from left) Jack Davies, Katie Davies, Emma Tattrie, (rear) Mackenna Clark, Jillian Beaver, Ainslie Gibbon, Casey Wood, Rachel Young and Arianna Cutler. DEBBIE GILBERT

Weldon Mosher of Eastern Marine Branch in Gaetz Brook, N.S., receives his 50 Years Long Service Medal.

Linda Desmond (left) and President Dave Geddes of A.H. Foster MM Memorial Branch in Kingston, N.S., present a $500 donation to Dwight Ross Elementary School principal Lisa Hewson for the school’s breakfast program. THERESA CORKUM

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Winston Mercer of Eastern Marine Branch in Gaetz Brook, N.S., received his 50 Years Long Service Medal.

President Dave Geddes (centre) and Second Vice Glen Paul of A.H. Foster MM Memorial Branch in Kingston, N.S., present $1,000 to local Canada 150 Celebration chair Heather Parker.

Morin Heights, Que., Branch welcomes new members. JAMES LAWSON

Jeanie Basile, (left) of the Lakeshore General Hospital Foundation receives $2,000 from Moe LaFoley and President Eric Connor of Hudson, Que., Branch. BOB BLACKBURN

Murray Crouse, honours and awards chair at Mersey Branch in Liverpool, N.S., presents a 50 Years Long Service Medal to Charlotte White.

Poppy fund representative Moe LaFoley (left) of Hudson, Que., Branch presents $3,000 to Vice President Neil Asselin of the Lakeshore Legion Housing Association (right), as Patrick O’Grady looks on. BOB BLACKBURN

At the presentation of $500 from Sutton, Que., Branch to the Massey-Vanier air cadet squadron are (from left) poppy chair Chuck Richards, commanding officer Lieut. (N) Maxime Boulay, WO1 Nimai Jariwala and President Jean Thibodeau. CHARLES RICHARDS

Barb McIntee is the Legionnaire of the Year at Lord Elgin Branch in St. Thomas, Ont.

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SNAPSHOTS

Volunteering in the community

Minden, Ont., Branch President Judy Fliefer, accompanied

by Second Vice Paul Norry, First Vice Jim Ross and service officer Al Mayo, presents $2,500 to the Haliburton Legion army cadet corps, represented by cadet Lilly Austin and Max Ward.

Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould presents Burlington, Ont., Branch President Matt MacPherson with a $25,000 grant from the New Horizons for Seniors program.

In London, Ont., Byron-Springbank Branch renovates after receiving a $10,010 grant from the Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program and celebrates with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. At the ceremony are (from left) Henry Klausnitzer, President Wayne Thompson, projects and grants committee chair Glenn Counsell and committee members Judy and Armin Grunwald.

Walkerton, Ont., President Bryan Preston presents $6,500 on behalf of Ontario Command, Branches and L.A. Charitable Foundation to the administration assistant for the Walkerton and District Hospital Foundation, Brittany Beuhlow (left), along with foundation board members Janice Swanton and Brian Currie.

President Bob Williams (left) and membership chair Lynn Bousfield of Pte. Joe Waters Branch in Milton, Ont., welcome 14 new members.

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In Prescott, Ont., Zone G-3 Commander Anne Dutcher presents Fort Wellington Branch President Frank Murphy with a plaque celebrating the branch’s 90th anniversary.

Theresa Lemieux (left) of Bells Corners Branch in Nepean, Ont., accepts the Legionnaire of the Year award from President Ron Henderson.

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In Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., President Wayne Paulencu places a wreath commemorating the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge, while Maj. Pierre Breckenridge of 49th Field Artillery Regt. army cadet corps and bugler Lieut. Richard Blackstock of Royal Sovereign sea cadet corps observe.

Port Colborne, Ont., Branch commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge with a ceremony at Vimy Park.

Poppy chair Barry McWhinnie and youth education chair Sylvia Lachance of Capreol, Ont., Branch present intermediate poster and literary contest awards to (from left) Jeb Mason, Naomi Schmid, Julia Gardner, Noah Richer and Emily Rowsell.

Westboro Branch and Strathcona Branch in Ottawa present $5,000 to the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre on behalf of the Ottawa Poppy Fund. At the presentation are (from left) executive director Daniel Clapin, resident Doris Jenkins and foundation development officer Delphine Hasle.

President Mark Wardle (centre) and poppy chair Glen Magee of Newbury, Ont., Branch present $1,500 to students travelling to France for the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge.

Trillium Health Partners Foundation development officer Kathleen Cymek (centre) accepts $25,000 from President Marika Booton (left) and Judy McNutt of Streetsville Overseas Veterans Club Branch in Mississauga, Ont. legionmagazine.com > JULY/AUGUST 2017

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Volunteering in the community

Osgoode, Ont., Branch poppy chair Peter Valdstyn (left), accompanied by Elsie Hickey (right), presents $2,000 to development officer Delphine Hasle and director Daniel Clapin of the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre.

Cutting the cake in celebration of the 65th anniversary of Trenton, Ont., L.A. are L.A. President Glenda Trottman and branch President Manny Raspberry.

Georges Vanier Branch in Hawkesbury, Ont., presents $6,500 to the Hawkesbury and District General Hospital Foundation on behalf of the Ontario Command, Branches and L.A. Charitable Foundation.

Attending are (from left) Second Vice Jack Hume, hospital board member Jeannine Lefebvre, Nicole Trottier, Gérard Hachey, secretary June Elliott, Bonnie Campbell, President Mervin Ward and hospital foundation executive director Pierre-Luc Byham.

First Vice Joe Phillips (left) of Havelock Belmont Branch in Havelock, Ont., is awarded the Legionnaire of the Year plaque

by President Sandy Peters, honours and awards chair Irene McArthur and Sgt.-at-Arms Ellen Kocik.

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Youth education chair William Walker Jr. of Gen. Nelles Branch in Niagara-OnThe-Lake, Ont., chats with first-place intermediate public speaking winner Abby Davidson.

Polish Veterans Branch in Kitchener, Ont., presents $6,500 to St. Mary’s General Hospital Foundation on behalf of the Ontario Command, Branches and L.A. Charitable Foundation. At the presentation are (from left) L.A. President Halina Jach, foundation representative Susan Dusick, President Stan Howie and Stan Robczuk.

In District C, Ontario Command Youth Education Chair John Lowe (left, rear) and Ontario Command Vice-President Derek Moore congratulate public speaking winners, (from left) James Speer, Austin Bieman, Kate Leppington and Emma Schuster.

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At Pte. Joe Waters Branch in Milton, Ont., First Vice Don Hipwell (second left) and President Bob Williams present $500 to Donna Danielli, executive director of Milton Transitional Housing. Event co-ordinators Margot Johnson (left) and Lorna Turner (right) are also present.

Dunnville, Ont., Branch presents $2,000 to Meals on Wheels. At the presentation are (from left) Second Vice Dave McQuillen, President Garry Frost, Meals on Wheels director Megan Cairns, and First Vice John Woods.

In Coe Hill, Ont., Branch, youth education chair Lynn Kruger accompanies winners of the public speaking competition.

Former president Al Nagy of Kitley-Toledo Branch in Toledo, Ont., presents $950 to representative Tara Johnston for the Rideau air cadet squadron.

Savannah Campbell (centre), surrounded by her family, is congratulated on her second-place win in the provincial senior essay contest by Elmira, Ont., Branch President Joe Vervoort, youth education chair Janet Williamson and Zone C-2 Commander Sandy Pember.

Port Elgin, Ont., Branch President Dan Kelly and track and field chair Sharen Maas present $1,000 from the branch and $50 from the L.A. to the Saugeen Track and Field Club.

President Manny Raspberry of Trenton, Ont., Branch presents $1,500 to Roger Snape, vicepresident of the Trent Port Historical Society.

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Volunteering in the community

East Toronto Branch won Ontario Command Cribbage Championship. With the trophy are (from left) event host District B sports officer Norm Lacasse, champions Eunice Francis, Dave Lanne, Lynn Somerton and Jim McKiel, along with Ontario Command Sports Chair Vic Newey.

Bar chair Velma Taylor (left) and treasurer John Yeo of Lord Elgin Branch in St. Thomas, Ont., present $3,000 to Kim Misener, KAR co-ordinator YWCA St. Thomas-Elgin for their Keep A Roof campaign.

Alliston, Ont., President Patricia Grant presents $1,000 toward a school trip to Vimy to student represenatives Johanna Bernardi and Thomas Rea.

Minden, Ont., President Judy Flieger, accompanied by Second Vice Paul Norry, service officer Al Mayo and First Vice Jim Ross, presents $10,000 to Don Popple and executive director Dale Walker of the Haliburton Hospital palliative care unit.

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Trenton, Ont, Branch First Vice Diane King, Beth Bouchard, Ena Newman and ways-and-means chair Norma Jean Henn present $1,809 for the Highway of Heroes Living Tribute to representative Mike Hurley.

The Highway of Heroes Living Tribute program is planting 117,000 trees along Highway 401 between Trenton and Toronto to honour Canada’s soldiers killed since Confederation.

Orillia, Ont., Branch President Rick Purcell (left), accompanied by Chuck Penny, presents $7,560 to Nicole McCahon, executive director of the Orillia Soldier’s Memorial Hospital Foundation.

Caistor, Gainsborough & South Grimsby Branch in Smithville, Ont., hosts the Zone B-5 public speaking competition. Zone youth education chair Sarah Frenetle presents awards to students (from left) Tow Waite, Colter Naphin, Tucker Wood and Matthew Kotsis.

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Members of Peterborough, Ont., Branch visit and bring gifts to veterans at St. Joseph’s at Fleming. Attending are (from left) Brenda Chandler, Shelia Davidson, veteran Jean Welbourn, St. Joseph’s director Carol Rodd and Una Golding.

Residents at the Tony Stacey Centre receive gifts from members of Dambusters Branch and Centennial Branch in Scarborough, Ont. Joining in the fun are (front, from left) Deputy District D Commander Joyce Geddes and resident Babs Anderson, (rear) Centennial Branch First Vice June Hayes, Bill McPhee, Debbie McPhee and District D public relations chair Chin Tam.

Thamesville, Ont., Branch wins the provincial darts championship.

With the trophy are (from left) Ontario Command Sports Chair Vic Newey, players William Lang, Wayne Dragstra, Kevin Markowski and Jeff Broad and the event host, District B sports chair Norm Lacasse.

Youth education chair Doris Mackey (left) and President Roy Mackey of Centennial Branch in Beamsville, Ont., congratulate the winning students of the branch-level public speaking competition.

Richmond Hill, Ont., Branch President Julian West plants an oak sapling to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

At Dr. Fred Starr Branch in Sudbury, Ont., President James Young (left), poppy chair Gisele Pharand, Past President Bob McLay and member Maurice Roy present $5,000 to Kelly Zinger, executive director of Meals on Wheels Sudbury.

In Grimsby, Ont., West Lincoln Branch President Simon Saulnier and secretary Corine McGill present $1,000 to Bill Lloyd and Sherry Cain of Rose Cottage palliative care. legionmagazine.com > JULY/AUGUST 2017

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Volunteering in the community

Bertie Township Branch in Ridgeway, Ont., places a memorial stone at the Legion Peace Park honouring military, police, firefighters and first responders who served during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In Elgin, Ont., Rideau Lakes Branch poppy chair Roy Samson (left), youth education chair Aline McRory and principal Sharon Halliday congratulate Natalie Snider for placing third in the provincial-level black and white poster contest.

At Centennial Branch in Scarborough, Ont., Jiade Guo, who placed first in the provincial-level senior black and white poster contest, is congratulated by (from left) Zone D-5 Commander Wayne Powell, District D Commander Karen Moore and district public relations chair Chin Tam.

Simcoe, Ont., Branch President Dan Reilly, nurse Nicole Chapple, poppy chair John Charleau, care practice leader Amanda Sonnenberg and committee member Christy Ritchie examine one of two special chairs funded from a donation of $5,798 from the branch to Norfolk General Hospital.

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Sir Sam Hughes Branch in Lindsay, Ont., presents $3,927 to Ross Memorial Hospital on behalf of the Ontario Command, Branches and L.A. Charitable Foundation. With the cheque are (from left) Erin Coons, First Vice Jim Richardson, Dr. Bert Lauwers, President Howie Johnston and technologist Pam Sleep.

Fergus, Ont., Branch President Fred Hiller thanks Charlette, Sadie and Amelia Bauman (front) for donating their allowance to a program for homeless veterans.

Sutton West, Ont., Branch won the provincial senior darts tournament. District D deputy sports chair Shelly Sing (left) and Ontario Command Sports Chair Vic Newey (right) congratulate players Fred Morganroth, Terry Cooper, Darrell Foote and Ron Mills.

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At the Zone B-7, Ont., public speaking competition, District B Commander Wes Kutasienski, Zone B-7 youth education chair Judy Ann Taylor and District B Deputy Commander Jack Porter congratulate winning students Kristine Mokrytski, Ishan Jaggi and Arechun Mohan.

Congratulating the winning students of the public speaking competition in Ontario Command District F are (from left) secretary Ann Bulpit, Zone F-5 Commander Mary Dunne, Zone F-2 youth education chair Astrida Jenkinson-Chalmers, District youth education chair Ena Newman and Zone F-2 Commander Gary Newman.

In Sudbury, Ont., Dr. Fred Starr Branch President Jim Young (left) accompanied by membership chair Gerry Bradley (centre) and poppy chair Gisele Pharand (right) present $2,000 to the Sudbury Navy League Cadets.

QOR Branch in Toronto presents $7,458 to St. Joseph’s Health Centre Foundation on behalf of the Ontario Command, Branches and L.A. Charitable Foundation.

At the presentation are (from left) director Paul Bauman, District D Past Commander Jay Burford, First Vice Jimmy Cohen, community campaign officer Darlene Swinton, charitable foundation vice-chair Cathy Geary, Zone D-3 Commander Walter Vaughan and branch President Mary Keates.

H.T. Church Branch in St. Catharines, Ont., commemorates the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge with a parade and service. Attending are (from left) President Lloyd Cull, Mayor Walter Sendzik, St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley and St. Catharines MP Chris Bittle.

Ontario Command Zone D-5 youth education chair Heather Vanslack (left) and Deputy District Commander Shelly Sing congratulate winning students of the district-level public speaking contest. legionmagazine.com > JULY/AUGUST 2017

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SNAPSHOTS

Volunteering in the community

At Battlefield Branch in Stoney Creek, Ont., Yuji Takatsu, the provincial winner and Dominion Command honourable mention in the Legion primary black and white poster contest, is congratulated by Zone B-6 Commander John Murphy (left), youth education assistant chair Linda Lalonde and youth chair John Glodziak.

Surrounded by members, First Vice Donna Wagenaar and President Linda Semanyk of Fergus, Ont., Branch L.A. hold a cake, celebrating 75 years of service to the branch.

In Shelburne, Ont., youth education chair Barb Defoe and First Vice Garry Netzke congratulate winners of the branch-level public speaking competition.

Helaine Ortmann (left), senior development officer at Juranvinski Hospital and Cancer Centre accepts $3,000 from President Gloria Armbrust of Rose City Branch in Welland, Ont.

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Cobden, Ont., Branch hosts Districts F and G public speaking competition. Congratulating the winners are (from left) District G Commander Stan Halliday, youth education chair Lori Buchanan, President Gene Phillion, District G youth education chair Tyrone Seeley, District F youth education chair Ena Newman and Zone G-7 Commander Wayne Bennett.

In Grimsby, Ont., West Lincoln Branch secretary Corrine McGill (left), treasurer Brian Stokes, President Simon Saulnier and L.A. President Sharon DesRoche present $6,800 on behalf of the Ontario Command, Branches and L.A. Charitable Foundation to West Lincoln Hospital representative Pamela Ellens.

Second Vice Lynn Mathieson of Sarnia, Ont., Branch (left) and L.A. President Mary Lou Mills present $5,988 to Maria Muscedere, development manager at St. Joseph’s Hospice Fund.

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NEWS

CORRESPONDENTS’ ADDRESSES Send your photos and news of The Royal Canadian Legion in action in your community to your Command Correspondent.

Each branch and ladies auxiliary is entitled to two photos in an issue. Any additional items will be published as news only. Material should be sent as soon as possible after an event. We do not accept material that will be more than a year old when published, or photos that are out of focus or lack contrast. The Command Correspondents are:

BRITISH COLUMBIA/YUKON

MALAHAT BRANCH HONOURS SERVICE

BRITISH COLUMBIA/YUKON: Graham Fox, 4199 Steede Ave., Port Alberni, BC V9Y 8B6, gra.fox@icloud.com

Malahat Branch in Shawinigan Lake, B.C., has presented 50 Years Long Service Medals to Malcolm Smith, Bart Batchelor and Leonard Cardiff.

ALBERTA–NORTHWEST TERRITORIES: Bobbi Foulds, Box 5162, Stn Main, Edson AB T7E 1T4, rfoulds@telus.net

ONTARIO

SASKATCHEWAN: Jessica McFadden, 3079–5th Ave., Regina, SK S4T 0L6, ­admin.legion@sasktel.net MANITOBA: Vanessa Burokas, 563 St. Mary’s Rd., Winnipeg, MB R2M 3L6, vburokas@hotmail.com NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO: Janice Pampu, 44 Penfold St., Thunder Bay, ON P7A 3J7, jpampu@hotmail.com ONTARIO: Mary Ann Goheen, Box 308, Gravenhurst, ON P1P 1T7, magoheen@sympatico.ca QUEBEC: Len Pelletier, 389 Malette, Gatineau, QC J8L 2Y7, hel.len@hotmail.ca NEW BRUNSWICK: ­Marianne Harris, 115 McGrath Cres., Miramichi, NB E1V 3Y1, jimfaye@nb.sympatico.ca NOVA SCOTIA/NUNAVUT: Rita Connors, 30 Annex Dr., Lower Sackville, NS B4C 3B2, rita.connors@ns.sympatico.ca PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND: Dianne Kennedy, Box 81, Borden-Carleton, PE C0B 1X0, mdkennedy@eastlink.ca NEW­FOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR: Brenda Slaney, Box 5745, St. John’s, NL A1C 5X3, bslaney@nfld.net DOMINION COMMAND ZONES: EASTERN U.S. ZONE, Gord Bennett, 12840 Seminole Blvd., Lot #7, Largo, FL 33778, Captglbcd@aol.com; WESTERN U.S. ZONE, Douglas Lock, 1531 11th St., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266, doug.lock@verizon.net.

Trenton L.A. presented $3,000 to the branch.

Arnprior Branch presented 50 Years Long Service Medals to Dennis Bertrand and Vic Garbutt.

Robert Thomson received a 55-year pin. Ron Whyte received a 60-year service pin.

NOVA SCOTIA/NUNAVUT

KITCHEN UPGRADES FOR LOCKERBY L.A.

Lockerby L.A. in Sudbury received a New Horizons for Seniors grant of $24,033 for kitchen upgrades.

Galt L.A. in Cambridge presented $5,000 to the branch.

Trenton Branch presented $500 to Special Olympics. The branch presented $500 to 8 Air Maintenance Squadron of 8 Wing Trenton, sponsors of the 23rd Annual Camp Trillium Charity Golf Tournament. A 55-year service award was presented to Ron Bryson.

SNAPSHOTS

TRANSLATION OF “IN FLANDERS FIELDS” PRESENTED President Arthur Anthony of the Native Council of Nova Scotia presented a Mi’kmaq translation of the poem “In Flanders Fields” to Mersey Branch in Liverpool, N.S.

Honours and awards

MERITORIOUS SERVICE MEDALS AND MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARDS

Submissions for the Honours and Awards page (Palm Leaf, MSM, MSA and Life Membership) should be sent directly to Doris Williams, Legion Magazine, 86 Aird Place, Kanata, ON K2L 0A1 or magazine@legion.ca.

TECHNICAL SPECS FOR PHOTO SUBMISSIONS DIGITAL PHOTOS—Photos submitted to Command Correspondents electronically must have a minimum width of 1,350 pixels, or 4.5 inches. Final resolution must be 300 dots per inch or greater. As a rough guideline, colour JPEGs would be between 0.5 megabytes (MB) and 1 MB.

GERRY MAILLETT Comox Br., B.C.

JAMES MARSDEN Lakefield Br., Ont.

NORMA DUDGEON Port Elgin Br., Ont.

PHOTO PRINTS—Glossy prints from a photofinishing lab are best because they do not contain the dot pattern that some printers produce. If possible, please submit digital photos electronically.

GORDON CONVERY Bowmanville Br., Ont.

JANET MITCHELL South Vancouver Island Zone, B.C.

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SNAPSHOTS

Honours and awards

LONG SERVICE AWARDS

PALM LEAF

60

years

DAVE HOLMWOOD

DONALD WELLS

GERTRUDE FERRIS

Trenton Br., Ont.

Cowansville Br., Que.

Marysville L.A., N.B.

MICHAEL ATKINSON

MARVIN LANTZ

Port Elgin Br., Ont.

Hants County Br., Windsor, N.S.

LIFE MEMBERSHIP 65

years

BC/YUKON

QUEBEC

JOHN PAULIN

WILFRED DONALDSON

Comox Br.

LAURA GRIERSON Comox L.A.

Buckingham Br.

WILLIAM MALLISH Buckingham Br.

COLOMB TALBOT JACK KANNEGIESSER

VERNON WARD

Lacombe Br., Alta.

Harcourt Br., N.B.

MANITOBA/NWT

Beauce-Dorchester Br., St-Georges

RON BARCLAY Souris Br.

NEW BRUNSWICK

DAVE JOHNSON

70

Souris Br.

years

DORIS SCOTT Harcourt Br.

ONTARIO MEL PORTER

NOVA SCOTIA/ NUNAVUT

Arnprior Br.

LORETTA MARSDEN Lakefield Br.

LLOYD WILCOX

SIDNEY MANNESS

Meaford Br., Ont.

Domain Br., Man.

KATHRYN EASTWOOD Port Elgin Br.

LINDA ORVIS Shelburne Br.

WILLIAM HOGG Streetsville Overseas Veterans Br., Mississauga

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MARY OLIVER

WILLIAM CALCUTT

Marysville L.A., N.B.

Grandview Br., Man.

OLA McNUTT

ROSCOE SCHOFIELD Hants County Br., Windsor

CAROL SMITHSON Hants County Br., Windsor

NEWFOUNDLAND/ LABRADOR RICK RICHARDS Gander Br.

Streetsville Overseas Veterans Br., Mississauga

ROBERT MURPHY

ROBERT JOHNSON

ALBERT O’CONNELL

Trenton Br.

Corner Brook Br.

Corner Brook Br.

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2017-05-25 4:11 PM

LOST TRAILS ANDREWS, CLARENCE BYORGVIN— M105915, Canadian Scottish Regt., WW II. Last known address 18th Ave., N.W., Calgary, Alta. Wife Jean died in 1993. Family seeking information. Margaret Bodnark, 2397 Warrenton Ave., Coquitlam, BC V3K 3M4, mbodnark@shaw.ca.

BARNES, JEAN MURIEL JANE—W301958, RCAF Women’s Division. Family of Elijah Scargall of North Battleford, Sask., would like to return identity bracelet, found among his possessions, to the owner or her family.

Elinor Florence, 2-1630 Johnston Rd., Invermere, BC V0A 1K4, 250-342-0444, florenceelinor@gmail.com.

BESLER, PTE. W.—L607934. Finder of brown leather identification tags recovered among WW II collection wishes to return them to owner or family. Mike Yorkston, 67 Nootka Rd., Leduc, AB T9E 4J8, m.yorkston@hotmail.ca.

DESABRAIS, PTE. JOSEPH PETER PAUL— 1 Canadian Parachute Bn., possibly from Montreal, qualified at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1943. Served D-Day, the Battle of Normandy and Battle of the Ardennes. Veteran or family sought for permission to use his story in a history blog in England. Paula Gerard, 17 Bowling Green Rd., Chobham, Surrey, GU24 8LJ, UK, paulagerrard@live.co.uk, valleyend150. wordpress.com.

FISHER, ALBERT W.—K76011, 10th Canadian Field Park Company, RCE, formerly of Vernon, B.C., RCE driver/mechanic, helped transport for Allied evacuation at Arnhem. Family seeks photos and information. Mark Fisher, 1257 Pine St., Kamloops, BC V2C 3A8, 250-374-0552, mandrfisher@telus.net.

HARDING, EDWARD—WW II veteran. Last known address on Mercille Street in St. Lambert, Que. Sought by family. Glenn Harding, Box 423, Acme, AB T0M 0A0, glennhatwork@hotmail.com.

HENDERSON, ALEXANDER ALAN— 48th Highlanders, 15th Bn., PoW, died at 27 in Germany Aug. 7, 1915, buried at Poelcapelle British Cemetery in Belgium.

Contact with family members sought by former resident of Poelkapelle. Christine Bentein, Roeselaarsestraat 256, B 8890 Moorslede, Belgium, 0032 51 21 19 30, christine.bentein@hotmail.com.

HUSSEY, EARL—Cape Breton Highlanders, in Bolsward, Friesland, Netherlands during the liberation. From Marion Bridge, Nova Scotia.

Son Weldon and daughters Judy and Lynn sought for relay of story from guide at the Canadian Museum of Immigration, Pier 21 in Halifax. George Zwaagstra, 602-247 Regency Park Dr., Halifax, NS B3S 0A5, geogerz@eastlink.ca.

JACKSON, ROBERT MICHAEL—S/N ZB6870 or relatives sought for return of pay book dated Sept. 6, 1956 to July 31, 1958.

Jonathan DeWitt, Box 6, Rosseau, ON P0C 1J0 jon.dewitt@att.net.

KING’S OWN CALGARY REGT. ASSOCIATION —Serving members, former members and families invited. Among activities, commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid at the Military Museum Aug. 19. Also perpetuates the 50th Battalion C.E.F., the 14th Armoured Tank Regiment. Jim Bauert, 4520 Crowchild Trail, S.W., Calgary, AB T2T 5J4, kocalgrassociation@gmail.com, http://kingsown.ca/association/.

MARTIN, BLANDINE—Trenton L.A. wishes to contact subject or anyone with information.

Sharon Astle Manuel, Trenton RCL, 19 Quinte St., Trenton, ON K8V 3S7, sharonastlemanuel@gmail.com.

STRACHAN, HARCUS VC—Descendants sought for unveiling of plaque in his honour in Bo’ness, Scotland, in November. Rona Buffett, 712 Roche St., Labrador City, NL A2V 1K1, ronabuffett@yahoo.com.

REQUESTS BATTLE OF SACKETS HARBOR—Descendants sought of Canadians killed in the Second Battle of Sackets Harbor, May 29, 1813, for plaque dedication ceremony at Sackets Harbor, New York, Aug. 5, 2017. Dave Aldus, 1245 Amundsen Ave. Peterborough, ON K9H 6T5, 705-741-6066, dave_aldus@ hotmail.com.

DEBERT AIR FIELD—Information, photographs, letters, first-hand accounts sought from veterans, service personnel and families for book on Nova Scotia air field and operational training squadrons using de Havilland Mosquitos. Sion Irwin-Childs, 5299 Concession 7, Uxbridge, ON L9P 1R4, 647-268-2727, sirwinchilds@gmail.com.

LIBERATION OF ZWOLLE, 1945—Photos of Chaudiere Regt. liberating Dutch town April 14, 1945, sought to illustrate children’s novel about a Dutch boy during WW II. Janet Wees, 245 Berwick Drive, N.W., Calgary, AB T3K 1P6 powertutor1@hotmail.com.

LOGISTICS BRANCH—Anecdotes, salty tales, memories and photos sought from serving and retired personnel and civilians for a humorous book to mark the 50th anniversary in 2018. Lt.-Col. Michael Hendrigan, 2950 Marcel St., Ottawa, ON K1V 8H7, 613-971-7811, Michael.hendrigan@forces.gc.ca.

MILITARY WATCHES—Collector seeking watches with military history. Chad Freeland, 2619 Makowsky Cres., Regina, SK S4X 0M8, 306-533-3326, Chadfreeland@sasktel.net.

WW I SOLDIER—Identity sought for photo of handsome man with light eyes, black 13 on maple leaf collar badges, Canada insignia on left epaulette, wearing a Boer War-style bandolier with flaps over individual bullets. Writing on the back includes Mrs. R.G.E. Hurst, 305 Centre Street, Calgary and the number 7449.

Effie Fiddick, 4372 Greta St., Burnaby, B.C. 604-435-1141 fiddickgrandma@gmail.com.

UNIT REUNIONS CAMERON HIGHLANDERS (DUKE OF EDINBURGH’S OWN)—Nov. 3-4, Ottawa.

CH of O Regt’l Ass’n, Box 5433, LCD Merivale, Ottawa, ON K2C 3J1; Chris Murphy, 613-729-4888, chofoassociation@sympatico. ca, www.camerons.ca.

PE&R (FORMER PERIS AND PEROS)— Aug. 16-19, Kingston, Ont., RMC Athletic Department, Box 17000 Stn. Forces, Kingston, ON K7K 7B4; Jocelyn Girard 613-541-6000 ext. 6280, girard-j@rmc.ca.

PPCLI (ATLANTIC)—Sept. 15-17, Kentville, N.S., Camp Aldershot, 1400 Lanzy Rd., Kentville, NS B0P 1J0; Stephen Bartlett, 560-454-0045, sknnbart@nbnet.nb.ca.

RCASC (ONTARIO)—Sept. 8-10, Tillsonburg, Ont., Royal Canadian Legion Br. 153, 16 Durham St., Tillsonburg, ON N0J 1T0; Ted Shelley, 519-874-4414, redhatgranny@ amtelcom.net.

SOUTH ALBERTA REGT.—Sept. 9-10, Medicine Hat, Alta., Jason Watt, 120 Cuyler Rd., Medicine Hat, AB T1B 3M4, 780-717-8248, watt.jason@gmail.com.

96TH WARRIORS DAY PARADE— Aug. 19, Toronto. Mark Stephens, 496 Mortimer Ave., Toronto, ON M4J 2G7, www.thewarriorsdayparade.ca.

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CANADA AND THE COLD WAR

By J.L. Granatstein

To draft or not to draft?

That question remained on the minds of military and political leaders following the Second World War

C

onscription for overseas military service has been one of the most contentious issues in Canada’s history. In the Great War, Prime Minister Robert Borden’s Military Service Act divided Canadians sharply, prompted riots in Quebec, and saw more than 90 per cent of those called up across the country seek exemptions. Even so, conscripts kept the Canadian Corps up to strength in the last battles of the conflict.

In the Second World War, the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King promised there would be no conscription for overseas service, but then took a series of steps toward reversing that promise as the war developed.

First there was home-defence conscription, then a plebiscite on releasing the government from its no-conscription promise, then the use of conscripts anywhere in North America, and

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finally in the last months of the war, the overseas dispatch of “zombies,” as the conscripts were derisively called by volunteer soldiers.

Conscription actually remained under consideration after the Second World War. Indeed, the first plan for universal military training emerged from the army’s planners in June 1945, even before the war with Japan had ended. Dubbed Plan G, it called for the induction of men 18½ to 19½ years of age for one year of training, with a goal of creating a regular force of some 56,000 and a militia of 177,000. Sixty per cent of Canadians favoured peacetime conscription, according to a 1944 opinion poll, so perhaps the planners believed they had the wind in their sails.

But the army had forgotten one key factor.

The King government had been re-elected in June 1945, and King relied on Quebec for his support. No government led by him was ever going to support peacetime compulsory

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service; no politician who remembered the fights of 1917 and the conscription crises of the Second World War would do so. The army’s plans faced a frigid reception, with the prime minister writing in his diary that he “resented strongly” the army’s demands that the country be ready to fight another war.

In 1945, no one was ready to consider that.

Within a few years, however, the Soviet Union was threatening Europe, the Communists were seizing power in China, and the Cold War was underway. In March 1948, President Harry S. Truman called for conscription in the United States. King, still prime minister, was horrified: If conscription were to be considered in Canada, he wrote, many Canadians “will say if we are to risk our lives fighting Communism, we better save our heads by joining with them.” King told his ministers that if Canada joined the North Atlantic Treaty alliance, “certainly there would be no commitment of any kind” for conscription.

But a few months later, King was gone and Louis St. Laurent was prime minister.

St. Laurent, a francophone, was no militarist, but he understood that another war was a possibility. The time might come, he told a Quebec labour group, when the Soviets would need to be shown that the limit had been reached. He could make no pledge against conscription. There was certainly some support for compulsory service: The Royal Canadian Legion called for it in 1946 and retired General Harry Crerar, commander of the First Canadian Army in 1944-45, called for it in 1949. Again, no one in Ottawa listened.

What changed matters was North Korea’s invasion of the Republic of Korea in late June 1950. This new Communist aggression led to the dispatch of a Canadian brigade group to Korea to fight under the U.S.-led United Nations forces and the raising of a second brigade for western Europe under NATO. Could enough men be found without conscription? The government believed so, but conscription talk still increased. In September 1950, the Legion again called for conscription for the reserve forces, and newspapers and magazines joined in. But in Ottawa, the message seemed clear: “Not yet.”

“Few people here have any hope, though many wish, that we shall actually have conscription, not for a while yet anyhow,” wrote Maclean’s columnist Blair Fraser. But, he went on, a national registration was possible:

“Get everybody listed, identified, classified as to occupation, age and civil status.”

On March 23, 1939, The government did go so far as to prefive months before pare National Registration Certificates Nazi Germany listing exactly those details. And labour invaded Poland, minister Milton Gregg, a Victoria Cross students from Université de recipient from the Great War, told the Montréal staged an National Advisory Council on Manpower anti-conscription in February 1951 that if war started, the demonstration at government “would take such compulChamps de Mars, sory steps as are necessary” to get the men a former military required for service anywhere in the world. parade ground in Another sign of the changed attitude Vieux-Montréal. in Ottawa was St. Laurent’s comment in The sign reads the House of Commons that same month.

“Pas de conscription.

“This is not a matter which can or should be La jeunesse veut decided on sentimental grounds,” he said. la paix” (No “It is one which should be decided on its conscription. merits, and strictly on its merits, and with Youth want peace).” regard to what will make for the efficiency and the effectiveness of our contribution to the joint efforts that have to be put forth.”

In fact, the Liberal cabinet had already decided that conscription would be implemented immediately if war with the Soviet Union occurred. Defence minister Brooke Claxton quietly told a friend that this decision was largely based on Quebec’s confidence in St. Laurent.

“With this prime minister, we can do anything in Quebec.”

“GET EVERYBODY But there was no general war, LISTED, and hence no conscription. This IDENTIFIED, disturbed Chief of the General CLASSIFIED AS Staff Lieutenant-General Guy TO OCCUPATION, Simonds. In a memorandum for Claxton in May 1951, Simonds AGE AND detailed the case for registraCIVIL STATUS.” tion and compulsory service.

He soon did the same in public and private addresses, earning him a stiff reprimand. Speeches

by Crerar and press campaigns calling for compulsory service also followed, but no government action ensued. As long as Canada could meet its military commitments in Korea and Europe with the voluntary system, there seemed no need for a battle over conscription. And once the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953, the pressure for a change in the manning of the military died away.

Today, the idea of conscription is scarcely ever heard. But should there be another world war, there can be little doubt that pressure for drafting able-bodied men—and now women—for military service will rise again. L

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2017-05-26 11:16 AM

HUMOUR HUNT

By Terry Fallis

Blustering on air

I

n direct competition with the most popular afternoon soaps, it debuted in October 1977 to modest reviews and small audiences. Yet somehow, nearly 40 years later, “Question Period,” live from the House of Commons, is still on the air. The cast has changed completely over the years, but the rhetorical battles over many of the same issues continue. Having watched the parliamentary proceedings through most of their impressive run on our airwaves, sometimes professionally while working on Parliament Hill, other times recreationally (yes, I know, it is a little sad), I consider myself something of an expert on the daily spectacle.

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There have been moments of high drama—I just can’t think of any right now—sprinkled in among hours of stultifyingly boring debate that could instantly anesthetize rabid fans of a show such as “This week in paint drying.”

Too harsh? Perhaps. Actually, I am a fan of cameras in the House of Commons.

It lets the light into the seat of our government and renders the parliamentary machinations of our democracy open and transparent. Perhaps a tad too transparent.

Some might argue that politics and legislation are a little like hotdogs. We don’t really need to know exactly how they’re made.

Yet broadcasting parliament invites average citizens to become more engaged in the electoral process and more informed on the

Illustration by Malcolm Jones

2017-05-26 11:18 AM

issues of the day. Who can argue with that?

Certainly not I. But letting in the light can also illuminate our democratic frailties.

On that first day, Joe Clark, amid the bright lights—and I’m not really referring to his caucus mates—rose in the House as leader of the official opposition, wearing a very bad dark-brown three-piece suit and a tie wide enough to be a spinnaker. Then he fired the first televised zinger across the House at Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, thus inaugurating the partisan descent into theatre, acrimony, grandstanding and the daily quest for the almighty news clip that remains with us to this day.

the park. They wax eloquent on just how brilliantly their government is performing, often drowned out by the jeering opposition benches.

But who in their right mind would advocate their removal? (The cameras, I mean, not the MPs.) I’m all for transparency in government. We should know what our politicians are doing.

IT’S PERFECTLY CLEAR WHY NO ONE IN 40 YEARS HAS EVER SUGGESTED CALLING IT ANSWER PERIOD.

I know what you’re thinking.

Surely the level of debate and witty repartee in question period has improved over the years? Not so much. It’s perfectly clear why no one in 40 years has ever suggested calling it answer period. The prime minister and cabinet ministers seem unwilling or unable to provide meaningful responses to loaded questions lobbed like grenades from the other side.

And the opposition members who pulled the pins in the first place don’t really expect answers. As one who used to write questions for my boss to ask in question period, I know first-hand what the goal was. And no, it wasn’t to advance a certain public policy issue or contribute constructively to the debate on new legislation. Rather, it usually had the twofold objective of embarrassing the government and elevating my member and party. And if we managed to snag a clip on the nightly news, there were high fives and cartwheels in our office.

The only questions ever truly answered are when government backbenchers lob sycophantic softballs to ministers who summarily knock them out of

We should be able to see how legislation becomes law and hear debates on the great issues that consume the national interest.

But for those voters who inadvertently stumble upon the parliamentary channel while flipping between “Master Chef” and “The Voice,” their reactions typically range from recoiling in disgust to plunging into a coma. Neither is healthy for our democracy.

So let’s challenge our MPs to make us proud when we watch the House of Commons on television. It’s the original reality TV. And if their question period performances don’t improve, we still have the option, every few years, of voting them off the island. L

> Check out Humour Hunt online!

Go to legionmagazine.com/en/category/ blog/humour-hunt/

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2017-05-26 11:18 AM

HEROES AND VILLAINS

By Mark Zuehlke

RadleyWalters

O

n Aug. 8, 1944, Sydney Radley-Walters was a newly minted 24-year-old major who had seen his first tank only two years earlier, when the Sherbrooke Fusiliers converted from infantry to armour. “Not one of us knew anything about armour or even what a tank looked like,” he said later. “We hadn’t a clue.”

Radley-Walters learned fast. On June 6, he came ashore commanding A Squadron and the next day he knocked out a Panzer IV— the first of 18 armoured vehicle kills that made him one of Canada’s top tank aces.

Two months later, on Aug. 8, the Sherbrookes were in the thick of the action supporting 2nd Canadian Infantry Division during Operation Totalize— the attempt to break out from Caen to Falaise. At noon, the RADLEY-WALTERS 12th SS Hitlerjügend (Hitler Youth) HAD NO IDEA THIS Panzer Division WAS GERMAN counterattacked the TANK ACE MICHAEL Canadians with a WITTMANN’S TIGER. mixed armour and infantry force. At its head were five Tiger tanks. Weighing as much as 70 tonnes, with armour up to 10 centimetres thick and an 88-millimetre gun, the Tiger was Germany’s deadliest tank.

The German advance passed a château alongside the road next to a village called Gaumesnil. A Squadron was hiding behind

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the château’s high walls, through which its tankers had cut holes to create firing ports for their main guns. Radley-Walters had eight tanks. Two were the Sherman Firefly, whose new tank-penetrating 17-pounder (76.2-millimetre) guns were more powerful than the standard 75-millimetre Sherman guns.

Seeing the Tigers at the head of a column of Panzer IVs, half-tracks and self-propelled guns (SPGs), Radley-Walters yelled over the wireless, “Hold off! Hold off!” Finally, at just 500 metres, he gave the order to fire. The lead tank, closest to the château, took an instant hit and ceased moving. Radley-Walters targeted and destroyed an SPG just behind the Tigers. In mere minutes, the Sherbrookes also knocked out the Tiger at the rear of the leading five, two of the Panzer IVs and another SPG. The other three Tigers fell victim to fire from British tankers on the Canadian left flank and the counterattack collapsed.

A few minutes later, the Tiger closest to the château exploded and the turret bearing the identifying number 007 was blown off. Radley-Walters had no idea this was German tank ace Michael Wittmann’s Tiger. The action had started at 12:30 p.m. and lasted just 25 minutes.

Before war’s end, Radley-Walters had three tanks shot out from under him and was wounded twice. He ended the war a lieutenant-colonel decorated with a Military Cross and Distinguished Service Order.

He retired from the army in 1974 with the rank of brigadier-general. Radley-Walters died on April 21, 2015, at age 95. L

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Germany’s top tank ace, Michael Wittmann, was likely killed by a Canadian tank squadron commanded by Major Sydney Radley-Walters

Wittmann H

auptsturmführer (captain) Michael Wittmann was reportedly nervous and uncharacteristically indecisive on the morning of Aug. 8. When Standartenführer (regiment leader) Kurt Meyer of the 12th SS Hitlerjügend Panzer Division ordered a counterattack, Wittmann need not have participated. But the designated tank commander was inexperienced and Wittmann said, “I must go with them, for [he] can scarcely cope.”

As Wittmann’s counterattacking force rolled toward battle, Meyer knew he was sending it into a “steely inferno.” Wittmann’s force consisted of seven Tigers, a company of Panzer IVs, a company of SPGs, and supporting infantry in half-tracks. Their goal was to strike the seam between the Canadians and the British 51st (Highland) Division to the left and drive deep in between.

By this time, the 30-year-old Wittmann had earned the nickname the “Black Baron” and held an Iron Cross along with numerous other medals. His status as Germany’s top Panzer ace had made him a minor celebrity at home. Since the invasion of Poland in 1939, Wittmann had amassed a stunning record of 143 Allied armoured vehicle kills in fighting on both the eastern and western fronts. On June 13, 1944, he had shocked the 7th British Armoured Division at Villers-Bocage, France, by destroying more than two dozen tanks and transports.

No radio log records exist regarding Wittmann’s advance on Aug. 8. But as

CWM/20110078-046; German Federal Archives/101L-299-1802-09

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his Tiger 007 ground past the château “At this point, enemy tanks have ceased at Gaumesnil, evidence suggests that an to be a strain on armour-piercing round fired by one of my nerves.” the Sherbrooke’s Firefly tanks punched – Wittmann (ABOVE) into the air inlet on the left side directly behind the turret. The tank immedi“Every time we went ately halted and no crew emerged. Some into action, we came minutes later, the Tiger was rocked by a out having learned massive explosion that hurled its turret something that we pin through the air to land right side up didn’t know before.” some distance from the main tank body.

– Radley-Walters Wittmann and his crew of four were (OPPOSITE) presumed killed, but their fate remained unconfirmed until 1983, when a road construction crew found their bodies. They were reinterred together at the La Cambe German WITTMANN HAD war cemetery. In the AMASSED A STUNNING aftermath of his death, RECORD OF 143 there was much conALLIED ARMOURED troversy about who really killed Wittmann.

VEHICLE KILLS. The British tankers of Northamptonshire Yeomanry’s A Squadron generally got the credit. It was also suggested that a RAF rocket-firing Typhoon made the kill, or even possibly some nearby Polish tankers. But none of these claims bore up against the fact that analysis of Tiger 007 > To voice your showed the only penetrating wound in its opinion, go to massive armour was the hole in the left side legionmagazine. air inlet. The only tanks having an angle of fire com/HeroesAnd capable of delivering that fatal shot were those Villains. of A Squadron of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers. L

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ARTIFACTS

By Sharon Adams

A membership card for the Caterpillar Club.

The

club no one

hopes to join Parachuting to safety from an aircraft that crashes is the Caterpillar Club’s sole entrance criteria

F

Captain Brian Bews ejected moments before his CF-18 Hornet became a fireball.

Parachuting pioneer Franz Reichelt before his doomed leap from the Eiffel Tower in 1912.

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ighter pilot Captain Brian Bews was rehearsing for an air show in Lethbridge, Alta., on July 24, 2010, when one engine of his CF-18 Hornet died.

He ejected only 90 metres from the ground; two seconds later, his jet was a fireball and he was floating to earth.

Bews had just become eligible for the Caterpillar Club, an exclusive group no one really wants to join: those who survived by parachuting from an aircraft that crashed.

No one knows exactly how many people have been saved by parachutes, though just one manufacturer—the Irvin Air Chute Company (later Irvin Aerospace, now Airborne Systems)—has rescued more than 100,000.

First World War parachutes were scarce and were inconveniently stored aboard

observation balloons and aircraft. Tailor Franz Reichelt invented the wearable parachute, but was killed in a demonstration jump from the Eiffel Tower in 1912, captured on macabre newsreel footage. In 1919, Leslie Irvin, nicknamed Sky-Hi, tested a wearable parachute with a ripcord, designed by the U.S. Army Parachute Section, and went on to manufacture them.

Irvin formed the Caterpillar Club in 1922 to recognize crash survivors who had used Irvin parachutes. Named for the silkworms that provided material for early parachutes, the club issued membership cards and gold caterpillar pins

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2017-05-26 11:44 AM

Leslie Irvin (right), inventor of the Irvin Air Chute, looks on as U.S. Army Air Corps Master Sergeant Ralph Bottriell (centre) prepares for a test jump, accompanied by pilot James Ray.

“We were shot down in flames over Holland and I was able to get out at 15,000 with my chute on but holding the loose folds to my chest as I had grabbed the ripcord…and it opened in the kite.”

— Caterpillar Club member Frederick Hamilton Scythes, in a letter home in 1943. with ruby eyes. They were changed to gilt and garnet during the Second World War, then 10-carat goldfilled with enamel eyes. “The number of applications we now receive, I am very pleased to say, is very small—two or three a year,” said Maureen Udy of Airborne Systems Limited in England.

Soon other companies also issued mementoes: plaques from Pioneer Parachute Company; kangaroo pins from Australia’s Roo Club; and gold and silver pins from the Switlik Parachute Co., which had outfitted Admiral Richard Byrd and Amelia Earhart. Earhart made the first public jump from the company’s 50-metre parachute training tower. She described the descent as “loads of fun!”—an opinion shared by sport jumpers to this day.

On Oct. 20, 1922, Ohio test pilot Lieutenant Harold Harris (above) became the first Irvin Caterpillar Club member. The first Canadian member was Jack Caldwell, who— due to engine failure—bailed out

of the Vedette he was testing over the Canadian Vickers factory on May 17, 1929, according to Harold Skaarup, author of Canadian Warplanes.

Fabled flyer Charles Lindbergh and astronaut John Glenn were also members.

More than 13,000 Royal Air Force and RCAF aircrew, many PoWs, applied for membership during the Second World War. Only a fraction of those eligible have applied to join the club, says a club brochure, including Luftwaffe crew, most of whom carried an Irvin-designed parachute from a factory bought by the Nazis in 1936.

No one who can substantiate their claim is denied membership.

Key to the claim is the fate of the aircraft. Deliberate jumps don’t qualify, so a skydiver whose plane later crashes would not qualify, but the plane’s pilot would.

In historic irony, Sky-Hi Irvin made more than 300 parachute jumps—but never was eligible to join the club he founded. L

EXTREME DEPLOYMENTS

April 9, 1958

Date of highest parachute escape, according to Guinness Book of World Records, during a failed test flight of a Royal Air Force English Electric Canberra jet bomber

3,048 metres

Height at which parachutes of Canberra jet pilot John de Salis and navigator Patrick Lowe deployed

17,070 metres

Altitude at which their Canberra jet exploded

8,848 metres

Height of Mount Everest

July 26, 1959

Date Lt.-Col. William Rankin of the U.S. Marine Corps bailed from his F-8 Crusader jet fighter

14,326 metres

Height at which the engine on Rankin’s jet fighter failed

40 minutes

Time it took Rankin to descend, due to a thunderstorm’s vertical air currents forcing him upward

11 minutes

Expected descent time Canadians can still join the Irvin Caterpillar Club.

Application forms are available from Yvonne.wade@airborne-sys.com.

The Canadian Press/9894388; National Air and Space Museum Archives 80-2393; all others: Wikimedia legionmagazine.com > JULY/AUGUST 2017

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O CANADA

By Don Gillmor

John A. Macdonald’s

rocky road to Confederation

I

* Find many more stories in our O Canada publication, NOW available in our SHOP!

n 1864, John A. Macdonald, along with George Brown, D’Arcy McGee and Alexander Galt, sailed to Charlottetown to convince the maritime colonies to join Confederation.

On board was $13,000 worth of champagne to smooth negotiations.

“Whether as a result of our eloquence or Negotiations remained fraught—Prince the goodness of our champagne,” wrote Edward Island and Newfoundland declined, Brown, “the ice became completely Nova Scotia had agreed but then wanted broken…thereupon the union was out, Quebec wanted guarantees on French completed and proclaimed.” rights, New Brunswick felt neglected, However, there were still a few details to and Brown wanted more senators for be worked out. The party moved to Halifax, Upper Canada. At the centre was the tireSaint John, Fredericton, and finally, Quebec, less Macdonald, holding it all together. where there was a dinner at Government The delegation finally moved to London House. A daughter of one of the delegates to present their fraying case to British described the scene: “D’Arcy McGee parliament, and took me to dinner and sat between Lady Macdonald’s tra“Not one man of the MacDonnell [wife of the Governor of Nova conference (except Galt in vails continued. He Scotia, Sir Richard MacDonnell] and I. woke one night to finance) has the slightest Before dinner was half over, he got so find both he and his idea of Constitution making. bed were on fire. drunk he was obliged to leave the table.”

Whatever is good or ill in The next day, delegates heatedly “Had I not worn the Constitution is mine.” discussed the idea of a senate and that a very thick flan—John A. Macdonald night there was a delegates’ ball for 1,400 nel shirt under my people. It started as a model of “grace, nightshirt, I would loveliness and politeness.” By four a.m., there have been burnt to death,” he noted. “As it was “drunkenness, pushing, kicking and was my escape was miraculous.” His hair and tearing…. The supper room floor was covhands were singed, adding to his ravaged look. ered with meat, drink and broken bottles.”

The bill to create a new country slowly dragged through the British parliament, Between the raucous parties, the hard and between the first and second readwork of creating a country had to be done. ing, Macdonald married Agnes Bernard Macdonald was the only one with a backin St. George’s Church in Hanover Square. ground in constitutional law, and it fell to The bill was finally signed by Queen Victoria him to draft 50 of the 72 resolutions. By on March 29, 1867. At noon on July 1, day he revised the constitution, at night he the Dominion of Canada was born, with lobbied the delegates, with mixed results.

Macdonald as its first prime minister. L

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