My mother-in-law Gerda Drews was a teenager living in Berlin during World War Two. She witnessed the ferocious battle of Berlin, and her family’s tragic experiences after her city fell to the Soviet Army.
How were children on the home front protected from the horrors of a world at war? The short answer: they weren’t. Kids were fully involved in the war effort, doing whatever their little hearts and hands could manage. Many children who grew up during the war were too young to fight, but they still wanted to do […]
Canada’s greatest living fighter pilot, Stocky Edwards, is a legend in aviation circles. But when I visited him and his wife Toni at their home in Comox, British Columbia, this humble gentleman still attributed much of his success to simple luck, and prayer.
This band of EIGHT Indigenous brothers served in the Canadian Army during World War Two, following the path laid down by their father John Ballendine and his brother James, both crack snipers in The Great War. Pictured here are James on the left and his younger brother John on the right. They are wearing pre-war […]
Seventy-two years after my uncle RCAF pilot trainee Alan Light died in a training accident, I discovered a dramatic oil painting that shows the last moments of his life.
Operation Manna saved thousands of Dutch civilians from starvation when the Allies stripped their bombers of weapons, and dropped tons of food instead. It was too late to save twenty thousand others who starved to death as the Second World War drew to an end. One woman describes how Operation Manna delivered her family from […]
A Jewish couple escaped the Holocaust by hiding inside the Scheffer household for two years, in a small town in Holland. Casey Scheffer, who moved to Canada after the war, told me how his courageous family accomplished this remarkable feat.
Jewish pilot Georg Hein, sent to England as a teenager to escape certain death in a concentration camp, changed his name to Peter Stevens and became a decorated RAF pilot. This daring young man was shot down, captured, and spent four terrifying years as a German POW.
My mother played wartime music on the piano when I was a kid, just as we were falling asleep. So my fascination with that era first began with its wonderful, evocative music: lilting love songs, morale-boosting melodies, big band swing and sweet songs of separation that wring your heartstrings. Click on the title to hear […]
For almost one hundred years, a story has circulated in our family about these two World War One soldiers. My grandfather Charlie Light, right, was saved from certain death on a French battlefield by his younger brother Jack Light, left. But several family members have expressed skepticism about whether it really happened.
