Read these World War One letters written by my great-uncle Robert Burns Florence in 1916, and you will remark on the dramatic change between a young man shortly after his arrival in France, and the same young man just one month later, after doing battle at The Somme. In honour of the World War One […]
My godfather Colin Greener served in the Canadian Cavalry in the First World War. He stood five foot three in his boots, but he had the heart of a lion. He fought in the trenches, was wounded twice, and decorated for bravery. He always joked that if he had been taller he wouldn’t have survived. […]
Almost 11,000 Canadian conscientious objectors refused, mainly for religious reasons, to perform military duties during World War Two. So the government required them to do “alternate service” in work camps, many of them in Western Canada’s national parks. Ray Crook was not a conscientious objector. He was rejected from military service because of a heart murmur. […]
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.
Arthur Bradford’s Spitfire was shot down over Normandy on D-Day, and he parachuted into the sea where he was promptly “rescued” by a landing craft, steaming towards the beach. He was unarmed, unprepared, and very, very unhappy. I interviewed Arthur Bradford at his comfortable lakeview home in Invermere, British Columbia before he passed away in […]
The D-Day decoys were part of Operation Fortitude, an elaborate, mind-boggling hoax that used rubber tanks, canvas ships, plywood aircraft, and even dummy soldiers to fool the Germans about where we secretly planned to land on D-Day. Everyone knew the Allies would eventually try to take back the continent. But when, and where? To refresh your knowledge […]
Wartime knitting was more than a hobby – it was an act of patriotism. Literally millions of women, children and even men in Allied countries used their knitting needles as weapons of war. If you weren’t a knitter, you might as well have been a Nazi! Countless knitted items were created and sent to the […]
