Bill Stewart, Paul Moffatt and Al Thomas, firefighters from Toronto, prepare to pay tribute to veterans at Menin Gate on May 23, 2024.
The three of them seemed buried in preparations – arranging the wreath, adjusting their berets, straightening their blazers and ties – and they didn’t notice me approaching with my cellphone camera. Then, suddenly as they stepped to the curb beneath the Menin Gate, a shaft of sunlight caught them.
“Look here guys,” I called out.
Almost in perfect symmetry, the three men – Bill Stewart, Al Thomas and Paul Moffatt – all snapped to attention the way they’ve done thousands of times before. And I clicked the photograph of the three retired firefighters in their parade uniforms, ready to join one of the most poignant Great War commemorations in Europe. (more…)
D-Day veteran’s son, Don Henderson (r), presents RCAF base map to Jean-Pierre Banamou. June 2024.
Last week, inside a modest-looking but sizable Quonset building, known as the D-Day Academy, in Normandy, France, Don Henderson, a visitor from Calgary, made a small presentation. From his backpack, he pulled an official RCAF map of Normandy showing where his father, Leading Aircraftman Wilbert Henderson helped construct one of the first Tactical Air Force (TAF) bases in Normandy immediately after D-Day.
“My dad landed on D-Day-plus-11,” Don Henderson began. “He was the second driver in the air force vehicle. But when the first driver was shot, my dad carried on using this map to reach B4,” site of the TAF base.
Standing next to Don Henderson in the D-Day Academy museum, its director Jean-Pierre Benamou watched as the Canadian unfolded the fragile map revealing all the Juno Beach coastline that Canadians seized from the Germans beginning on June 6, 1944.
“I’ve kept this map all my life, but I want to donate it to your museum” said Henderson, and he handed the map to the clearly moved Benamou.
“Canadian veterans and their families are always bringing important artifacts back to Normandy, so that we don’t forget,” Benamou said. “D-Day is not dead for us. We relive it every day we welcome visitors here.” (more…)
Canadian soldiers marched through the streets of Dieppe, after the hit-and-run Allied raid on August 19, 1942.
About the time most people in North America were sitting down to dinner that summer day in 1942, a young Canadian whom many of us knew here in Uxbridge, Stephen Bell, was exhausted, bloodied by combat on Dieppe beach and throwing his hands in the air.
“Aufgeben! Aufgeben!” the Germans pointing their weapons at him were shouting.
Bell didn’t speak enough German to know they were shouting “Surrender!” but realized he was still wearing a revolver on his belt. He undid the belt, dropped it to the ground, and again put his hands in the air.
The hit-and-run raid on the French seaport of Dieppe that morning, August 19, 1942, had ended with Bell becoming a prisoner of war; he would spend the rest of the war in various German POW camps. He was one of 1,946 men the German defenders captured that day, more than the whole Canadian Army would lose in Western Europe in almost an entire year of action between D-Day on June 6, 1944, and VE Day on May 8, 1945.
Altogether 3,467 of the nearly 5,000 Canadians who embarked form England that day became casualties. More than 900 of those were killed in the bloodiest nine hours in Canadian military history. (more…)
Our 80th Anniversary of D-Day tour poses in front of the Normandy house captured in the famous D-Day film.
I walked the last few hundred metres along the beach looking expectantly at the skyline of Norman houses. Somehow, I knew I was on the right track. My walking companion, a fellow Canadian and military tour guide, was using a GPS map on his phone as we searched for a small seaside stretch of beach on the Normandy coastline called La Rive Plage. We passed an older gentleman, a local. I stopped and in my high school French I asked him a question.
“Is this the spot where the famous D-Day film was shot?” I asked.
He paused, then realized what I was asking, “Yes,” he nodded and then said, “Keep going farther. It’s up ahead.”
Minutes later, when my colleague Ian Cowan said we’d arrived at La Rive Plage according to his cellphone, I looked back to the man I’d consulted a few minutes before. He motioned, “Just a bit farther.” Then I saw it. A small, rather square two-storey waterfront home with a single-storey detached garage set back from the shore. And the two buildings matched nearly perfectly the image I’d watched in documentaries about the D-Day landings on Juno Beach nearly 80 years ago. (more…)
Reg Weeks kept the most vital intelligence of 1944 secret without using a password.
The other day, I needed to get an identification card replaced. The transaction required a password entry. Do you think I could remember it? I kept drawing a blank. Frustrating! If you’ve ever been around me when I can’t remember or have to create a new password, you’ll hear me repeat:
“If I were king of the world, I’d have all passwords eliminated!” (more…)
Leafs go out of another first round Stanley Cup series against Boston. Globe and Mail.
Last Christmas, with my Toronto Maple Leafs clicking along about fourth or fifth in the NHL standings, Matthews netting goals in threes (it seemed) every other night, Ilya Samsonov looking like Johnny Bower between the pipes, and even Sheldon Keefe exuding confidence behind the bench, my daughter gave me a most appropriate gift. It was a Leafs blue T-shirt, complete with logo and an inscription.
Breaking cellphone addition. Photo – Business Insider.
When I was about 12, I had my first taste of alcohol. I guess my parents were breaking the law by allowing a minor to consume booze, but one Christmas when our extended family got together to celebrate at our house, my mother and father made a point of giving me a wine glass for what amounted to a couple of sips of the stuff.
“Merry Christmas!” we all toasted, and like the adults around the table, I was invited to clink my glass with theirs and enjoyed that first taste of alcohol.
From then on, it turned out, if I wanted a bit of wine with our family dinners, my parents always set the glass out for me. (more…)
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau answers questions from reporter Tim Ralphe on Parliament Hill during the October Crisis, 1970. CBC.
That October, the country was on the verge of civil war. At least that’s what it felt like. A Quebec cabinet minister had been murdered by the FLQ (Le Front de libération du Québec). A British trade official remained kidnapped. The then prime minister had introduced the War Measures Act to ferret out FLQ members and arrest those responsible.
As a senior student of then Ryerson’s Radio and TV Arts program and thinking only about getting the story on the air, I sat down in a radio studio at CJRT FM in Toronto and interviewed four students of Loyola College who’d been questioned in a Montreal dragnet just days before.
“My guests are John Welsh, Alan Saig, Joe Sagantic and John McKay,” I began. “Tell us how all this affected you.”
And they did. It was Oct. 28, 1970, the height of the October Crisis. (more…)
Bandsman Lyman Nichols, eventually called upon for more than his musical skills in the Great War.
It was nearly the last question I fielded the other night. I’d just told the story of Uxbridge youth Lyman Nichols – how (underage) he had joined Sam Sharpe’s 116th Ontario County Battalion in 1915, but when he turned 18 how, as a bandsman, he joined the 116th officially and marched off to the Great War, how he survived the battles at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, and how he’d come home wounded among 160 surviving soldiers (of the regiment’s original 1,600).
“What had helped the Canadians get through?” someone at my Vimy dinner audience in Peterborough asked.
“They were task-oriented,” I suggested. “Perhaps more than all the regular soldiers from Britain and the Empire, the Canadians before the war had been farmers, lumberjacks, fisherman, labourers, even students who all understood the meaning of getting a job done.”
Charlene Orrell, incoming president of the Army Cadet League of Canada, meets with volunteers.
When I arrived at the meeting, the executive director of the group was at the lectern addressing members. Rob Gill had finished his introductory remarks to the Army Cadet League’s annual general meeting, including a few jokes to break the ice.
Then he got to the theme of the weekend conference, “Community Engagement,” and wisely he chose to focus on the organization’s people. Among them, he complimented the outgoing president.
“Rick Brown doesn’t say an awful lot,” Gill said. “But he’s one of the best listeners I’ve ever known.” (more…)
