Posts with the Ellin Bessner tag

Barris Beat

Wayne and Shuster legacy under fire

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Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster helping the war effort on CBC and in-person behind the lines in Normandy 1944.

It’s June 1944. Two men in Canadian Army battledress are hunkered down waiting for orders. One’s a soldier with sergeant’s stripes. The other’s a private in a greatcoat.

“Time to move out,” says the sergeant.

“I won’t do it,” retorts the private.

“You will, too. When an order is given, it must be obeyed!” And the sergeant points a gun at the enlisted man. “Do it or else.”

At precisely the same moment, there’s the sound of an artillery shell exploding nearby, and the two soldiers dive for cover. Sgt Johnny Wayne then turns to Pte Frank Shuster and says, “And we’re still in Canada! Imagine what it’ll be like when we get overseas!” (more…)

Barris Beat

The case against hoarding history

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RCAF wireless radio operator Cobby Engelberg, during training in Canada in WWII. Photo courtesy Harvey Engelberg.

His original itinerary involved a flight from Canada to Israel, but when Harvey Engelberg received a letter of inquiry from France, a few weeks ago, his plans changed. Thérèse Férey and her husband, current owners of a farm in Normandy, wondered if Harvey was related to one Cobby Engelberg, a Canadian airman shot down in the early hours of June 6, 1944.

When Harvey explained that Cobby was his father, he changed his flight plans to include a side trip to Normandy.

“I own a farm in Bassenville,” Mme Férey wrote in her letter, “and we’ve found pieces of (your father’s) plane that crashed on our property. Would you like them?” (more…)

Barris Beat

Fix nationhood. Don’t abandon it.

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First Peoples of Canada print of Battle of Batoche, 1885.

It was the climax of the chapter, about a 19th-century military battle in western Canada. It was an important feature in my first non-fiction book, written 44 years ago. It pitted a massive force of army militia troops from eastern Canada against Métis communities defending their land rights in the Saskatchewan territory. That spring of 1885, it became known as the Battle of Batoche.

In my book, Fire Canoe, I referred to the stand that Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont made at Batoche as “the Riel rebellion.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Including all ‘the few’

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F/L William Nelson, a Canadian of Jewish faith,  who served with distinction in the Battle of Britain. Photo – Canadian Jewish Heritage Network.

“We are all in this together.”

It’s a phrase often repeated in times of crisis, a common call to arms or for popular solidarity, that leaders have adapted in so many different ways. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s told Americans (at his inauguration in 1933) to pull together since, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

In October 1970, after the FLQ kidnapping of a politician and a trade diplomat, Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, encouraging Canadians, “If we stand firm, this current situation will soon pass.” (more…)

Barris Beat

What-ifs of Canadian warriors

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Veteran Bill Novick offering reflections on his role in D-Day operations 75 years ago.

He sat down to rest. He sighed a long, audible sigh. And he smiled with a touch of satisfaction. Around Bill Novick, sat family and some of his fellow travellers gathered, this spring day, at a museum in Normandy, France. They all sensed that Bill had a story to tell: the time, just before D-Day, when his Halifax bomber was coned.

“Enemy gunners at Cologne (Germany) put up a box barrage (concentrated anti-aircraft fire) 3,000 feet high, two miles wide by 10 miles long,” he said. “Searchlights moved all over the sky … and we were coned by the lights. That required evasive action called a corkscrew.” That meant Pilot Officer Novick put the 18-tonne bomber into a violent dive one way, then another, at speeds up to 250 miles per hour to escape the lights and the anti-aircraft fire.

“It was four minutes of sheer terror,” he concluded. “If we were scared, it never entered my mind that I wasn’t going to make it.” (more…)