Posts with the Second World War tag

Barris Beat

Thwarting Donald’s lust for land

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Elizabeth May offers solution to 51st state issue.

The federal election is just days old, but suddenly our attention has shifted slightly from the impact of Trump’s tariffs to the Canadian electorate deciding which federal political party is the most able to deal with the U.S. president’s territorial aspirations to make Canada the 51st state.

She hasn’t repeated this since the election writ was issued on Sunday, but Elizabeth May delivered a creative countermeasure to Trump’s insult a few months ago.

“You think we want to be the 51st state? Nah,” she said in December, offering California, Oregon and Washington the chance to become Canada’s 11th province. “Have we got a deal for you,” she suggested to Americans. “Universal free health care … safer streets, strict gun laws and free abortions … and a chance to get rid of all these states that always vote Democrat.” (more…)

Barris Beat

O say, can you see…

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They did it in Ottawa. They did it in Calgary. Then, in Toronto. And then Monday night, in Nashville, Americans did it back. First, Canadian spectators booed the The Star-Spangled Banner north of the border. And so American fans in Tennessee booed O Canada right back when the Ottawa Senators came to Nashville this week.

Shouted one irate Predators fan, “You gotta pay!”

Then, Nashville coach Andrew Brunette (who is a Canadian) told the U.S. Daily Mail. “I don’t like it. The NHL has been around 100 years and the U.S. and Canada both share this game. I don’t think there’s a place for booing the anthem.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The gift I’ll never forget

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I had just completed my final public-speaking event of 2024. I had presented the same talk on my latest book nearly 70 times in three months, and that mid-December day I was looking forward to the holiday break.

The best present, I thought, would be a few days’ rest over Christmas and New Year’s. I was wrong. As I packed up my laptop, one of the aviation enthusiasts in my audience said he had something to give me.

“Come on over to the officers’ mess,” he said. “It’s there.”

After a short, chilly walk across the outdoor parade square at the Canadian Forces College in North York, I caught up with the man who’d invited me. “You might find this of interest,” he said and handed me a cardboard portfolio with red, white and blue lettering on the cover; it read: “RCAF: The War Years … Commemorating 40th Anniversary Battle of Britain.” (more…)

Barris Beat

“I swear allegiance…”

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Candidate Donald Trump in Orlando. Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Some say our current troubles with the U.S. can be traced back to 2016, during the presidential campaign of that year. It happened at a Republican rally in Orlando, Fla., where candidate Donald Trump called out to his supporters:

“Raise your right hand,” and then prodded them to recite, “I do solemnly swear that I … will vote on or before the 12 (of November) for Donald J. Trump for president.”

Candidate Trump didn’t describe it as such, but when critics chastised him for demanding unconditional allegiance to his campaign, that is, invoking a loyalty oath, he responded, “They started screaming at me, ‘Do the swearing!’ I mean, they’re having such a great time. … Honestly, I didn’t know it was a problem.” (more…)

Barris Beat

For the love of cursive

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Sergeant medic Alex Barris in Czechoslovakia, 1945.

It was April 1945. The Second World War was just days from ending in Europe. My father’s medical battalion had received a few days’ leave in the then Allied-occupied German city of Düsseldorf.

There, Alex and his comrades enjoyed hot meals, hot showers, and billets with beds and clean sheets. Somewhere in the chaos, somehow in the uncertainty, my father found a place and some time to sit down and compose a letter.

“Dear Koula,” he wrote to a pen pal in New York City. “We have known each other so long, yet I never saw you very often after I finished school.”

Koula Kontozoglus, a pen pal worth writing to,

The words spoke to me deeply because Dad was expressing emotion in a war zone that allowed little room for feelings. He was admitting frailty – delinquency for not writing often enough. And his words flowed because they were written cursively. (more…)

Barris Beat

History becoming the realm of youth

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The storytellers of our society tend to be our elders. In most European cultures, and indeed First Nations cultures, the laws, the lineage and the lore are generally gathered and told by the senior members of society. That’s why the stories of young researcher and military historian Rebecca Murray proved so refreshing to me.

“Kate Reid served as a WD (Women’s Division) in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War,” Murray explained during her presentation at a history conference I attended in Calgary last week. “She was my Nan, and one of 17,000 WDs in the Air Force.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Get some. Miss some.

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Firefighters in the Blitz, 1940.

The public-speaking appearance was half done. At intermission, last Friday night in the central-Alberta city of Camrose, I sat at a table signing books and listening to feedback from members of the audience.

A woman approached; with her British accent she offered her take on the subject of my evening talk, the Battle of Britain. She was a child in London during the Blitz in the summer of 1940, when she said her father had served in the London fire brigade fighting fires German bombers ignited each night.

“When he came home in the morning after fighting fires all night, I remember his face was completely black with soot,” she said, then drawing imaginary circles around her eyes, “except the white around his eyes where he’d warn protective goggles.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Warrior with a bucket of sand

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Fire watchers had tools, but during the Battle of Britain their greatest weapon was courage.

I’ve flown into Heathrow, the city of London’s major civilian airport, dozens of times – seeing a sky full of jetliners lined up to land at Europe’s largest commercial airport. But not until I met Torontonian Dorothy Firth, who lived there during the Second World War, had I ever imagined what the skies over that city might have looked like during a period known as “the Blitz.”

“It was always a nasty sound and a horrible feeling when the air-raid sirens went off,” she told me when I met her a few years ago, “because you never knew how fast the German (bombers) were coming.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Jewel on the Hill

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Thomas Foster Memorial, our jewel on the hill.

We were winding up our visit to the building just north of the Sandford Road, a structure my author friend Conrad Boyce called a “Jewel on the Hill,” when our wonderful guide took questions. The one I asked had nothing to do with the building, but everything to do with its namesake.

“What’s the story about Thomas Foster rewarding women for delivering the most babies?” I asked.

“In his will in 1945,” explained tour guide Nicole Greenly, “the recently deceased mayor of Toronto, Thomas Foster, awarded cash prizes to women who had the most babies in Toronto in the decade following his death.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Will memory of D-Day fade away?

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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…)