May 2006 - Legion Magazine

1May 2006

By D'Arcy Jenish1 Comment

O Canada

Mapman Of Temagami

AUTHOR: CRAIG K. MACDONALD; PROJECT SPONSOR: ONTARIO GEOGRAPHIC NAMES BOARD; PHOTOS: D’ARCY JENISH; DR. W.H. ELLIS, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA121317 Top: A detail from the Temagami map shows natives hunting and trapping. Above left: A teepee was built on Lady Evelyn Lake in 1897; Above right: Craig Macdonald shows his Temagami map. Craig Macdonald has been smitten all his life by wanderlust, an itch to travel, not to the summits of the world's tallest mountains, nor to distant lands and exotic cities, but up and down the waterways of eastern North America. Macdonald, now 59 and a resident of Dwight, Ont., 200 kilometres northeast of Toronto, has paddled, snowshoed and walked from the shores of Hudson Bay to the mouth of th...

1May 2006

By Pat SullivanNo Comments

Military History

Tunnelling Back To The Cold War

PHOTO: METROPOLIS STUDIO The Diefenbunker's massive vault. There are many ways to spend $14 during a visit to Ottawa, but anyone who makes the short trek to the Diefenbunker will probably conclude that the museum's admission price is one of the National Capital Region's bigger and perhaps more bizarre bargains. This underground building located near Carp, Ont., was once known as the Central Emergency Government Headquarters, but no one calls it that any more. It earned the irreverent nickname because of its intrinsic link to John Diefenbaker, the Tory prime minister who ordered its construction in 1958, but never once visited the place. Known today as Canada's Cold War Museum, the building is an engineering marvel that saw tonnes of concrete and rebar turned into an intricate fou...

1May 2006

By Terry CoppNo Comments

Army

Moving Forward With Boforce: Army, Part 64

PHOTO: ALEX STIRTON, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA177155 A tank, carrying Canadian soldiers, heads towards Potenza, Italy, in September 1943. When Operation Baytown--the Anglo-Canadian invasion of mainland Italy--was in the planning stages, Major-General Guy Simonds, the general officer commanding 1st Canadian Division, informed his brigade commanders that he would employ mobile battlegroups if the enemy simply withdrew. On D-Day plus four, X Force, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel C.H. Neroutsos, the commanding officer of the Calgary Tanks, led the advance along the coastal highway, but on Sept. 9, 1943, Montgomery ordered the Canadians to pause a...

1May 2006

By Hugh A. HallidayNo Comments

Air Force

Hunting U-boats From The Air: Air Force, Part 15

PHOTO: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA116719; PA107907 Top: A Canso flying boat observes the surrender of U-889 (left) to the Canadian navy off Nova Scotia in 1945; Bottom: A Liberator patrol bomber helps escort a trans-Atlantic convoy in 1943. In the Atlantic, the first four months of 1943 were dreadful. By April the U-boat fleet had grown to 240 operational submarines and 185 more on trials and training. Convoy battles raged from Greenland to the Azores. During February, the enemy sank 63 ships--41 of them in convoy--and lost 16 U-boats. In March it was 108 ships lost for only 12 U-boats. Yet when the tide turned--as it did in May 1943--the change was sudden and dramatic as a...

1May 2006

By Marc MilnerNo Comments

Navy

The Ascension Of Percy Nelles: Navy, Part 15

PHOTO: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA126721 Percy Nelles (front row centre) poses with other sailors on board HMCS Niobe in 1910. The worst years of the Great Depression followed the Royal Canadian Navy's adventure in El Salvador (The Invasion Of El Salvador, March/April). The bottom was reached in 1933, the year Adolph Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. The two events were closely related. By mid-1933, Hitler had subverted the German constitution, seized absolute power and started rearming. That same year, Walter Hose, the chief of the Naval Staff, fought his successful battle in Ottawa against the extinction of the RCN. Not since...

1May 2006

By Jessica SwailNo Comments

Memoirs

Land Of Hope And Glory

ILLUSTRATION: Fred Sebastian When they piped Rig of the Day on that fateful morning in 1945, they ordered us to don our Burberries, not our greatcoats. It was springtime in Nova Scotia, and we had wakened to a fine day. In HMCS Protector, the naval base at Point Edward near Sydney on Cape Breton Island, May 7th began like every other for the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS), also known as Wrens. I joined at 18 in HMCS Tecumseh in Calgary and had completed my basic training in HMCS Conestoga at Galt (now part of Cambridge, Ont.), before being posted to Protector as a general duties writer. I was one of 500 W...

Month: May 2006

Mapman Of Temagami

Tunnelling Back To The Cold War

Moving Forward With Boforce: Army, Part 64

Hunting U-boats From The Air: Air Force, Part 15

The Ascension Of Percy Nelles: Navy, Part 15

Land Of Hope And Glory

Search

Connect

Listen to the Podcast

Sign up to the e-newsletter today

Sign up today for a FREE download of Canada’s War Stories