The Rainbow Veterans of Canada (RVC) is a new veterans group looking at providing support for those who suffered discrimination in the Canadian Armed Forces because of their sexual orientation. “We want to work with other veterans groups. We want to belong to the veteran community,” said Diane Pitre, president of the group which represents those who identify as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer and two-spirit (LGBTQ2S) and who suffered discrimination while in the military. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the federal government had a policy of removing gay people from positions in the CAF, the RCMP and the public service. Often referred to as the gay purge, it was a product of the Cold War when the conventional thinking was that such people could easily be blackmailed by enemy fo...

The Military Museums in Calgary—the country’s second largest military museum—is poised to get a lot larger with an expansion including a new museum devoted to the war in Afghanistan.  “We’ve been honoured [to have been chosen] to be the permanent home of the Afghanistan legacy exhibit,” said director Doug Stinson. “There’s a lot of stuff that came back from our time in Afghanistan that’s sitting in warehouses or travelling,” he said. Those artifacts will serve as the cornerstone of exhibits honouring the more than 40,000 Canadians who served and the 158 soldiers and seven civilians who died in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. But during fundraising and planning for the expansion, which is expected to be about 3,000 square metres and cost about $50 million, it’s business as usual f...

The Royal Canadian Navy has apologized for a five-year delay in releasing its study on the health of 56 navy crew who survived a 2004 fire aboard HMCS Chicoutimi. Chicoutimi is one of four retired diesel-electric submarines Canada bought from Britain in the late 1990s. The submarines needed extensive repair and retrofitting. Chicoutimi was the last to join the Canadian fleet on Oct. 2, 2004. On Oct 5, running on the surface with upper and lower hatches open during repair work, a massive wave dumped seawater into the boat at about 11 a.m. Two hours later, an electrical fire broke out and, in seconds, thick black smoke spread through the decks. Nine of the crew suffered smoke inhalation, three severely. They were about 200 kilometres off the Irish coast and high seas prevented an immed...