Canada Corner Archives - Legion Magazine

15Sep 2020

By Don GillmorNo Comments

Battle of Britain Day

Hitler’s plan was to destroy the Royal Air Force then launch Operation Sea Lion, an invasion of England. Winston Churchill assumed as much. “Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war,” he told the House of Commons in 1940. “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: “This was their finest hour.” The Battle of Britain was a proving ground for Britain’s aerial forces, and it also stirred Churchill to some of his most memorable speeches. On June 4, 1940, he addressed the House, emphasizing how critical the RAF would be in the months ahead. He ended with the famous words: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing gro...

31Aug 2020

By J.L. GranatsteinNo Comments

Canada Corner, Home Front, Military History

Defence deal

The first Canadian-American defence alliance was born in menacing times After the German invasion of Scandinavia, the Low Countries and France in April, May and June 1940, the chances of Britain’s survival seemed very much in doubt. In Canada, there was consternation and fear, but the federal government dutifully sent every military resource it had at its disposal to bolster the United Kingdom’s defences. The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division joined the 1st in southern England. A Royal Canadian Air Force fighter squadron helped the Royal Air Force resist the Luftwaffe’s onslaught. And the RCN’s four destroyers in the Atlantic proceeded overseas. Canada had promptly stripped itself bare to help the desperate mother country. Nonetheless, the astonishing Nazi conquests forced the Canad...

7Aug 2020

By Graham ChandlerNo Comments

Home Front

The last of the biplanes

It was 1939 and the Canadian Car and Foundry Company’s (Can-Car) new FDB-1 fighter-bomber had just demonstrated that it could out-climb a Hurricane or Spitfire. After flying it, an RCAF test pilot extolled its dogfighting agilities, which he said would also challenge that of contemporary fighters. Aeronautical engineer Michael Gregor had earlier convinced Can-Car’s Montreal headquarters to hire him to design and build a new highly manoeuvrable fighter-bomber at their facility in Fort William, Ont. (now part of Thunder Bay). Gregor’s creation was somewhat radical: a biplane at a time when monoplanes were all the rage. But Gregor was a huge fan of biplanes and of enhancing their potential. “They’ll start the war with monoplanes but finish it with biplanes,” he said. Can-Car’s general ma...

Military Moments | Canadians in the Battle of Britain

31Jul 2020

By Legion MagazineNo Comments

Multi-media Features, News

Military Moments | Canadians in the Battle of Britain

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, which took place from July to October 1940. Our new Military Moment and the next issue of Canada’s Ultimate Story explore the Canadians who took part in the furious air defence of Britain against the German Luftwaffe. As Winston Churchill later proclaimed "Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few." Narrated by Canvet Publications’ Stephen J. Thorne, this Military Moment takes us back to July 10, 1940, when the Luftwaffe struck hard at Great Britain, attempting to soften the country for a land invasion. The Battle of Britain started with Luftwaffe raids on shipping in the English Channel, then on airfields and radar bases. In early September, the attacks shifted again, to London, Coven...

17Jul 2020

By Don GillmorNo Comments

O Canada

O CANADA: Overweight span

Overweight span When they started building the Pont de Québec spanning the Saint Lawrence River in 1905, there was a sense of pride. Designed mainly for rail traffic, it was going to be the biggest cantilever bridge in the world, longer than the Forth Bridge in Scotland. But on Aug. 29, 1907, a riveter noticed that a rivet he’d put in only an hour earlier had broken in half. Minutes later the structure twisted and collapsed with such force that people in Quebec City, 10 kilometres away, thought it was an earthquake. The engineering challenges of the Quebec Bridge had been daunting. It spanned a shipping lane, so it had to have a 45-metre clearance for ocean-going ships. It was 850 metres long, but needed a single 550-metre span in the centre. Key to its structural integrity was the ...

8Jun 2020

By Don GillmorNo Comments

O Canada

Eyewitness to war

Now the rest of the assault troops are going in. I am going ashore with them.” This was the last line in Ross Munro’s dispatch on D-Day. As the lead correspondent in Europe for The Canadian Press during the Second World War, he covered D-Day on June 6, 1944, as well as the 1941 Canadian raid on Spitsbergen, Norway, the 1942 raid on Dieppe, the 1943 Allied landings in Sicily, the Italian campaign of 1943-45, and other battles. Munro was the first Allied journalist to report on the D-Day invasion. A British officer tipped him off that a destroyer was heading back from the Normandy beachhead to pick up General Bernard Montgomery. On board was Munro’s dispatch, the first from the coast of France. It wasn’t the first time Munro had been first. His accounts of Dieppe, Sicily and Italy wer...

Canada Corner

Battle of Britain Day

Defence deal

The last of the biplanes

Military Moments | Canadians in the Battle of Britain

O CANADA: Overweight span

Eyewitness to war

Search

Connect

Listen to the Podcast

Search

Connect

Listen to the Podcast

CANADA AND THEVICTORIA CROSSSPECIAL ISSUE | $14.95

CANADA AND THE
VICTORIA CROSS
SPECIAL ISSUE | $14.95