Home Front

Meticulously colourized images kindle a renewed appreciation of the burdens carried by homecoming soldiers   Winning wars lets countries tidy up some national stories, but losing wars often worsens domestic divisions. Winning certainly makes history appear neater: in the First World War, Canadians fought against tyranny for democracy and freedom—or so the story goes. But after a defeat, a nation can descend into social and political turmoil—that was Germany after the Great War. Soldiers returning from wars, both lost and won, unpack agendas, and it is often a challenge for a country to absorb hundreds of thousands of veterans for whom violence was their professional language. Germany in the 1920s was plagued by hyperinflation, threat of revolution and veterans who felt betrayed...

Fort McMurray rebuilds after a devastating forest fire that caused the largest evacuation in Alberta history   Two years after the devastating wildfire that forced 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray, Alta., to flee their homes, the city has made great progress in its recovery. Along Highway 63, which runs through the city, the trees in June were bare with no green of their own, but grass and low-lying brush were returning. The city itself is in a building boom, caused not by growing fortunes in the nearby Athabaska oil sands, but by insurance claims settled and homes being rebuilt. It is a story of survival and recovery, of military assistance, of co-ordination between municipal, provincial and federal agencies and of neighbours helping neighbours. In many ways, it is a home-f...

As Canada rushed to find instructors and aircrew for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, many Americans flocked north.   It was 1941 and Britain and the Allies were losing the war. German Panzers were sweeping across Russia and there seemed to be little to stop them. At home, the United States had not entered the war or even seriously rearmed. Some Americans took note that Canada, not the United States, was the arsenal for democracy. The British Eighth Army was transported on Canadian-made vehicles, and the same army fired Canadian 25-pounder shells from Canadian-made artillery. But the most significant contribution to the Allied victory was not munitions and equipment, it was the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), which President Franklin Roosevelt acknowle...

What was it like to be conscripted during the First World War? In 1910, William Joseph Rowntree dropped out of school to work full time on his father’s mixed farm near Weston, Ont. So when Ottawa issued its Proclamation Calling Out Class 1 on Oct. 12, 1917, it was well into harvest season and he knew he would have to seek an exemption from compulsory military service. The only other male farmhand his ailing father had was his other son, who was just 14. The proclamation was made under the Military Service Act of Aug. 29, 1917, and it meant Rowntree was immediately deemed a soldier on active service and subject to service discipline. In May 1917, Prime Minister Robert Borden was faced with more than 27,000 Canadian casualties since the start of the year, and recruitment was falling far...

Fifty years ago, the Ottawa River claimed the lives of seven paratroopers on a routine jump Every May, retired paratroopers, family and friends gather for a small ceremony in Petawawa, Ont., to remember those who died in the worst parachute accident in the history of the Canadian Armed Forces. Fifty years ago, on May 8, 1968, 26 parachutists jumped from three Buffalo aircraft expecting to land in a drop zone on the Mattawa Plains, a flat sandy stretch of land on Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Instead, rough winds caught them, sending 22 of them into the frigid Ottawa River. Seven drowned before rescuers could reach them. “One of the men, Bob Knight, was my best friend. We chummed around quite a bit at the time,” remembered Dennis Stow, who is organizing the 50th anniversary servic...