Face to Face

In 1939, Canada was the only independent nation in North America to declare war on Germany. A member of the British Commonwealth, Canada was nonetheless independent in foreign and defence policy and had been so since the Statute of Westminster in 1931. The British colonies in the Caribbean and in South America were not independent, and they went to war automatically as soon as Britain did on Sept. 3. But Canada waited until Sept. 10 to declare war. It should not have done so. Why? Because Canada’s national interests were not directly threatened by Germany. It was protected by the vast distances of the Atlantic Ocean from any attempts at major landings by German forces; no aircraft yet developed could attack Canada from Europe and there were no missiles that could do so. If such attacks ...

In late March, India announced that it had successfully shot down one of its own satellites using an interceptor fired from the ground. In doing so, India became only the fourth nation to gain this capacity after the United States, Russia and China. The move brought the weaponization of space even closer, adding to steps that have been taken ever since the launch of the first military communications and reconnaissance satellites in the 1960s. As much as any of us may have wished this would not happen, it was almost inevitable. Few human inventions have been brought to fruition without military purposes in mind. Whatever new technologies humans invent and for whatever purpose, military applications and weapons are not far behind. Take the weaponization of the airplane as an example. Fol...

Elegance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and highly subjective. One could ask the same question about scotch, wine or cars. And superlatives are dangerously inflexible words: terms like ‘most,’ ‘always’ and ‘forever’ should be avoided (especially in matters of the heart). Moreover, pilots (like sailors) are notoriously romantic; why else are ships and aircraft referred to as ‘she’? The Spitfire was undoubtedly an attractive aircraft, especially before its wings were mutilated by 20-millimetre cannon and its wingtips shortened and squared off in the low-altitude versions. Yet was it the “most” of anything? It was certainly not the most comfortable. Many pilots, having flown in the cramped quarters of a Spitfire, expressed delight at the roominess of American fighter aircraft....

Back in 2002 and into 2003, a tempest swirled in an Ottawa teapot over the combat fatigues Canadian troops were wearing to a war 10,600 kilometres away. Here were our soldiers, God forbid, wearing green in the arid climes of Afghanistan. The uniforms were an embarrassment, declared the pundits and politicians, none of whom had set foot in Afghanistan or anyplace remotely like it. Their case, countered one Afghanistan veteran, “was more political than it was tactical.” The fact was, at least half the armies of the coalition—Middle East included—were wearing green. And, in a stroke of serendipity, the Canucks’ crisp new fatigues faded after a couple of washings. The diluted green, combined with the powdery desert dust, proved ideal camouflage in much of the Afghan terrain, with its li...