1 August 1950
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police absorbs the Newfoundland Rangers and takes over policing services in Newfoundland and Labrador.

3 August 2000
An American-owned merchant ship being held up over a payment dispute is boarded by sailors of HMCS Athabaskan to compel delivery of 580 Canadian vehicles, 390 sea containers of equipment and three Canadian soldiers destined for Quebec from Kosovo.

4 August 1914
Britain declares war on Germany, and so Canada is automatically at war.

5 August 1914
The government announces the purchase of two submarines to aid HMCS Rainbow in the Pacific.

6 August 1945
The atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

7-10 August 1813
The United States loses four ships to the British in a battle for naval supremacy on Lake Ontario.

12 August 1961
Cold War animosity deepens as construction of the Berlin Wall begins, aimed at halting defections to the West.

13 August 1941
The Canadian Women’s Army Corps is established.

17-18 August 1943
The RCAF contributes 74 of 597 Bomber Command aircraft for attacks on a research centre on the Baltic coast, delaying Germany’s V-2 rocket program for months.

19 August 1942
Some 6,100 Allied troops, including 4,963 Canadians, conduct a disastrous raid on Dieppe, France. Canada suffers 3,367 casualties, including 1,946 prisoners of war and 916 killed.

21 August 1968
The Cold War heats up as Warsaw Pact troops occupy Czechoslovakia and crush anti-Soviet protests.

24 August 2007
The Ontario Ministry of Transportation names a section of Highway 401 from Trenton to Toronto the Highway of Heroes in memory of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

25 August 1875
Fort Brisebois is established by the North West Mounted Police at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers in Alberta. It is renamed Fort Calgary the following year.

27-29 August 1944
1st Canadian Infantry Division smashes through German positions along the Arzilla River in Italy.

30 August 1945
Hong Kong is liberated after it had been overrun by Japanese forces in December 1941.