1 DECEMBER 1941
Wartime wage and price controls begin.

 

2 DECEMBER 1970

James Cross, kidnapped by the Front de libération du Québec, is located and freed two days later.

 

3 DECEMBER 1943
Devil’s Brigade member Private Daniel Wade of Stewart, B.C., is killed in action at Monte La Difensa in Italy.

 

4 DECEMBER 1950

 

HMCS Cayuga leads six ships on a dangerous night passage to support evacuation of the port of Pyongyang in North Korea.

5 DECEMBER 1912

Prime Minister Robert Borden proposes $35 million to help Britain rearm, a bill ultimately defeated in the Senate.

 

6 DECEMBER 1907

Lieut. Thomas Selfridge records Canada’s first recorded flight carrying a passenger of any heavier-than-air craft in Canada, aboard Alexander Graham Bell’s kite Cygnet I in Baddeck, N.S.

7 DECEMBER 1837

One thousand militia and volunteers rout rebels at Montgomery’s Tavern on Yonge Street in Toronto, but the Upper Canada Rebellion leads to democratic reform.

 

8 DECEMBER 1649
Jesuit missionary Noël Chabanel is murdered in what is now Midland, Ont. He is proclaimed a saint in 1930.

8-9 DECEMBER 1941
Japan bombs Hong Kong and Singapore in a prelude to invasion.

10 DECEMBER 1914

 

The Borden Motor Machine Gun Battery is mobilized in Montreal.

 

11 DECEMBER 1813
Frozen bodies of women and children are found after American forces burn the town of Niagara.

 

12 DECEMBER 1901

The first transatlantic wireless signal is received in St. John’s, Nfld.

13 DECEMBER 1940
Hatley Castle in Victoria, B.C., becomes HMCS Royal Roads, a naval officer-training establishment.

 

14 DECEMBER 1995

A peace accord ends three years of war in the Balkans; more than 16,000 Canadians served—and 11 died—in the United Nations Protection Force.

 

15 DECEMBER 1964

Parliament approves the maple leaf design for Canada’s new flag.

 

16 DECEMBER 1944
A V-2 rocket kills about 500 in the Rex Theatre in Antwerp, Belgium.

 

17 DECEMBER 1939

Canada signs the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan—but stipulates a separate RCAF structure in the Royal Air Force.

 

18 DECEMBER 1950
Canada’s first fighting unit—2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry—reaches Korea.

 

19 DECEMBER 1941

In Hong Kong, Sergeant-Major John Robert Osborn tosses back several Japanese grenades before throwing himself on one to save his comrades. He is posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

 

20 DECEMBER 2007
Elizabeth II surpasses Queen Victoria as the longest-lived British monarch, and goes on to have the longest reign, too.

21 DECEMBER 1883
The first permanent force cavalry and infantry regiments of the Canadian Army are formed.

22 DECEMBER 1969
A post office truck in Montreal is blown up, one of more than 200 bombs set off by the Front de libération du Québec in 1963-1970.

23 DECEMBER 1943
HMCS New Glasgow is commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy; in 1945 it rams U-1003, which later sinks.

24 DECEMBER 1944
HMCS Claoquot sinks, victim of a U-boat torpedo near Halifax.

25 DECEMBER 1939
King George VI resurrects the monarch’s Christmas broadcast to hearten subjects in Britain’s war-torn empire.

 

26 DECEMBER 1791
Britain’s Constitutional Act creates Upper and Lower Canada, and sets the stage for rebellion.

 

27 DECEMBER 1972
Lester Pearson, prime minister in 1963-68 and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, dies.

 

28 DECEMBER 1943
1st Canadian Infantry Division is victorious in the brutal Battle of Ortona in Italy.

 

29 DECEMBER 1944
RCAF Flight Lieutenant Dick Audet shoots down five German plans in two minutes.

 

30 DECEMBER 1941

Winston Churchill speaks in Canada of resolve and toughness: “We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries…because we are made of sugar candy.”

 

31 DECEMBER 1963

After controversy brings down the government, Bomarc nuclear missiles come to Canada.

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