Re: History - Topics & Posted Articles

by Proctor Tue 09 Apr 2019, 8:03 am

The fight did not end on Nov. 11th, 1918

The Vimy Foundation marks Vimy Ridge Day

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 Soldiers_returning_from_vimy_ridge

Canadian soldiers returning from Vimy Ridge are seen in a photo from the Vimy Foundation's book They Fought in Colour.

National Post
Christopher Sweeney and Caitlin Bailey

April 9, 2019

By Christopher Sweeney and Caitlin Bailey

Last November, the world commemorated the end of the First World War. But the effects of the war continued well beyond the cessation of hostilities. Over the coming months and years, the Vimy Foundation will continue to keep alive not only the memory of the First World War, but also its effects on Canada. These include the handling of the physical and mental damage of our soldiers of the First World War; the displacement of women from the workforce by the returning soldiers; the outbreak of Spanish influenza; and the post-war surge in Canadian autonomy from Great Britain. This article will deal with the first of these topics; how Canada handled its returning veterans.

On May 25, 1918, Lt.-Col. Samuel Simpson Sharpe — a sitting Union MP, the commander of the 116th Battalion, a veteran of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, a recipient of the Distinguished Service Order, and an officer who cared deeply for the soldiers serving under him — jumped to his death from an upper window of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. He had been hospitalized in March 1918 for “general debility” and sent home to Canada on compassionate leave. He never got home.

Many thousands of Great War soldiers surely suffered from what was then known as 'shell shock'

Unfortunately, Lt.-Col. Sharpe was not an isolated case. Many thousands of Great War soldiers surely suffered from what was then known as “shell shock” or “neurasthenia” as a result of their service, and while the statistics for suicides are not known, current numbers related to the mission in Afghanistan show that self-harm is all too common among returning veterans (though we now have a much better, but not perfect, idea of how to try to deal with what we currently call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.) Overall, 170,000 serving Canadians were physically wounded during the First World War, and more than 10 per cent of the total force, or roughly 70,000 people, reported some form of shell shock or mental strain during their service (at a time when there was great stigma to reporting such an ailment — have things changed so much?).

Reintegrating roughly 10 per cent of the population after five traumatic years in the trenches on the Western Front posed a vast problem to both Canadian society and the Canadian government. What did society owe those who had taken part in this faraway conflict and had sacrificed so much? How would they assure that these individuals received the care they needed or the jobs they had been promised at the beginning and throughout the war? What to do with the women being displaced from “men’s jobs” they had held during the war? These are questions that Canadians struggled with in 1919 and beyond.

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 Wounded_canadians

Wounded Canadians take cover behind a pillbox during the Battle of Passchendaele in November 1917. The photo has been colourized by the Vimy Foundation and Canadian Colour.

In the post-war years, veterans’ groups such as the Great War Veterans Association (later the Royal Canadian Legion) advocated for a variety of supports including lump-sum payments to veterans, and lifelong pensions. Families of the deceased, 60,000 of them, also required support, and those returning with disabilities needed pensions, medical care, and rehabilitation. Some schemes worked and some didn’t; the veterans’ groups never succeeded in receiving lump-sum payments or lifelong pensions, but the Pensions Act of 1919 did come into being, to provide long-term support for those who needed it. Wounded veterans continued to receive pensions, though they were small, and most eventually simply resettled into life at home, damaged.

The Great War quadrupled Canadian national debt in the years that it was fought; with the post-war debt ratio reaching close to 60 per cent of the national GDP (today’s ratio is less than half of that at roughly 29 per cent), much of it financed by domestic bonds purchased by citizens to help support the war effort. After the war, Canada continued to struggle with costs associated with it. The booming war economy was shut down virtually overnight as companies needed to repurpose themselves. Jobs were lost, and the reintegration measures were expensive. The recognition that the government needed to care for its most vulnerable added another financial burden.

The booming war economy was shut down virtually overnight

Much of the expansion of the role of government was covered by the Income War Tax, which had been introduced in 1917 as a “temporary measure” to help pay for the war, and which was retained at its end to help offset the costs of veterans’ services, among other purposes. Charitable societies like the War Amps and the National Institute for the Blind provided additional services, as did such veterans’ groups as the Legion and the Great War Veterans’ Association. All these pieces formed a network of care and support for war veterans and their families, though imperfect.

With the passage of time, most Canadians simply wanted to move on from the war and its terrible legacy. And so it goes — our sons (and daughters) go off to fight and potentially die on behalf of a nation that expresses gratitude, then often fails to show it.

The Vimy Foundation will continue to remind Canadians of their great First World War effort, the seismic effects of the conflict upon Canada, and the development of a new, vigorous sense of national identity. We will remember them.

— Christopher Sweeney is the chairman of the Vimy Foundation. Caitlin Bailey is the executive director of the Vimy Foundation and the Canadian Centre for the Great War.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-fight-did-not-end-on-nov-11th-1918

by Caliber Tue 09 Apr 2019, 1:24 pm

Germans considered it a victory, too: In rare photos, everything you didn’t know about Vimy Ridge

Tristin Hopper
April 9, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 Vimymain

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/vimy-ridge-anniversary

by RevForce Wed 10 Apr 2019, 9:40 pm

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 16351227_web1_VimyRidgeMemorial11.0409

Second World War veteran Werner Hockin, 94, salutes as Laila Cole, president of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 4, helps him lay a wreath at the Vedder cenotaph during the 102nd commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge at All Sappers’ Memorial Park on Tuesday. (Jenna Hauck/ The Progress)

PHOTOS: The 102nd commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in Chilliwack

Second World War veterans among those who paid their respects to fallen soldiers at Vimy Ridge

JENNA HAUCK - Apr. 10, 2019

https://www.theprogress.com/news/photos-the-102nd-commemoration-of-the-battle-of-vimy-ridge-in-chilliwack/

by Ringo Thu 11 Apr 2019, 7:45 am

Countdown to D-DAY: How the world turned on a single day

The stakes couldn’t have been higher as morning dawned on June 6, 1944

Thu Apr 11, 2019 - by Alex Day Hamilton Spectator

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 B88661189Z.1_20190410210611_000_GFGI9B2O.3-0_Super_Portrait

Canadian troops land on the beachhead in Normandy, France in June, 1944 shortly after the D-Day invasion. On a chilly, grey morning 75 years ago, a few boatloads of scared, cold, often seasick young Canadians charged ashore on a windswept French beach and helped make history. - DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE,Canadian Press

"They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate."

— U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On Sept. 1, 1939 — in a bid to establish a 'Third Reich' — Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany began to invade the countries of Europe in sweeping fashion. His 'Blitzkrieg' attacks passed through shocked and helpless defences like a rolling fog. By early 1941, only the British Isles had yet to fall.

Nearly a year and a half went by before any attempt could be made to land a small invasion force on the coast of France to fight back.

On Aug. 19, 1942, a force primarily made up of Canadians — including the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry — attempted to land at the French port of Dieppe in what was codenamed Operation Jubilee. Of the 4,963 young men who set out for the operation, 2,210 returned and a total of 3,367 were listed as casualties with 1,946 taken prisoner. Nine hundred and sixteen died. The RHLI lost 197, the second highest casualty total among Canadian Army units, according to Veterans Affairs Canada.

The defeat at Dieppe made two things painfully, deadly obvious. First, there was much to learn to be able to sustain any break in German defences, which was vital in order to seize and hold a swath of land. Second, the risk to human life, resources and morale was very real and, even more so, difficult to rebound from.

Unknown to the world — including the common citizens of Germany — Hitler was systematically exterminating every Jewish person in Europe. He craved the extinction of the entire religion. In the end, he would kill more than six million Jewish men, women and children, including approximately three million Polish-Jews alone.

For those under his powerful heel, there was no end in sight.

Four and a half years after the start of war — and nearly two full years since the ill-fated landings at Dieppe — the Allied powers were finally able to try again at piercing the armoured wall lining the coast of France.

This attempt would include more than 150,000 young men and women, dwarfing the Dieppe invasion force in size and scale with troops from the United Kingdom, United States and Canada.

It was codenamed Operation Overlord, and D-Day — the secretive date marked for the launching of the invasion — was scheduled for June 5, 1944.

The operation was comprised of naval, ground-based and airborne operations that were all designed around supporting one another and cutting off Nazi reinforcement to the five target beaches along the coast of Normandy, France.

Much to the concern of Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, early June had been plagued with extremely inclement weather. So much so that he decided to postpone the June 5 invasion until a weather window produced itself in the upcoming weeks.

At the last moment, he decided to risk it all on an opening in the storms on early June 6.

"This operation is not being planned with any alternatives. This operation is planned as a victory, and that's the way it's going to be. We're going down there, and we're throwing everything we have into it, and we're going to make it a success." he said.

If successful, the Allies would have a foothold to thrust themselves in a bid to take back Europe. Not only that, but it would mark a second victory for the Allies, just two days after the liberation of Rome in Italy and be a much-needed sign of hope for a world desperately awaiting a miracle. It could be the beginning of the end of the Second World War.

If turned back, the Allies would have been faced with an unfathomable hole from which to climb. Losses of astronomical proportions would be definite. It would take years to be able to re-train and re-arm a fighting force of that size. Hitler could focus on Italy again, or focus entirely on the western front. He would no longer have to worry about the threat of a two-pronged attack. He could continue making strides in weapons innovations and would remain unopposed in his carrying out of his diabolical "Final Solution."

Fast-forward, 75 years later. We know how the events unfolded on, above and around the shores of Normandy on June 6, 1944. But, in those moments, not a single person in the world knew what was going to happen.

Those brave men did not just land on the beaches of France, they landed themselves in history as part of the most complex military operations to ever take place. The operation undoubtedly led to the end of the war in Europe — not even a year later in May 1945 — and the liberation of millions of people whose gratitude is just as strong today as it was three-quarters of a century ago.

Hitler's rain of V-2 rockets on England ended and the Nazi's dream of developing an atomic bomb was thwarted. France, Holland, Belgium — all of western Europe — rejoiced.

And there's no telling how many more innocent Jews were saved.

"It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only 6 miles long and 2 miles wide."

— U.S. President Barack Obama. June 6, 2009.

June 6, 2019 will be the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one of the monumental days in human history. It was one that changed the course of the world, signalled the beginning of the end of the Second World War and shaped the image of Canada as a power on the world stage.

Hamilton will pay tribute to all D-Day veterans with a one-of-a-kind gala at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum on June 1, featuring the World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra.

Today, The Spectator, in conjunction with Newspapers In Education, begins an 8-week countdown to D-Day, with a look at what Operation Overlord was, and what was at stake.

Alex Day is a member of the D-Day Commemorative Gala Committee, and an employee of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.

Alex Day is a member of the D-Day Commemorative Gala Committee, and an employee of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.

https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9278242-countdown-to-d-day-how-the-world-turned-on-a-single-day/

by kodiak Wed 17 Apr 2019, 8:18 am

WW2 - D-Day. Invasion of Normandy [Real Footage in Color]

by Maxstar Thu 18 Apr 2019, 8:41 pm

Powell River sprinter part of 2019 Sports Hall of Fame class

Sara Donnelly / Powell River Peak
APRIL 18, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 Powell-river-track-and-field-athlete-gino-bortolussi

FLEET-FOOTED: Powell River track and field athlete Gino Bortolussi will be inducted into the Powell River Sports Hall of Fame this June. His Olympic goals were sidelined due to service in World War II, however, he distinguished himself as a world-class sprinter at military competitions during that time. Powell River Historical Museum and Archives photo

In its inaugural year, Powell River’s Sports Hall of Fame will induct eight athletes and one team that have had a lasting legacy. In the weeks leading up to the gala, taking place June 15 at Hap Parker Arena, the Peak will profile the inductees, giving more insight into their accomplishments and contributions to the fabric of the community.

Born in Italy in 1919, Gino Bortolussi immigrated with his family to Canada in the early 1920s. The family first settled in Alberta, before arriving in Powell River.

Gino was the eldest of five children and, along with his siblings, loved playing sports. He excelled at track and field and his skill caught the attention of Powell River’s Martin Naylor. In 1936, Naylor had represented BC in the Olympic trials held in Montreal, coming fourth against the country's strongest competitors.

Naylor became Gino’s mentor and coach. Under his guidance, Gino developed as an athlete and set his sights on competing in the Olympics. The start of World War II in 1939 put those dreams on hold, however, as Gino enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces. Many young athletes had their careers end when they enlisted, but war did not diminish Gino’s enthusiasm or competitive spirit.

As a member of the Western Regiment, Gino served on the front lines in Italy and Holland from 1943 to 1945. During this time he distinguished himself at track and field events held during the war in Canada, England and liberated parts of Europe.

Gino became the best Canadian Army sprinter for two years in a row, excelling in the 100- and 200-yard dashes and winning for his regiment, the 5th Division. The Powell River resident ran in the Aldershot meets against the best runners in the British Empire.

“Apparently he was a very stylish runner to watch,” said his youngest son David Bortolussi. “He was said to have been very graceful. He looked like he was just floating down the track.”

By the end of the war Gino had either beaten or held his own against many of the top sprinters in the world and his Olympic goals were still alive. Complications from a back injury suffered in combat eventually brought these dreams to an end.

After a lengthy recovery from back surgery at Shaughnessy Military Hospital in Vancouver, Gino returned to Powell River where he and his wife Mary raised three children. Gino commenced what would become a 40-year career with the Powell River Company/MacMillan Bloedel and continued his involvement with track and field, coaching a number of local athletes into the 1960s.

An unforgettable moment of this time, said David, was when Gino met one of his idols.

“He got to meet Jesse Owens, which was a really big thing for him,” he added.

Owens, the four-time Olympic gold-medal sprinter from the United States, was a superstar and an inspiration.

“Dad got a signed picture [from Owens],” said David. “It says ‘from one great athlete to another.’”

Gino maintained his military connections, serving as an officer in the Sea Cadet Corps. In honour of his military service to Canada and outstanding athletic achievements he was inducted into the Canadian Armed Forces Sports Hall of Fame in 1988. He passed away in 1997 at the age of 77.

Being recognized locally is important, said David.

“He should be remembered; he kind of put Powell River on the map back in the day,” he added. “He was the favourite son for a lot of years for his generation. His accomplishments brought inspiration and pride during a very dark time.”

https://www.prpeak.com/sports/powell-river-sprinter-part-of-2019-sports-hall-of-fame-class-1.23795894

by **Wolfman** Fri 19 Apr 2019, 5:39 pm

Navan's Eric Smith among only Canadians to fly combat missions in both WWII, Korea
ANDREW DUFFY - April 19, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 Eric-1952

Photos of Eric Smith courtesy of his family.

Even among fighter pilots, Eric Smith was a rare breed.

The Navan, Ont. wing commander was one of the few Canadians to fly combat missions in the Second World War and Korean War — and receive decorations for both.

“He was in an exclusive little club,” said Canadian aviation historian and author Larry Milberry.

Smith received a Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for the valour he showed in flying more than 50 low-altitude night fighter missions over France, Belgium Holland and Germany during the Second World War. He received the U.S. Air Medal for “his fortitude and courage” in flying 50 combat missions in the Korean War while on secondment to the U.S. Air Force.

Smith died last month at The Ottawa Hospital from pneumonia. He was 98.

“I liked everything about him,” said his widow, Dinah Smith, 87. “He could talk to anybody from the lowest rank to a general.”

Eric George Smith was born on Jan. 26, 1921 in Navan, Ont., about half an hour east of Ottawa. His father was a farmer and a veteran of the First World War. Eric often accompanied him as he delivered milk and cream by horse-drawn wagon to Ottawa.

An accomplished student, Smith graduated from teacher’s college, Ottawa Normal School, and took a job at a small schoolhouse in Carlsbad Springs. The Second World War interrupted his fledgling career.

In July 1941, at the age of 20, Smith enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force, determined to be a pilot. At 5’6’’, he narrowly met the height requirement.

“If he wasn’t going to be a pilot, he didn’t want to be anything else,” said his daughter, Erin Zintel.

Smith had heard his father’s stories about the mud and misery of trench warfare, she said, and he wanted nothing to do with the regular army.

He trained in Toronto, Trenton, Belleville and Portage La Prairie before earning his pilot’s wings at Camp Borden. After still more training, Smith became a pilot instructor at No. 2 Service Flying Training School at RCAF Station Uplands — one of 231 sites opened in Canada to train pilots, navigators, gunners and flight engineers for the war.

Smith spent more than a year instructing young pilots before preparing for his own combat duty: He was sent to England in early 1944 to learn the dangerous art of low-level flying.

Posted to No. 107 Squadron RAF, Smith flew his first night sortie over occupied France on Aug. 26, 1944. It was his first experience with night fighting.

Smith’s logbook — he flew 58 missions — shows that he attacked troop transports, rail yards, warehouses, ammunition dumps, boats, trains, even a V-1 flying bomb, often while under attack by German anti-aircraft units.

“Every one of these trips was literally death-defying: low-level Mosquito missions at night looking for anything German that moved,” said Milberry. “A lot of Mosquitos didn’t come back because they flew into wires or trees or towers.”

On the evening of March 5, 1945, Smith was one of only two pilots to get into the air because of dense, low-lying fog. The other pilot died that night in a crash landing.

In April 1945, Smith was awarded the DFC with a citation that read: “He has at all times exhibited great determination, initiative and daring, and set an inspiring example by his fine fighting spirit and devotion to duty.”

After the war, Smith returned to Canada and enrolled in university. But after a year in school, he decided to return to the air and to the RCAF. In 1952, he accepted a secondment to the U.S. Air Force to fly in the Korean War.

Smith flew an F-86 Sabre jet on 50 combat missions, which took him deep into enemy territory and pitted him against Russian-built MiG fighters. Then a squadron leader, he was one of 22 RCAF pilots to fly in Korea.

It’s believed he was the last surviving member of that exclusive group.

Smith once told an interviewer how the high-flying MiGs would attack from out of the sky. The MiGs could climb to 50,000 feet while the Sabres couldn’t get above 42,000. On one sortie, he said, a MiG dropped right onto his tail. “But he was a very poor shot I guess,” Smith said of his narrow escape.

After returning to Canada, Smith was stationed in Chatham, New Brunswick, where a late season blizzard changed his life. In March 1953, during the storm, he crashed his car into a snow bank on RCAF Station Chatham.

Two women went to see if he was OK. Dinah Cole, on her way home from the midnight shift as a fighter control operator, was one of them.

“He ploughed into a snowbank right in front of me,” she recalled. “I opened the car door, and I said to him, ‘Can I help you? Can I phone somebody to pull you out?’

“He took a look at me and said, ‘No, but you can keep me company until someone comes, though’ … That was smooth.”

The two were married five weeks later. Cole, then 21, had to quit her job since Smith was her senior officer.

Smith went on to serve in the RAF Air Ministry in London and to command RCAF’s Squadron No. 413 at CFB Greenwood.

He retired as a wing commander in August 1968 and bought a property in Kemptville so that he could return to farming. He also sold real estate.

In May 2001, Smith and his wife moved back to Navan to be closer to their only daughter, Erin, and their grandchildren.

Smith continued to curl — it was his favourite sport — and to collect stamps and coins well into his 90s.

During his career, Smith flew more than 30 airplanes, including the CF-100 twinjet fighter. “He knew how to fly and he knew his airplanes inside out,” said Milberry. “Like any of the good ones, he could fly anything.”

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/navans-eric-smith-among-only-canadians-to-fly-combat-missions-in-both-wwii-korea

by Hunter Wed 24 Apr 2019, 7:41 am

Historian says Hamilton troops were wrongly accused of cowardice in 150-year-old Battle of Ridgeway

April 24, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 B88679148Z.1_20190423194542_000_G65INL75.3-0

An artist's conception of the Battle of Ridgeway, June 2, 1866. In fact, the two sides, Fenians on the left and colonial militias of Canada on the right were never this close together. A historian says that if the American government had supported the Fenians. a big if, it might have changed who owned Canada. | Ridgeway Battlefiedl Hospital Museum

https://www.thespec.com/news-story/9298668-historian-says-hamilton-troops-were-wrongly-accused-of-cowardice-in-150-year-old-battle-of-ridgeway/

by Starman Wed 24 Apr 2019, 5:56 pm

Lorna Collacott, WW2 code breaker veteran, dies at 94

Collacott was a part of the Royal Air Force in the codes and ciphers division

CBC News · Posted: Apr 24, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 Lorna-corlacott

Lorna Collacott is one of 1,405 people listed on the Honour Wall in Essex, Ont. She worked as a code breaker with the Royal Air Force.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/lorna-collacott-veteran-code-breaker-enigma-machine-1.5109457

by Leopard Thu 25 Apr 2019, 8:13 am

THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2019

Countdown to D-DAY: The general from Hamilton who showed Canada the way

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 B88679174Z.1_20190424195935_000_GO2INPO2.4-0_Super_Portrait

General Harry Crerar on the cover of Time Magazine on Sept. 18, 1944. - Hamilton Spectator file photo

When General Harry Crerar — the "quiet man who got things done" — died at the age of 76 in Ottawa in April 1965, he was hailed as the most distinguished military leader Canada had ever produced.

A Hamilton native, Gen. Crerar was the first Canadian to be promoted to general while serving at the battlefront and the first to command a full-fledged Canadian army in the field.

The stern-faced, soft spoken general, who left Hamilton in his early 20s, won wide acclaim for the Canadian Army's dramatic drive from Normandy along the Channel coast into Belgium, Holland and Germany during the Allied victory campaign that ended the Second World War.

It capped a military career that began at the Royal Military College in Kingston where he graduated in 1909. He spent several years as a civil engineer with Ontario Hydro, but at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he went overseas as an artillery captain.

He was in the Battle of Ypres where the first gas attack in history failed to crack the Canadian front. Rising rapidly through artillery command posts, he was a lieutenant-colonel and corps counter-battery officer when the Great War ended.

In the interval between the wars, he served in various headquarters roles, attending the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Imperial Conference of 1937. He rose to full colonel in 1938, commanding the RMC in Kingston.

A month after the Second World War began, he was made a brigadier and sent to London to plan for the arrival of the 1st Canadian Division. In July 1940, he returned to Ottawa as chief of the general staff and was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1941.

Gen. Crerar took a step down in rank later that year to go overseas again as commander of the 2nd Canadian Division then training in England.

He explained to a friend: "I must get away from a desk. I must get overseas, for that is where I belong."

Soon he was commanding the 1st Canadian Corps, and back at lieutenant-general in rank. It was the 2nd Division of this corps that carried out the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe, an operation that he always defended as an essential prelude to the D-Day operation of 1944.

In the spring of 1944, Gen. Crerar was returned to England, succeeding Gen. McNaughton as commander of the Canadian Army.

Two weeks after D-Day, Gen. Crerar arrived in Normandy and began forming the 1st Canadian Army for its special task of clearing the coast of northwest Europe. He made his military reputation — and Canada's — in the bitter months of struggle toward Germany.

In the climatic attack across the Rhine in February 1945, he had more than 500,000 men under his command, including eight British divisions sent to bolster the three Canadian divisions. By early March, he had turned the Siegfried Line and cleared the west bank of the lower Rhine in an operation that received high praise from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander.

Eisenhower later described him as a humble leader who was much less flamboyant than his contemporaries, George Patton and Bernard Montgomery: "He was not one to seek the limelight or command headlines. He was one of those great souls whose only ambition was to do his duty to his troops and to his country."

Gen. Crerar once summarized his personal philosophy of generalship: "Lead always, drive rarely, but when you must, drive hard."

On his return to Ottawa in August 1945, thousands welcomed him on Parliament Hill, where, it was reported, he received one of the greatest ovations in the country's history.

About 20,000 people turned out for a civic ceremony and parade in Hamilton in 1946. He is remembered in his home town with a neighbourhood, street and a park named in his honour.

June 6, 2019 will be the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one of the monumental days in human history. It was one that changed the course of the world, signalled the beginning of the end of the Second World War and shaped the image of Canada as a power on the world stage.

Hamilton will pay tribute to all D-Day veterans with a one-of-a-kind gala at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum on June 1, featuring the World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra.

Today, The Spectator, in conjunction with Newspapers In Education and the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, continues an 8-week countdown to D-Day, with a look at what faced Canadians that day, 75 years ago.

https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9300731-countdown-to-d-day-the-general-from-hamilton-who-showed-canada-the-way/

by **Powergunner** Sun 05 May 2019, 8:21 pm

Canadian Jewish Second World War veterans remembered

Nikki Sullivan (nicole.sullivan@cbpost.com)
Published: May 5, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 CB_05052019_Candle_NS_large

Kara Doyle (second from right) lights a candle during Yom Hashoah (Holocaust memorial service) on May 5 at Temple Sons of Israel in Sydney. The candles were lit in memory of those who died during the Holocaust and guest speaker this year was author Ellin Bessner, whose book Double Threat is about Canadian Jewish Second World War veterans. Pictured here, from left: Fred Blufarb, Maura Lea Morykot, Michael Christmas, Heather MacDonald, Kara Doyle, (behind Doyle) Pam Van Dommelen and Diane Lewis. - Nikki Sullivan

https://www.capebretonpost.com/news/local/canadian-jewish-second-world-war-veterans-remembered-308435/

by Firestrike Tue 07 May 2019, 1:35 pm

Postcards are being sent to the last known homes of fallen Canadians soldiers. We visited in advance

By Toronto Star and StarMetro
Tues., May 7, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 _1_postcard

The Juno Beach Centre's postcards will inform recipients across Canada they’re living at the last known address of a soldier before he served and was killed in the Allied invasion of Normandy. (JUNO BEACH CENTRE)

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/05/07/75-years-after-d-day-we-visited-the-homes-that-fallen-canadian-soldiers-left-behind.html

by Firestrike Tue 07 May 2019, 1:40 pm

4,000 kilometres in their boots: D-Day commemoration in Jasper

Posted by: fitzhugh Posted date: May 07, 2019

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 Screenshot-2019-05-07-at-10.17.52-AM

Dignitaries including Jasper RCMP detachment commander Sgt. Rick Bidaisee, Jasper protective services director and fire chief Greg Van Tighem and Jasper Legion president Paul Godbout gathered to welcome a national tour commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day. | F. Dragon photos

https://www.fitzhugh.ca/4000-kilometres-in-their-boots-d-day-commemoration-in-jasper/

by Lucifer Wed 08 May 2019, 8:01 am

AT WAR

These Jewish World War II Veterans Would Be Legends, if People Knew Their Stories

History - Topics & Posted Articles - Page 32 08atwar-jewishvets-jumbo

Left: Mickey Heller’s World War II service photo. Right: Heller (far left) with his fellow aviators.

By Aron Heller

May 8, 2019

In April 1943, the Halifax bomber that Wilfred Canter co-piloted was shot down on the way back from a mission over Stuttgart. Canter parachuted out into occupied France, breaking a leg when he landed. The only member of the six-man crew to evade capture, he was given food and clothing by a local family, then passed to members of the Resistance, who smuggled him to Paris, then Bordeaux, then over the Pyrenees by foot into Spain. From there he made his way to Gibraltar and then England. King George VI personally awarded Canter a Distinguished Flying Medal at Buckingham Palace, where he was cited for displaying “courage and tenacity of a high order.”

After less than a month of home leave in Toronto, Canter — one of about 17,000 Jewish Canadians who fought in World War II — deemed himself fit for duty and returned to England to resume his bombing missions, including one in which his plane took fire but returned safely to base. In April 1944, Canter was shot down again, on a bombing run over Düsseldorf, and was captured by the Germans. After a lengthy Gestapo interrogation, a German prisoner-of-war camp made famous in the 1963 film “The Great Escape,” which recounted how 76 British and Allied aviators tunneled to freedom. All but three of the prisoners were caught, and 50 were executed. Records and chronology indicate that Canter arrived at that camp at least a month after the escape.

As the Allies were closing in on Germany, the camp’s remaining war prisoners were marched west, away from the advancing Soviet Army. Canter escaped and managed to connect with a British unit. Family lore adds that he was briefly recaptured by a German officer, but resistance forces shot the German dead, freeing Canter again and handing him the officer’s Luger pistol, which he kept as a memento.

I didn’t know Canter, but my grandfather, Mickey Heller, did. Zaidy — I’ve always called him by the Yiddish word for “grandpa” — speaks fondly of his friend Wilf, the fellow Jewish veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force who survived three near-death experiences and almost a year as a prisoner of war. Canter would be legendary, if only more people knew the legend.

Unlike their celebrated American and British comrades, Canadian veterans of World War II are rarely remembered in triumphant narratives because there were far fewer of them. Jewish Canadians even less so, but they should be. Though he steadfastly refuses to share his personal war experiences, my grandfather notes with pride that about 40 percent of the military-age Jewish male population of Canada enrolled for active service, most of them volunteers who were dispatched overseas. Roughly 44,000 Canadian service members died in the Second World War, and more than a third of those were in the Air Force, including many of the men with whom my grandfather served. Only in 2011, after years of rebuffing inquiries into his wartime experiences, did my grandfather finally start opening up to me, asking me to help research Canter for a Toronto war memorial for Jewish vets. In the years since, unraveling Canter’s story has helped me understand my grandfather’s past — as well as his reluctance to speak about it — and opened a window into the often-overlooked contribution of Jewish-Canadian airmen in World War II.

My widowed grandfather remains relatively vibrant at age 97, with four children, nine grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren as his lasting legacy. While he points to Canter as an example of Jewish Canadians’ service, his own World War II ordeal remains a mystery. All I know for sure is that he was a navigator in the Lancaster and Vickers Wellington bombers, and he flew missions over Europe from his base in England between 1942 and 1944.

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Wilfred Canter.

My grandfather’s biography is almost a cliché of what has become known as the greatest generation: Born into poverty, he went off to war and then came back to marry his sweetheart. He had a family, and he started a clothing business in Toronto. After retiring, he spent his winters in Florida, playing golf and bridge and regaling his grandchildren with jokes and Yiddish sayings. But there was one chapter of his life that remained perpetually sealed: He would never tell us, or anyone else, what he endured during the war. “You don’t like talking about the war that much, do you?” I asked him during a 2011 summer visit to Toronto. “What’s there to talk about?” he replied. “A lot of guys went over, not a lot came back.”

When given the chance, my grandfather would talk about almost anything besides himself or deflect with a joke. “I didn’t do much,” he told me in 2015, in his typical modest fashion. “I fought in the battle of Piccadilly Circus, though. Have you heard of that one?” he said, chuckling. “That’s where you met all the girls.”

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Although two of his sons, nearly all his grandsons and a great-grandson have served in the military, the only advice my grandfather ever dispensed to us was: “Never volunteer” and “Keep your feet clean and dry.” But eventually he began to talk about Canter.

According to Canter’s military records, he embarked from Canada on Aug. 21, 1942, and arrived in Britain on Sept. 1. The vessel that carried him across the Atlantic was the Queen Elizabeth, then the largest passenger ship in the world. It was during this journey to war, on a luxury liner converted into a packed troop transport, that my grandfather and Canter met and bonded. “There were thousands of guys on that boat,” he told me, “and we did most of the talking while waiting in line for hours to get a meal.”

Canter and my grandfather were each born in 1921 and grew up in downtown Toronto, each graduating from high school before enlisting, earning their wings in training and heading off to battle. They exchanged letters throughout their time in combat. Canter invited my grandfather to the ceremony in London where he received his Distinguished Flying Medal, but my grandfather couldn’t go. His last letter to Canter, sent in 1944, was returned with a military stamp on the envelope noting “present location not known” and a handwritten note that read: “Missing.” By then, Canter had already been taken prisoner.

The paths they followed after the war diverged significantly. My grandfather, the youngest of seven children, returned home and never looked back. Canter eventually made it to Toronto, but he never reconnected with my grandfather, and he struggled to find his way after the war, I learned from his family. He had energy and drive, but he had trouble finding a job in which he could apply it. He worked for a while as a draftsman, but he must have longed to fly again, and when he heard, through word of mouth in the Jewish community, that there were aviation opportunities in the new state of Israel, he went.

In 1948, as Israel prepared to declare itself a sovereign nation, it sought foreign assistance to fight the Arab nations moving against it. Thousands of mostly Jewish volunteers from around the world with combat experience made their way to Israel — often in clandestine fashion, to avoid running into trouble with their own governments. Canter left behind a girlfriend in Toronto for the chance to fly again, I learned from Wayne Gershon, one of Canter’s nephews, who was born after Canter’s death. “I think it was personal for Wilf to double down and go to Israel,” he told me. “He recognized the cause. I don’t have the impression that he relished battle just for its own sake.”

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Canadian World War II veterans attending a memorial ceremony at the Holten Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, May 2015.

Canter arrived in Israel on Aug. 5, 1948, one of just five Jewish-Canadian World War II veteran pilots in a newly minted Air Force that had few aviators with any significant operational experience. Late on the night of Oct. 24, Canter and four other crewmen, two of them Canadian, took off in their rickety Douglas C-47 Dakota transport from Tel Aviv’s Sde Dov airport to deliver supplies to the isolated Negev outpost of Sdom, which was encircled by Egyptian forces. Just minutes after takeoff, the right engine began to overheat and spit out flames. Canter redirected for an emergency landing, but the engine exploded within sight of the airfield, breaking off a wing and sending the Dakota spiraling to the ground. It exploded on impact, killing everyone onboard, in one of the first fatal aerial transport accidents in Israel’s history. Canter was 27 when he died.

By that time, my grandfather was already a struggling young salesman and father in Toronto. He learned of Canter’s death only years later and didn’t delve into the details until enlisting my help to tell his friend’s story. “He had quite a life,” my grandfather recalled. “The funniest thing about this guy was that he was a crier. He had balls, but he cried at the drop of a hat.”

It’s impossible to gauge what World War II did to many of the veterans who served — particularly those like my grandfather who flew in bombers. About 45 percent of the flight personnel in Canada’s wartime Bomber Command perished — approximately 10,250 in all. Between March 1943 and February 1944, the period when my grandfather was deployed, members of crews that ran a full tour of 30 bombing operations had a grim 16 percent survival rate, according to the Bomber Command Museum of Canada. Unlike their American counterparts, the Canadians and the Royal Air Force flew their missions at night. Their aircraft had no belly gunners and were at the mercy of Luftwaffe fighters that attacked from below. Whenever they lifted off on a mission, they departed with the knowledge that this sortie could easily be their last.

“The Germans used to come up from the bottom, and boom, that was it,” my grandfather told me in a rare revelation. In addition to flying in daytime, American crews flew en masse, and “they had five or six gunners in each plane, and lots of firepower, so the Germans couldn’t get close to them,” he said. The Royal Air Force and Canadian forces, by contrast, “had a terrible time.”

Even before he opened up about Canter, my grandfather’s scant stories of the war revolved around other men’s exploits. He told me about his second cousin, Alfred Brenner, a Canadian pilot whose three-man crew met a convoy of 12 German merchant ships accompanied by five destroyers and took one of the freighters out with torpedoes before being shot down. Brenner’s bomber settled into the waves, and the men escaped on a dinghy. They were picked up after drifting for two days in the North Sea near the English coast. Brenner was honored with the Distinguished Flying Cross.

My grandfather also told me about his friend Somer James, with whom he went to synagogue services when they were teenagers. James was a pacifist who avoided the army because he abhorred violence. “So he went to the merchant marine instead, which was even worse,” my grandfather said with a laugh. James found himself on a ship in Italy loaded with high explosives and moored next to a munitions depot when German bombers attacked. With fires raging on the dock, he jumped ashore and wrestled the ship free from its moorings so it could move to safety. For his actions, James received a British Empire Medal and the Lloyd’s War Medal for Bravery at Sea. “He was the only one who got those two medals for one deed,” my grandfather said.

And then there was Canter. During his months in captivity, Canter kept a prisoner-of-war log in which he took notes, drew sketches and preserved mementos. The diary — which his nephew Wayne shared with me — contains no reference to the escape, nor does it chronicle his Jewish faith, details that might have proved fatal if discovered by Nazi troops.

Instead, he described the daily routines, the food they ate, barley and jam, and the locker-room conversations among the prisoners, or kriegies, as they called themselves. He listed the 102 books he read in captivity and the major events he witnessed, especially as the end of the war was approaching. “V2 rocket flew over the camp,” he wrote on April 4, 1945. “Plenty of excitement the last few days as our armies close in on this area.”

He wrote how the kriegies lived off the surrounding land, where they found “countless chicken, geese, turkeys, lambs and pigs.” He noted the dates on which he received parcels from the Red Cross and listed the diseases contracted in the camp. “I would be blessed to have been able to commiserate with my Uncle Wilfred if he had survived,” Wayne Gershon said. “I can only try to imagine the perspective of someone who lived a life as he did.”

Perhaps my grandfather’s stubborn compartmentalization of World War II is what helped him avoid the seductions of war that appear to have lured Canter back. My grandfather kept quiet and moved on to live a long, fulfilling life. Canter was seemingly sucked back to fight for Israel and ended up buried in a foreign land, thousands of miles from home.

One day in the summer of 2012, I decided to go visit him. The resting ground in Rehovot in central Israel is a typical Israeli military cemetery: rows upon rows of simple, uniform, rectangular plots covered by tiny manicured garden beds and headstones engraved with each soldier’s basic information. It was empty, and I found Canter’s grave site easily.

Against an eerie silence, I placed a small pebble on his headstone. “Zaidy says hi,” I said aloud.

I wondered if anyone else had paid a visit to his grave in the past 64 years. It made me question how many other anonymous men like him were out there — even in just this cemetery — who had lived short, dramatic lives, but left little behind.

In 2002, the Israeli government announced plans to build an official museum for the Jewish soldiers who served in World War II. But the museum has yet to open, mired in bureaucratic wrangling, as the few Jewish war veterans still alive continue to die off. And, as my grandfather has proved, not all the veterans want that part of their lives memorialized. When I told him that I had filled out his profile on the prospective museum’s website and that I hoped his story would one day be featured in its halls alongside Wilf Canter’s, he demurred, as usual.

“I’m just happy if they leave me alone,” he said.

Some 1.5 million Jewish soldiers fought for the Allies in World War II; more than 250,000 of them were killed, including some 450 Canadians. Most of their stories are lost to history, and my grandfather’s is probably going to join that long list. That’s the way he wants it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/magazine/canadian-jewish-veterans-world-war-ii.html

by Phantom Thu 09 May 2019, 8:12 am

Ottawa's William Little drove a floating tank in D-Day assault, wounded on Juno Beach

ANDREW DUFFY - May 9, 2019

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Lt.-Col. (Ret'd) William Little, of Ottawa, piloted a floating tank on D-Day. He was injured by a hand grenade on Juno Beach, but returned to the war a month later and won a Military Cross for valour in Holland.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottawas-william-little-drove-a-floating-tank-in-d-day-assault-wounded-on-juno-beach

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