by Gwynne Dyer
Members of 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles return from the Battle of Amiens on a tank. (photo insert 9)
Mackenzie King was a dumpy, fussy bachelor, communing regularly with his dear, dead mother and other denizens of the spirit world. (photo insert 10)
Sutherland Brown, Special Reconnaissance. In the Upper Ausable Valley, east of Lake Placid, planning to invade the United States. (photo insert 11)
Mackenzie King inspecting guard of honour from the Régiment de la Chaudière: “I never dreamed that the day would come when … it should be my lot to be the one to lead this Dominion of Canada into a great war.” (photo insert 12)
The Malton aircraft factory in Toronto (originally the National Steel Car Company, until C.D. Howe took it over and reorganized it as Victory Aircraft), which built Avro Lancaster bombers. (photo insert 13)
“I’ve been in a permanent state of exhilaration since March 8.… I don’t know where it’s going to land me, but it’s damned good while it lasts.” Frank Pickersgill, January 1943. (photo insert 14)
Survivors of the HMCS Clayoquot, torpedoed Christmas Eve 1944. (photo insert 15)
Carriers in soft, flooded ground, Breskens Pocket: “So it was a slow, painful, bloody, muddy battle, and it wasn’t helped by the fact we were short of reinforcements.” Major-General Dan Spry, October 1944. (photo insert 16)
HMCS Summerside in heavy seas. (photo insert 17)
Sherman tanks of Lord Strathcona’s Horse make their way north from the Pintail Bridge over the Imjin River, Korea. (photo insert 18)
CF-101 Starfighter in 1977 with Hohenzollern Castle in the background. In July 1959 the government announced that the RCAF in Europe would be re-equipped with CF-104 Starfighters, whose sole mission would be nuclear strikes into Eastern Europe. (photo insert 19)
President Dwight Eisenhower meets Prime Minister Diefenbaker and Minister of Foreign Affairs Howard Green, 1960. (photo insert 20)
By the end of 1962 the Bomarcs were all fully operational in their Canadian launching sites—except, of course, for the nuclear warheads without which they were about as useful as the tail fins on a ’62 Chevy. (photo insert 21)
Canadian soldiers on NATO manoeuvres, 1984: at least 90 percent of Canada’s soldiers and an even higher proportion of its military spending were always devoted to the purposes of its Cold War alliances, NATO and NORAD. (photo insert 22)
PHOTO PERMISSIONS
1 Wounded Canadians after Paardeberg
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Credit: Reinhold Thiele/C-006097
2 Soldiers leave for War, 1915
Source: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 727
3 B Company, Newfoundland Regiment, in front line, Suvla Bay, 1915
Source: The Rooms Archives, St. John’s
4 The enthusiasm of the early days was long gone.…
Source: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 816
5 Talbot M. Papineau, April 1916.
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Talbot Mercer Papineau fonds/C-013222
6 Sir Robert Borden chats with a wounded man …
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Department of National Defence fonds/PA-000880
7 How did people in the West feel about conscription?
Source: Library and Archives Canada/ The Toronto world [microform] – June 6, 1917– AMICUS 8693733 – page 6.
8 Lester B. Pearson, spring 1918
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Duncan Cameron fonds/PA-110824
9 Members of 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles …
Source: CWM 19930012-528; George Metcalf Archival Collection © Canadian War Museum
10 Mackenzie King was a dumpy, fussy bachelor …
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Laurier House collection/C-080345
11 Sutherland Brown, Special Reconnaissance
Source: Department of National Defence, PMR 85 151
12 Mackenzie King inspecting guard of honour …
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Credit: Capt. Laurie A. Audrain/Dept. of National Defence fonds/PA-152440
13 The Malton aircraft factory in Toronto
Source: Avro Lancaster 11736-6 McDonnell Douglas Canada, Neg MDCAN 11736-6
14 “I’ve been in a permanent state of exhilaration since March 8 …”
Source: Public Archives: C 130882
15 Survivors of the H.M.C.S. Clayoquot
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Credit: Ernest Campbell/Dept. of National Defence fonds/PA-141316
16 Carriers in soft, flooded ground, Breskens Pocket
Source: Lt. Grant/DND, Public Archives Canada PA 131252
17 HMCS Summerside in heavy seas
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Credit: Gilbert Alexander Milne/Dept. of National Defence fonds/PA-115481
18 Sherman tanks of Lord Strathcona’s Horse …
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Credit: Paul E. Tomelin/Dept. of National Defence fonds/PA-115496
19 CF-101 Starfighter in 1977 …
Source: Public Archives of Canada PCN77-510, photographer M/Cpl Knox
20 President Dwight Eisenhower meets Prime Minister Diefenbaker and Minister of Foreign Affairs Howard Green, 1960.
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Department of External Affairs fonds/PA-122743 © Government of Canada. Reproduced with the permission of Library and Archives Canada (2014).
21 By the end of 1962 the Bomarcs were all fully operational …
Source: DND/John Sherman
22 Canadian soldiers on NATO manoeuvres, 1984
Source: Kent Nason
GWYNNE DYER has served in the Canadian, British and American navies. He holds a Ph.D. in war studies from the University of London, has taught at Sandhurst and served on the board of governors of Canada’s Royal Military College. Dyer writes a syndicated column that appears in more than 175 newspapers around the world.