Korean War

A reminder to members of City Daily Photo: the theme for the beginning of the year is your favourite shots of this year.

It was time to switch out my header image for something fitting for winter. This one was taken last winter from a platform at the start of the Alexandra Bridge, looking towards Parliament Hill over the Ottawa River.

The Cold War was a very different kind of conflict from what had become before, with the threat of nuclear war hanging over the world, and a series of proxy wars being fought around the world. 

Another early element of the time was the Berlin Airlift and the formation of NATO.

Lester Pearson was the foreign minister at the time, and took part in the talks that led to NATO.

The Korean War broke out at this time, as the communist North Korea sought to take South Korea, backed by China and the Soviet Union. 

Western countries, including Canada, would take part in the war.

Ted Zuber was one of the soldiers who fought in Korea, and his memories became the basis of a series of dramatic paintings. This is Day Break- Gulf Of Korea, depicting a Canadian destroyer firing at enemy trains on the coastal railway.

Here we have the M3 Half Track, a transport and mobile command post of the war.

Another painting by Zuber: Freeze depicts Canadian soldiers on patrol in no man's land halting in the light of an enemy flare.

Commentary by Zuber himself carries the wisdom of someone who'd been there and seen it all happen.

Kap'yong was the site of a major battle of the war, with a model of the mountainous area below in the display case, and another Zuber painting above. Holding At Kap'yong is a vivid work.

Beneath it, a quote that speaks to the ferocity of the battle itself.

In the end, the Korean War ended not in peace, but in armistice. Tensions still persist to this day, with opposing forces on either side of a no man's land, and a lunatic running North Korea, dreaming of uniting the peninsula under his iron fist.