Fighting A War Near And Far From Home

This display features items on the war coming very close to home. U-boats sank ships off the east coast and within the confines of the St. Lawrence River. German saboteurs were dropped off on Canadian coastlines. Even with an ocean between Canada and the war, the war could still come very close indeed.

This map puts that into vivid display.

Here we have a depth charge, a killing tool for surface ships to use against u-boats.

This is a model of HMCS Swansea, a frigate that took part in the fight against the German threat in the Atlantic.

A key asset of the war for the Allies- the captured Enigma machine. Cryptologists were able to use this to decipher and read Nazi messages, a critical intelligence coup that helped win the war.

This dramatic painting is The Boarding Of The U-744, by Thomas Wood

Much further away, Canadian troops had been stationed at Hong Kong. On the same day that they struck at Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces launched attacks on other locations, including Hong Kong. The Battle of Hong Kong would be the first for Canadian soldiers in the war, ending in defeat. Survivors would endure hell as prisoners of war.

Hanging above is a recreated balloon bomb. The Japanese sent balloons up over the Pacific, with the expectation that they would descend on the far side, dropping the bags of explosives on North American targets.

The map included here shows places where they did go off, all in red.

Things were busy on the home front, where families had absent fathers and husbands, and where women stepped up to fill the void. Propaganda posters of the time are seen here.

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Furry Things

The first day of each month is a theme day for members of City Daily Photo. For December, that theme is Furry Things. See how others are interpreting the theme right here.

I start off with these two shots taken last year at the Christmas Market at Lansdowne Park, where dogs were regularly accompanying their humans on walks.

This little dog was inside the arena during the World Juniors hockey tournament last December, and was more interested in watching the game than paying attention to the photographer.

This was taken some Christmases back, but also at the Lansdowne Christmas Market. It popped up in my Facebook memories last year as an extra shot I had taken, so I decided to put it in here.

In the second part of April, I photographed this groundhog at the Garden of the Provinces and Territories.

That same month, this rabbit stayed still long enough for me to photograph at a house in the Glebe.

When I was at Dow's Lake during the Tulip Festival, I photographed this friendly dog.

During the Tulip Festival in May, passing through the north end of the Glebe early one morning, I noticed two rabbits in among the tulips in a front yard.

On another evening that month, while taking more shots of residential tulips in the Glebe, I saw this cat sitting outside a house and said hello.

I took a couple of shots of a dog in Major's Hill Park during the Tulip Festival, and held this shot for now.

I took this shot one morning in June. This sweetheart lives close to my place, and is periodically seen outside her home in warmer weather. Now with the cold weather having had settled in, she's inside for the winter.

The World Descends Into Another War

The third gallery at the War Museum concerns itself with the Second World War.

The Great Depression hit Canada hard, as it did elsewhere in the world. It would also give rise to the dictators who took power in Germany, Italy, and Japan.

The first artifact in this area is this Mercedes. This belonged to Hitler himself, and was captured by the Americans at the end of the war. It later ended up in Canadian hands.

When Hitler launched his attack on Poland, Canada swiftly became part of the war effort, declaring war on Nazi Germany.

An army of volunteers would have to be raised to send across the ocean to Europe. Here we have the typical uniform of a Canadian soldier.

The Nazi blitzkrieg swept western Europe, occupying neighbours and spreading tyranny. The fall of France left Britain, along with Commonwealth counterparts like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, seeming to be alone.

Canadians went to war as pilots in the Royal Canadian Air Force, fighting in the Battle of Britain and afterwards throughout the war.

Canada became a training ground for commonwealth pilots. Its vast spaces were ideal, and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was initiated. Franklin Roosevelt, who foresaw the dangers of the world long before his countrymen could accept it, called Canada the aerodrome of democracy. 

Every city and town on this map of the country housed a training base under that plan. It was a big operation.

The Canadian navy was in it from the beginning as part of the Battle of the Atlantic, facing the threat of German u-boats. They protected convoys of merchant ships bringing much needed supplies to Britain and elsewhere. 

This is the uniform of Joan Voller. She went to war as part of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service, nicknamed the Wrens. I still remember she would be here for many a Remembrance Day alongside her uniform, still bright and chipper, telling stories of her war service, and meeting her navy husband. We'll return to the series after the theme day.

An Ending To The Great War

 This temporary grave marker is from the Battle of Arras, part of the Hundred Days. Canadians fought in places like Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, the Canal du Nord, and ultimately at Mons, driving the Germans back in each battle. This was being repeated all along the line by the Allies during those days. It was just a matter of time. Following the war, permanent gravestones would be erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission, founded in the war. Today its work continues as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

At Cambrai, the momentum continued, another costly victory.

Soldiers collected souvenirs from surrendering Germans. Among them was this spiked helmet, marked with the date and time of the previous owner's surrender.

This is the ceremonial headdress of Francis Pegahmagabow, the most decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian history, considered one of the deadliest snipers in military history. Following the war, he took a leadership role not just among the Ojibwe, but among First Nations peoples in the country as a whole, working for equal treatment.

The last Canadian killed in the war was George Price, shot by a German minutes before the armistice.

Canadians ended the Hundred Days by liberating the Belgian town of Mons, which had been occupied from the beginning of the war. The townspeople met them with open arms.

The cost of the war was enormous. More than one in ten of those Canadians who went to serve died, and there were even more casualties. An entire generation had people they had known who would never come home. This was typical of many countries involved in that war.

Afterwards, grief was expressed in memorial windows in churches, or town cenotaphs. Gravestones would be placed overseas where Canadians had died in action. And two decades later, another horrible war would engulf the world.