Women to support women on gruelling Arctic trek

Story by Stephen J. Thorne
As vice-president of training, learning and development at Mackenzie Investments, Libby McCready spends her days in meetings, on the phone, corralling e-mails and delivering presentations.

If all goes as planned, in a month’s time she will be completing a 100-kilometre trek across Baffin Island in Nunavut with 24 other women, seven of them currently serving in Canada’s military. Four guides, two Inuit, a military doctor and a photographer will complete the lineup.

The expedition aims to raise $1 million for women’s programs supported by True Patriot Love, a charity devoted to bridging gaps in government funding for serving military, veterans and their families as well as backing related health research.

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Canadian peacekeepers arrive in Cyprus

The RCAF began delivering troops and supplies for the Canadian contingent of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cyprus on March 13, 1964. No one expected the Canadian mission would end 29 years later, or that Canada would continue to have a presence on the Mediterranean island to this day.

Trouble started almost immediately after Cyprus gained its independence from Britain in 1959. Both Greek and Turkish Cypriots wanted to unite with their mother countries. Civil war broke out in 1963, and Greece and Turkey both threatened to intervene to protect their ethnic communities.

Canadian troops were part of the UN peacekeeping force enforcing the ceasefire. Tensions continued even after the island was split into Turkish and Greek republics, with a UN-maintained buffer zone between.

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March 11, 1918

The first case of Spanish influenza is diagnosed in Kansas;
soldiers spread it across Canada and carry it to the front in Europe.

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