9 must-watch movies featuring Canada at war

STORY BY LEGION MAGAZINE

Have you ever watched a war movie and thought, “when are they going to mention Canada?” It’s rare that the great white north gets anything more than a nod in cinematic depictions of warfare, but these nine movies break the mould and let Canada take centre stage.

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On June 24, 1940, HMS Emerald set sail for Canada with British gold and securities worth millions of pounds. [Imperial War Museums]

Ted Barris on WW II’s Operation Fish

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

“It’s a stunning story that has sort of been lost to time,” said Canadian author and journalist Ted Barris on WW II’s stranger-than-fiction Operation Fish.

That tale, recounted in the bestselling author’s 2023 book Battle of the Atlantic: Gauntlet to Victory, involved a bold yet desperate gamble to safeguard Britain’s gold in the event of a Nazi invasion—by shipping the country’s entire reserves to Canada.

Despite remaining little-known today, Barris believes that the mission’s importance, with all its immense perils, can’t be overstated. “We often think of the Second World War as being a six-year-long siege,” he said. “Well, there were pivot points along the way where had they gone differently, the war would have been much longer and might not have ended up the way it did. One of those pivot points was Operation Fish.”

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• Historian Karl James on the Australian-Canadian wartime bond
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