Members of the CAF engineering training element as part of Operation UNIFIER in Poland on June 30, 2025. [Canadian Armed Forces Imagery Technician]

Answering the call: Has the time come for mandatory national service?

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

We live in a dangerous new world, with major conflicts in Europe and Asia, with NATO under strain from within, with Canada under threat from its once-trusted American ally and, in response, with Ottawa embarking on the largest military rebuilding effort since the 1950s.
Amid this ominous milieu, should Canada adopt mandatory national service?

Numerous countries—including several NATO members in Scandinavia and the Baltic, as well as Greece and Turkey—require citizens to undertake a period of national service, often with a military component.

READ MORE

Latest Stories

• Care over profits: VAC’s privately contracted rehab program under review
• Badge of remembrance: The 1936 pilgrimage to Vimy
• Meeting veterans’ care needs at home

In her new book The Taking of Vimy Ridge, historian Carla-Jean Stokes explores the First World War photography of William Ivor Castle. [Wilfrid Laurier University Press]

Historian Carla-Jean Stokes on the man who photographed Vimy Ridge

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

The camera never lies, or so the saying goes. The reality, however, is in the eye of the beholder.

In the 1860s, U.S. Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, renowned for capturing scenes of carnage and despair, was hailed—alongside his team—as a pioneer of the medium. Yet some of his depictions were served with a side of deception when battlefield props, and even bodies, were shifted and staged.

With advances in technology came improved methods to manipulate, applied anew following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. When pictures could speak a thousand words, not to mention win hearts and minds, military authorities weren’t above sanctioning subterfuge in the name of propaganda.

READ MORE

More from The Briefing

• WW II’s HMCS Sackville to be formally recommissioned into the RCN
• Afghanistan veteran William MacDonald on being considered for the Canadian Victoria Cross
• Historian Craig Baird talks Star Trek’s James Doohan and Juno Beach

Member Benefit Partner

Learn More