Canadian Master Bombardier Clint Godsoe (right) of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team patrols the province on Aug. 26, 2008, on the way to deliver donated school supplies to a local school. [ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office/Wikipedia]

Canada lost the war in Afghanistan: Top diplomat Ben Rowswell speaks out

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT​​​​​​​

Ben Rowswell remembers the sinking feeling he had flying out of Kandahar in the summer of 2010. As the brown earth of southern Afghanistan receded below him, the despair inside him grew.

Rowswell had spent the previous two years serving at the highest civilian levels of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, first as deputy ambassador in Kabul, then as the Representative of Canada in Kandahar (known as the RoCK), overseeing a NATO Provincial Reconstruction Team, from 2009 onward.

He led a team of about 80 civilians building infrastructure, such as schools and irrigation projects, and providing other support, including training for security and governance, to the people and local authorities of Kandahar province. Their work, alongside the combat and security efforts of the Canadian battle group, was the cornerstone of Canada’s mission to “stabilize” the Kandahar region and win the counter-insurgency war there.

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Naval Commander James Campbell Clouston. [Courtesy Clouston family via Brian Jeffery Street]

Biographer Brian Jeffrey Street on the Canadian hero of Dunkirk, Part 1

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

“He’s been with me for a long time,” said biographer Brian Jeffrey Street of the largely forgotten Canadian war hero he has chronicled for decades. Naval Commander James Campbell Clouston’s efforts during the Dunkirk evacuations were vital to its success.

From May 26 to June 4, 1940, as German forces closed in on the French port and dominated the skies above, the British Royal Navy, alongside a fleet of civilian vessels, ferried more than 338,000 beleaguered Allied troops across the English Channel. The retreat from continental Europe was an undeniable defeat that precipitated the fall of France, but the evacuation itself—code-named Operation Dynamo—would epitomize British pluck and determination to many at home, despite the debacle.

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