King Charles III waves to the crowd as he and Queen Camilla depart the National War Memorial after placing a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier the day before the 25th anniversary ceremonies.[Stephen J. Thorne/Legion Magazine]

Ceremony marks 25th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

A quarter century ago, an unidentified Canadian soldier killed at the seminal First World War Battle of Vimy Ridge was ceremonially exhumed from his grave 8.5 kilometres away in Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery and brought home to Canada.

Vimy, because it was here, in France in April 1917, that all four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together for the first time, claiming—under unprecedented Canadian leadership—a victory that would propel the country to its rightful place in the war, and the world. Brought home, because Canadians—indeed, all secure, free-living people—need reminding of what it took, and still takes, to keep them secure and free.

More than 18,000 of the over 66,000 Canadians killed in the Great War were never identified, their names listed on the Vimy Memorial (11,285) and the Menin Gate in Belgium (6,940). This soldier was destined to represent them all and the 27,000 who remain unidentified from the Second World War, 16 from Korea and undetermined others from the Boer War and other conflicts.

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Mandy Shintani admires a samurai sword at the Nikkei National Museum.

“Samurai in Our Closet”: New podcast highlights Japanese-Canadian WW II service and civilian internment

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Mandy Shintani remembers the samurai in her family closet.

Just a child at the time, the third-generation Japanese-Canadian—or Sansei—had little understanding of where, exactly, the sword came from and why it was there.

It belonged to her father, that much she knew, but the reason it stayed hidden away and how it had come into his possession in the first place remained unanswered.

“When I was a kid,” explained Shintani, “I didn’t even know he’d been interned,” referring to Canada’s racially motivated policies of the Second World War where more than 22,000 Japanese-Canadians were forcibly removed from the West Coast, then incarcerated after Japan launched the Dec. 7, 1941, assault on Pearl Harbor.

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A young patient was among those wounded in a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian children’s hospital in Kyiv on July 8, 2024. Two people were killed and at least 16 wounded in the strike on Okhmatdyt Hospital.[ZelenskyyUa/X]

Wartime attacks on health-care workers and facilities on steep rise

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Attacks on clinics, hospitals and health-care workers in conflict zones numbered more than 3,600 in 2024, a 62 per cent increase in two years, says a new report.

More than a third of the attacks targeted Gaza or the West Bank; hundreds more were recorded in Ukraine, Lebanon, Myanmar and Sudan.

The report “Epidemic of Violence: Violence Against Health Care in Conflict 2024,” by the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, says the attacks consisted of air, missile and drone strikes; shelling; tank fire; shootings; arson; the looting and takeover of health facilities; and the arrest and detention of health workers.

“By far the largest number of attacks on health care—more than 1,300—took place in Gaza and the West Bank, far more than we have ever reported in one conflict in one year, including more than double the number of health workers killed,” wrote coalition chair Len Rubenstein.

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Flying Officer Donald Galloway Watt McKie was returning from a mission when his, and another plane were shot down by U.K. friendly fire. He did not survive. [McKie family]

Remembering Canadian downed by U.K. friendly fire tragedy in WW II

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Craig McKie of Fraser Valley, B.C., never met his father.

He was just two months old on May 29, 1944, when Flying Officer Donald Galloway Watt McKie of Toronto, piloting the Wellington bomber LN443, lost his life, along with all five other crew members, following a friendly fire incident near the rural English village of Hazelbury Bryan in Dorset.

The absence the tragedy left never went away. It was “always there,” recalls Craig. There was “always a missing chair.”

As for many families who lost fathers, brothers and sons, the McKie’s never really got over it.

The lost became internalized and its ripple felt for generations, including by people who didn’t even meet him. Craig’s daughter Catriana was one of them.

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