Category Archives: Legion Magazine

From the archives: Dead man appears to old comrade

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An item from the Legion Magazine.
Weekly Feature
Weekly Feature

The battlefield of St. Julien, Belgium, photographed in 1919 (O-4653/DND/LAC)

From the archives: Dead man appears to old comrade

STORY BY LEGION MAGAZINE

This story appeared in a June 1926 issue of The Legionary, the predecessor for Legion Magazine that celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The piece has been left mostly as it was originally published, with only minor copy edits to correct typos or glaring omissions.

“Hello, Jack!”

“My God, Tom, I buried you in France – thought you were dead!”

“Not me, Jack; this is me here.”

And Guard John Reid at the Jail Farm, Langstaff, Ont., walking into the refectory for duty at dinner hour, a few days ago renewed his wartime friendship with Thomas Armstrong, a comrade he has been mourning since the sad day following the battle of St. Julien in the fateful spring of 1915.

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The Briefing
The Briefing

One of 430 Lancasters built at Victory Aircraft in Malton, Ont., the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum’s 81-year-old Mk. X is one of only two of the bombers flying today. The other is in Britain. [Stephen J. Thorne/LM]

An armchair tour of Canada’s only airworthy Lancaster bomber, Part 2

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

For 50 hours each year, the skies above Mount Hope near Hamilton, Ont., play host to a time capsule unlike any other. Its true uniqueness lies not in its make or model but in its spirit—in what, fundamentally, it symbolizes.

Only one other—sited an entire ocean away in Lincolnshire, England—bears any resemblance, at least as far as the clouds are concerned. Together, they’re titans, transatlantic feats of engineering and the last two airworthy Lancaster bombers in the world.

Of these, however, just one is Canadian.

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Love behind enemy lines: An Anglo-Canadian couple’s D-day exploits

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An item from the Legion Magazine.
Weekly Feature
Weekly Feature

Sonia and Guy d’Artois. [Wikimedia]

Love behind enemy lines: An Anglo-Canadian couple’s D-day exploits

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

“Tell 14 the Queen’s terrace is wide,” said the BBC presenter over radio airwaves on June 1, 1944. To most listeners in occupied France, the strange statement would have meant little. To Guy d’Artois, a 27-year-old Canadian agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)—together with French Resistance fighters of the DITCHER circuit—the cryptic code signified the news they had been waiting for: D-Day would begin within the next 15 days.

There was no time to lose.

d’Artois’ duties, alongside the Maquis groups he led behind enemy lines, were to hamper German movements in advance of Operation Neptune. Whether sabotaging rail lines, cutting communications or ambushing convoys, it was his job to occupy the occupiers around Charolles and the wider Saône-et-Loire region of France while the Allied invasion proceeded in Normandy.

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Tales of Valour
The Briefing
The Briefing

The Lancaster bomber of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, one of only two airworthy Lancs in the world. [Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum]

An armchair tour of Canada’s only airworthy Lancaster bomber, Part 1

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

They call her Vera—and she sings.

Her voice may not carry through the sky like bluebirds, for bluebirds cannot roar. Her stature may seldom tower above the white cliffs of Dover, for her heart lies across an ocean. An English sweetheart she is not—although the late, great Vera Lynn did surely approve.

For a few months each year—a mere 50 hours in total—a very different icon leaves its hangar at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope near Hamilton, Ont., as the sound of its four Packard Merlin 224 engines churns the air. Capable of reaching speeds of 443 kilometres per hour, the beloved beast is a true sight to behold when it graces the heavens, its roughly 21-metre-long frame looming large amidst the clouds.

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Canvet Publications Ltd.
86 Aird Place |
Kanata, Ontario | K2L 0A1 | Canada |
1-844-602-5737 | 613-591-0116 | magazine@legion.ca

Vignettes from the life of a young woman in wartime Halifax

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An item from the Legion Magazine.
Weekly Feature
Weekly Feature

Navy personnel and local women at a dance in Halifax in 1941. [EA Bollinger/1975-305 1941 no. 269/Nova Scotia Archives]

Vignettes from the life of a young woman in wartime Halifax

STORY BY STEPHEN A. HARPER

My mother Ruth Pigott and her parents Olive and Louis lived in Halifax in the 1940s. It was a bustling, turbulent time for the picturesque old city, the population of which doubled from 1939 to 1944. Despite being a garrison town since its founding, the relationship between the citizens of Halifax and the navy was often strained during the Second World War. Ruth’s formative years were spent in this environment, which created unique challenges and engaging stories. Another war had started and Canada was to play a vital role. And Halifax was a major hub.

Ruth and her parents arrived in the city in 1940 from Prince Edward Island, where the family had eked out a living during the Great Depression. Life in Halifax was different. From their home at 42 North Street, Ruth could see convoys forming up in Bedford Basin to the north. She was shocked one morning to discover that all the ships had vanished, off to do their war work. Meanwhile, her new school was larger and busier than she had been used to. Outsiders seemed to be shunned. Ruth’s Halifax experience wasn’t starting well. Eventually, she attended the new Queen Elizabeth High School. That helped. By then, she felt more equal to her classmates.

Halifax had few social activities for the hordes of newly arrived military personnel. And legal alcohol wasn’t easily available. Young trainee sailors wandered the streets, sometimes getting into trouble. This further tarnished the navy’s reputation and solidified civic leaders’ determination to tighten restrictions. To their credit, navy brass responded. They organized events such as dances in the gym of HMCS Stadacona. And the Navy League of Canada was enlisted to help support the initiative.

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Tales of Valour
The Briefing
The Briefing

During the 1994 United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, Major-General Roméo Dallaire (right) and other peacekeepers pose with local children. [Corrine Dufka/courtesy Roméo Dallaire]

Roméo Dallaire at peace in a turbulent time

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Retired general Roméo Dallaire doesn’t pretend to have all the solutions, but he strives to ask the right questions. He sees a world of geopolitical strife and uncertainty; a world of inequity and social injustice; a world, fundamentally, in need of change.

The former Canadian senator has witnessed such things, such failures of humanity, not only through news coverage but before his very eyes. In 1994, while serving as force commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission to Rwanda, Dallaire was left without a sufficient mandate to intervene in a genocide that claimed some 800,000 lives. As UN bureaucracy and dubious decision-making played out behind desks, blue beret wearers on the ground remained all but powerless, relegated to the role of observers amid the devastation.

Despite the horrors that left him with post-traumatic stress, Dallaire maintains hope that people, as a collective, can transcend a proneness for conflict to achieve a better tomorrow. It’s why, in 2024, he published The Peace : A Warrior’s Journey with Jessica Dee Humphreys, a book that details his vision for the future .

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Canvet Publications Ltd.
86 Aird Place |
Kanata, Ontario | K2L 0A1 | Canada |
1-844-602-5737 | 613-591-0116 | magazine@legion.ca