Stephen J. Thorne

100 pictures of the 44th Legion National Youth Track and Field Championships: Part 1

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

The Legion National Youth Track and Field Championships took place for the 44th time in August after a two-year, pandemic-imposed hiatus.

Six-hundred-and-ninety teenaged athletes participated over three days of events, including 255 Royal Canadian Legion-sponsored participants who more than held their own against elite club and independent competition from across the country. Among 52 clubs and unattached athletes, RCL teams swept the Top 3 positions in the medal count and placed five in the Top 10.

With Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador not participating for another year due to COVID-related issues, British Columbia/Yukon led all comers with 20 gold and 43 medals overall, followed by Alberta-Northwest Territories (16/36) and Quebec (8/26). Manitoba/Northwest Ontario placed fifth in the team count with 10 medals; Nova Scotia/Nunavut was eighth with eight, half of them gold.

Legion-sponsored teams took 129 of 248 medals awarded at the championships, the only truly national competition for pre-university track-and-field athletes in the country.

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Remembering the first Canadian to die in the Second World War

STORY BY SHARON ADAMS

On Sept. 1, 1939, the passenger liner Athenia left Scotland bound for Montreal, two days before Britain declared war on Germany.

Athenia was carrying 1,418 passengers and crew, including 469 Canadians, mostly women and children, trying to get home before hostilities began. Among them was Hannah Baird of Verdun, Que., who went to Britain as a nanny, escorting two children travelling to join relatives, and took a job as a steward on Athenia to work her way back home.

But the Second World War began while Athenia was at sea. Britain declared war on Germany at 11 a.m. on Sept. 3. The Germans had stationed a score of U-boats around the British Isles and were ready to attack, which they did—just eight hours after war officially began

Athenia was the first British ship torpedoed by a U-boat in the conflict and Baird was the first Canadian civilian war casualty, seven days before the country entered the war.

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We want to help you understand that your hearing health matters as much as other aspect of your wellbeing. We’re offering up to $1500 off the purchase of a pair of hearing aids for Legion members and their family. Start loving your ears today and book your free hearing consultation!

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The myth of dying a glorious death at war

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

The letter out of 44 Casualty Clearing Station, British Expeditionary Force, France, is neatly written in vivid blue ink on a creased and wrinkled page of notebook paper, its edges stained deep red in an oddly patriotic, if not disturbing, rendering of time or maybe circumstance.

Written by the chaplain to the forces, Leonard T. Pearson, it’s dated July 10, 1917.

There’s no destination address recorded on the page, but the recipient was William John Paul of Burin, Nfld., a merchant and father of Private Reginald Paul.

Twenty-one-year-old Reginald had been a member of the storied Newfoundland Regiment. He was killed on the first day of battle at the Somme—July 1, 1916. A day venerated by Newfoundlanders.

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Canada’s Nursing Sisters of the First World War

STORY BY SHARON ADAMS

The Hall of Honour in the centre block on Parliament Hill was designed to take your breath away.

The soaring arches and vaulted ceilings draw the eye upward. Soft light from high windows imparts a warm glow to the limestone.

It feels like a space built for a high purpose. It is used for state occasions and formal parliamentary events.

Along the walls are commemorative plaques, reliefs and statues. The largest among them is the Nursing Sisters’ Memorial.

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Hamid Mir, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

Al-Qaida leader’s Kabul death highlights Taliban’s continuing terrorist ties

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

At 6:18 a.m. local time on July 31, 2022, a CIA drone launched two Hellfire missiles at the balcony of a house in Kabul’s former diplomatic enclave of Sherpur and killed the man who succeeded Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida leader.

In one fell swoop, the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, 71, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, erased any pretense that Afghanistan’s new Taliban regime was somehow better, more credible or deserving of legitimacy than the old one.

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Allies fight the weather, terrain and the Japanese in a battle for Pacific islands

STORY BY SHARON ADAMS

Many today may not realize it or remember, but North America was invaded during the Second World War.

Six months after the attack on the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Japanese set up shop in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, which stretch like a long tail from the state’s coast 1,800 kilometres southwest into the Pacific Ocean.

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