Warner Bros./Wikimedia

Runaway Bart Simpson balloons and rogue microwave ovens: NASA debunks most UFO reports

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

The world’s top space agency says American authorities have investigated about 800 reports of what it calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) in recent decades, but only a small number cannot be explained.

A NASA research panel has been looking into reported sightings of airborne phenomena “that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective.” It is expected to release a report in July.

Addressing the group’s first public meeting, which included a live broadcast online, panelist Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the U.S. Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, said authorities receive 50-100 UFO reports a month. Only two to five per cent are “possibly really anomalous.”

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Archives of Canada Library

The Trojan Horse of the 1700s

STORY BY PAIGE JASMINE GILMAR

George Etherington was a man who took his military service seriously, spending the mid- to late-1700s climbing the ranks of the British army. But Etherington had one weakness—and that was for sports.

Born in Delaware in 1733, Etherington rose to the rank of captain in 1756 while serving in the Seven Years’ War. So, when he took command of Fort Michilimackinac, at the confluence of lakes Huron and Michigan, in 1762, he carried the confidence of British military superiority with him—but that wouldn’t last for long.

Etherington and his garrison were responsible for salvaging the tenuous relationship between the Brits, French and the Ojibwe and Sauk tribes, but even for Etherington, that was a big feat.

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Stephen J. Thorne

Tough talk: Advocates mince no words delivering inclusion message to Legionnaires

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Addressing a longstanding bugaboo of one of the country’s most revered institutions head-on, a former regional president of The Royal Canadian Legion delivered a firm message to its grassroots membership in May.

Marion Fryday-Cook was Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command president from 2019 through 2021. She’s now a member of the Legion’s national committee on equity, diversity and inclusion. She didn’t mince words when presenting a report on the organization’s draft plan to address what some consider the Legion’s single-biggest challenge.

“We’re moving into a new world,” Fryday-Cook said before an all-white convention audience in Sydney, N.S. “Somebody once said, we’re all volunteers and the Legion sometimes tends to eat its own and go after its own.

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CAF Image Gallery

The master lens of Darrell Jason Priede

STORY BY PAIGE JASMINE GILMAR

“Like I say, only the good die young,” Roxanne Priede of Grand Forks, B.C., tells The Globe and Mail.

Roxanne is the mother of Master Corporal Darrell Jason Priede, a military photographer who stole the hearts of his family, friends and fellow military personnel with his quiet voice, fantastic listening skills and photographs that left the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Regional Command spellbound.

“[His photography] was definitely more than a job…his pictures were top-notch,” said Lieutenant Brian Owens, public affairs officer at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown to The Toronto Star.

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Wikimedia

Heavy ice forces new Russian icebreaker on long southerly voyage

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Russia’s newest icebreaker—an 82-metre, 4,000-ton naval vessel—has joined its Pacific fleet off the Kamchatka peninsula, just across the Bering Sea from Alaska.

But the route the Yevpatii Kolovrat navigated in mid-May has raised some eyebrows.

Instead of traversing Arctic waters from the St. Petersburg shipyard where it was built, the ship sailed out into the Atlantic and south to the Mediterranean Sea. It then passed through the Suez Canal and crossed the Indian Ocean into the Philippine Sea before it arrived at its home port in Petropavlovsk in the North Pacific. The route is easily twice as long as the northern passage to Kamchatka.

Why would Russia’s newest icebreaker not sail the Arctic waters for which it was intended? The answer: heavy ice.

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North America’s Unknown WW II Campaign

STORY BY PAIGE JASMINE GILMAR

Alaska’s Aleutian Islands have a violent beauty to them, crowned with steep cliffs, 2,000-metre-plus-high mountains and active volcanoes, all protected by the white horses of ocean waves. Cold and brooding, the islands stand in hushed resistance between life and death.

Many don’t know, however, that this archipelago to the southeast of the Bering Sea had a place in the memories of some Second World War veterans.

The Aleutian Islands Campaign took place from June 1942 to August 1943. It was a challenging campaign, not only because of the enemy force, but because of the geography. It was also the only action fought on North American soil during the war. Canada’s contribution was its army’s second largest in the Pacific theatre. One of its battles, the Battle of Attu, marked its 80th anniversary on May 11, but still, the campaign is considered a “Forgotten Battle.”

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THE RCMP GUIDON

STORY BY GRAHAM MUIR

There’s much to be written about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police guidon with the organization celebrating its 150th anniversary. This year, the force will consecrate, present and parade a new regimental colour, and lay up its old guidon.

As such, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the RCMP’s storied past, particularly to edify the many Canadians who aren’t aware of the force’s service abroad to Crown and country.

The history told through honours received and carried on the force’s guidon is exclusive to its actions in theatres of war. The RCMP’s extraordinary contributions to international peace operations and United Nations peacekeeping is not included, though that’s not to say it doesn’t matter—rather that it’s not war per se. Anyone who has offered themselves in the service of peace during internecine civil strife and violence knows better.

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