Canadian pigeon carriers give the birds water in captured trenches on Hill 70 in August 1917. [DND/LAC/O-1828]

Winged victory: How a wonder of nature helped win the Second World War

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

They served bravely in the Second World War on secret flying missions deep inside Nazi-occupied Europe.

Thousands perished. Others made it home safely to Britain amid extraordinary feats of endurance and daring.

None understood the high stakes of their wartime service. After all, they were pigeons— small, stoic birds conscripted into the war to carry out vital tasks that no human ever could.

During the raid on Dieppe on Aug. 19, 1942, a pigeon named Beach Comber was carried ashore by Canadian soldiers, then released. Dodging machine-gun fire, the bird flew back across the English Channel carrying a message attached to its leg: the first confirmation for authorities in England that Allied troops had landed in France.

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Jim Hutton, co-founder of Veterans with Cancer. [Veterans with Cancer]

Veterans with Cancer co-founder Jim Hutton on carcinogenic exposure in the CAF

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Retired commander Jim Hutton recalls the mess deck where he relaxed aboard HMCS Assiniboine. Then an ordinary seaman serving in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Cold War, he was well prepared for peril—but not for what loomed above his berth.

There, hanging low where he rested off duty, were “steam pipes covered with lagging. The lagging was all asbestos.”

It was an era before FaceTime, Hutton recounts, when writing letters was still in vogue. “I remember putting my pen and pencils into the lagging to hold them because it was a great place for them to be. You could also throw your webbing over that, and all you could see was dust coming down.”

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Canadian soldiers are dispatched to Montreal during the 1970 October Crisis. [Frank Prazak/LAC/4118269]

October Crisis: Canadians are tested again by threats both domestic and foreign

STORY BY RICHARD FOOT

The prime minister’s words, delivered in a televised address on Oct. 16, 1970, were chilling:

“The governments of Canada and of Quebec have been told by groups of self-styled revolutionaries,” said Pierre Trudeau with icy reserve, “that they intend to murder in cold blood two innocent men unless their demands are met.”

A week earlier, British Trade Commissioner James Cross, and Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte had been abducted by the Front de Libération du Quebec (FLQ), a group of anti-anglophone militants who, for years, had been terrorizing Quebecers with bombings and robberies. Now the FLQ was vowing to execute two high-profile hostages unless its demands—including the release of dozens of FLQ members from prison—were met.

At the request of the Quebec government, Trudeau invoked the controversial War Measures Act, suspending civil liberties in the province, ushering in mass arrests by the police and sending the army into the streets of both Montreal and Ottawa.

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A portrait of Francis (Mike) Kendall from his Special Operations Executive personnel file. [gwulo.com]

Author Allan Bartley on the Hong Kong exploits of Canadian WW II spy Mike Kendall

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Francis (Mike) Kendall was many things: flawed yet formidable, complicated yet courageous and, perhaps most strikingly, forgotten.

A resident of Hong Kong prior to the Dec. 8-25, 1941, battle, the Canadian civilian was nevertheless drawn into a clandestine war against Japan after its forces attacked. There, as the Allied garrison attempted—ultimately in vain—to stem the enemy tide, Kendall helped organize the escape of 75 key people out of the doomed British colony and into unconquered China.

His exploits continued with Operation Oblivion—a secret mission to infiltrate Japanese-occupied Hong Kong alongside a group of Chinese-Canadians. Despite the absence of official military credentials, Kendall found himself at the centre of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) effort.

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