Nursing pioneer 

Story by Sharon Adams

When the First World War started, Major Margaret MacDonald of Bailey’s Brook, N.S., was already seasoned from serving overseas.

While working as a nurse during the construction of the Panama Canal in 1896, MacDonald contracted malaria. She served aboard a U.S. military ship during the Spanish-American War in 1898. And she was one of eight nurses, dressed in uniforms provided by the army, who cared for Canadian troops during the Boer War.

In 1906, she was appointed to the Canadian Army Medical Corps along with Lieutenant Georgina Pope. In 1911, she petitioned for a six-month leave to study the new British nursing service. On her return, she began working to reform the Canadian service.

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Space, deep-sea tourism coming
in 2021—if you’ve got the bucks

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

With a pandemic raging, governments urged wishful travellers to stay close to home in 2020. In 2021, new travel options are on the menu that promise to take a privileged few vacationers away from home and far beyond the surging COVID crowds.

Two companies—Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Canadian Elon Musk’s SpaceX—plan to fly paying passengers into space next year, while OceanGate Expeditions of Everett, Wa., will sail out of St. John’s, N.L., on six trips to the Titanic.

The space options vary. Promoting it as an “out-of-home luxury experience,” Virgin Galactic is offering suborbital trips (about 100 kilometres up) that last a few minutes in space. SpaceX plans orbital tours (more than 400 kilometres up) that will last days.

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November 6, 1990

CAF establishes a headquarters under Commodore Kenneth J. Summers in Manama, Bahrain, part of Canada’s contribution to the Persian Gulf War.

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Stuff of legend:
ingredients that make the Victoria Cross 

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

Everyone knows what a Victoria Cross recipient is made of. But what about the Victoria Cross itself?

Instituted by Queen Victoria at the end of the Crimean War, it has long been believed that the British Empire’s highest award for valour was originally made from bronze taken from Russian cannons captured at Sevastopol in 1855.

Now a British researcher and retired lieutenant-colonel has concluded that it is “highly implausible” the medals, awarded for exceptional gallantry in the presence of the enemy, ever came from Russian guns. Andrew Marriott served 30 years in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and is now a visiting researcher at Newcastle University in England.

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A gruelling rescue effort

Story by Sharon Adams

On Oct. 30, 1991, a Canadian Forces CC-130H Hercules transport aircraft left Greenland on a routine airlift of supplies to the isolated Canadian Forces Station Alert, an electronic listening post on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island in Canada’s High Arctic.

Everything—personnel, food, supplies, fuel—had to be airlifted into the station, situated 817 kilometres from the North Pole, far north of any settlement.

The flight was scheduled to arrive at the Alert airfield in the dark at 4:30 p.m. On board were a crew of five, 13 passengers and 3,400 litres of diesel fuel.

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October 27, 1918

Lieutenant-Colonel William Barker shoots down an enemy two-seater over France. Seriously wounded, he shoots down three more enemy aircraft before crash landing near Allied lines. He is awarded the Victoria Cross.

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Disaster aboard HMCS Kootenay

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

The worst peacetime disaster in Canadian naval history occurred 51 years ago this week when nine crew were killed and another 53 injured in an explosion and fire aboard HMCS Kootenay.

The engine-room accident on Oct. 23, 1969, marked the last time Canadian service personnel were buried overseas and it helped bring about sweeping changes to shipboard fire-prevention and firefighting systems.

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Rescue tugs to the rescue

Story by Sharon Adams

German submariners referred to the period from July to October 1940 as Die Glückliche Zeit, or the Happy Time, when their wolf packs sank more than 280 Allied ships.

It was not too happy for Convoy HX-77. Between Oct. 11 and 13, a wolf pack targeted its 42 cargo ships, picking off six vessels carrying 35,000 tonnes of supplies and war materiel to the United Kingdom.

At just after 10 p.m. in a gale on Oct. 11, the cargo ship Port Gisborne was hit by a torpedo from U-48 in the North Atlantic, about 180 kilometres off Ireland.

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October 20, 1671

Bachelors in New France are ordered to marry filles du roi (King’s Daughters)
—800 young French women who immigrated in 1663-73 in a program sponsored
by King Louis XIV—or else lose their hunting, fishing and fur-trade rights.

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