Treachery on Anticosti Island

Story by Sharon Adams

The submarine attacks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence during the Second World War were the stuff of nightmares. How much worse would it have been if Germany had established a toehold off the coast of Quebec?

That may be just what they tried to do in 1937 in an attempt to buy Anticosti Island, a stretch of real estate 200 kilometres long and 50 wide, situated in the mouth of the St. Lawrence about 70 kilometres north of the Gaspé Peninsula.

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Gassed up: The juice that fuelled
victory in the Battle of Britain

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

Well before it entered the Second World War in December 1941, the United States invested heavily in the Allied cause by instituting the US$50.1-billion Lend-Lease Act, providing food and war materiel to Britain and other friendly nations.

Worth nearly US$600 billion in today’s currency, the measures under what was formally known as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States lasted the entire war and helped turn the tide of battle both in Europe and the Pacific.

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August 2, 1990

Saddam Hussein invades an unsuspecting Kuwait during the night of Aug. 1-2, 1990, President George H.W. Bush immediately begins to assemble a coalition including Canada to back up United Nations demands for an Iraqi withdrawal.

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Remembering the chaos of liberated Europe

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

Pierre Gauthier landed on D-Day with his Régiment de la Chaudière and fought through France, Belgium and into the Netherlands before a second wound ended his war.

His regiment lost 58 men killed on June 6, 1944, and 248 before the fighting ended 11 months later, but among the most unsettling images that remain burned in the veteran’s mind are those of the people they had liberated turning on each other and on those who had defeated them four or five years earlier.

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The fighting after Hill 70

Story by Sharon Adams

The Battle for Hill 70 was an important victory for the Canadian Corps in August 1917, though it did not achieve its ultimate objective.

The Canadians had been ordered to capture the German stronghold at Lens, a French coal-mining centre.

But first, Hill 70 had to be taken. Taking the high ground, noted Brigadier-General Percy Radcliffe, would make “the enemy’s position in [Lens] untenable, and [force] him to evacuate it.” It also would take out guns that would otherwise target Canadians from above as they attacked the city.

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July 24, 1927

The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing is inaugurated in Ypres, Belgium.

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