Resurrecting the memory of a WW II pilot

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

For years, it was my favourite photograph in the rather extensive album my father assembled chronicling his time overseas as a medical officer with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. I recently went back to it, this time conducting a more general search. It was not long before I found him, I believe: Flying Officer William Smith Johnston, a Mosquito pilot from Renfrew, Ont., 90 kilometres west of Ottawa.

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Stopping the panzers

Story by Marc Milner

Canada’s role following D-Day was vital to the success of Operation Overlord. The problem with the well-known story of Canada’s role in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings in France in June 1944, is not what it says, but what it leaves out—just about everything that matters.

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June 6, 1944

Some 14,500 Canadians invade the beach code-named Juno, marking the beginning of the Allied invasion of Normandy in France.

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Two pictures, a thousand stories
and millions of lives

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. These two pictures spawned a thousand stories and to this day, some 70 years later, they speak in profound reflection to two triumphs and the prices paid.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal and Soviet Flag over the Reichstag by Yevgeny Khaldei are two of the most iconic photographs of the Second World War.

But their genesis and their evolution in the archive of immortal photographs have taken a long and circuitous route through history.

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The short heroic life of Buzz Beurling

Story by Don Gillmor

George (Buzz) Beurling was credited with 31½ “kills” in the Second World War, more than any other Canadian pilot, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross and two Distinguished Flying Medals. He was a gifted pilot, a superb marksman and fearless in battle. He died young, at 26. These qualities are usually enough to create a mythic figure, but Beurling failed to capture the public imagination the way First World War ace Billy Bishop did, and he wasn’t beloved by fellow pilots or his superior officers.

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May 30, 1814

The British are ambushed and defeated in a skirmish at Sandy Creek, N.Y.

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