Klondike Joe Boyle used some of his gold fortune to assemble Boyle’s Mounted Machine Gun Detachment, later to become the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Battery. (Wikipedia)

Klondike Joe and the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Battery

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

They called him Klondike Joe Boyle and, true to his name, he was an adventurer, an entrepreneur, a passionate Canadian and, by his own description, a fighting Irishman born in Toronto.

By times sailor, prizefighter, sourdough, spy and royal confidant, the son of Irish immigrants was among the first to employ large-scale mining techniques in the gold fields of Canada’s Yukon Territory.

No friends to the environment, Boyle and others swept in on the heels of the Klondike Gold Rush, replacing prospectors’ sluices and pans with enormous electric-powered dredges, taking millions of ounces of gold from the creeks and waterways while wreaking devastation on the virgin landscape.

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Lieutenant Harry Colebourn and Winnie, 1914. (Wikipedia)

When Harry met Winnie: The WW I story behind a classic children’s book

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

On Aug. 21, 1921, a one-year-old Christopher Robin Milne—son of British writer A.A. Milne—received a particularly special birthday present.

The teddy bear, gifted to him by his parents, became a beloved companion called Edward. Its name, however, was destined to change in 1924 when the boy, aged around four, saw the real thing at London Zoo with his father.

There, he met Winnie, a tame female black bear long accustomed to human contact since her earliest days in the Canadian wilderness. Inspired and enamoured, Christopher Robin rechristened his Teddy in her honour.

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The Russian Krivak II-class frigate Pytlivyy sits at anchor in Sevastopol Bay in 2009. An unnamed frigate of this type was the last to leave the occupied port of Sevastopol on July 15. (WIKIMEDIA)

Last of Russia’s Black Sea fleet leaves Crimean base

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

“Remember this day,” was the July 15, 2024, declaration from Ukrainian navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk. The last remaining warship of Russia’s vaunted Black Sea fleet left its base at the occupied Crimean port of Sevastopol, apparently ending a battered Russian navy presence in the region for the foreseeable future.

“From a pure maritime perspective, this is the last in a long list of humiliations suffered by the Black Sea Fleet since the 2022 invasion,” Tom Sharpe wrote for the London Telegraph.

With no navy to speak of, Ukrainian military have launched land-based missile and drone attacks, as well as sea drones, to great effect against maritime targets. Almost a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet—27 of 80 vessels, including a submarine—is believed to have been sunk or disabled since Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

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Sub-Lieutenant Hampton Gray following his graduation as a pilot at Kingston in September 1941.(CFB ESQUIMALT)

The Last Canadian Victoria Cross?

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

On Aug. 9, 1945, 27-year-old Lieutenant Robert (Hammy) Hampton Gray of Trail, B.C., piloting a British Royal Navy Corsair above Japanese waters, became Canada’s last Victoria Cross recipient—depending on one’s perspective.

Gray’s flight of eight fighters had been on a sortie near Onagawa Bay, Miyagi Prefecture, when he spied a cluster of enemy naval vessels. Among them was the Etorofu-class destroyer escort Amakusa, two minesweepers, a training ship and submarine chasers. Gray targeted the 1,000-ton Amakusa.

Under a maelstrom of flak and tracer fire, he descended to within 12 metres (40 feet) of the waves and pressed home the attack.

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