A 268 Squadron composite reconnaissance photograph shows the landings by the British 231st Infantry Brigade at Anselles, France, on D-Day. Note the vehicles moving away on the road from the beach. (EYES OF THE INVASION)

Vivid: A Canadian pilot describes his bird’s-eye view of D-Day

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Tuesday, June 6, 1944, would be forever etched in the memory of Canadian Flight-Lieutenant Gordon Lloyd Gibson, a Mustang fighter pilot who flew operations over the Normandy beaches in support of history’s greatest seaborne invasion.

Attached to 268 Squadron, Royal Air Force, the 24-year-old Toronto native flew 37 tactical missions between May and August 1944, none more memorable than those of that stormy day in June when 160,000 Allied troops began what their supreme commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, called The Great Crusade.

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Lyman Carter shooting a wild hog. (Wikipedia)

Hog Hysteria: The U.S.-British confrontation over Canadian livestock

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

American farmer Lyman Cutlar had a pig problem.

In 1859, having settled on San Juan Island—land contested between the British Empire and the United States near Vancouver Island—he encountered swine eating his vegetables. These weren’t just any old hogs, however, but ones belonging to the ever-influential Hudson’s Bay Company, a British-founded institution that had long acted as the regional powerhouse.

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In “Sixth Company Battalion,” photographer Anique Jordan cast her mother and two aunts in the uniforms of War of 1812 British forces, for which Black Loyalists from Trinidad fought. The photograph is among 70 works by 52 women artists on exhibit at the Canadian War Museum until Jan. 5. (ANIQUE JORDAN/CWM)

War Museum exhibits more than two centuries of women’s war art

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Elise Findlay had just graduated with distinction and the Board of Governor’s Award from Alberta University of the Arts when an unprecedented opportunity presented itself. The former cabinet maker from Banff seized the day, applying for and becoming the Canadian War Museum’s first artist in residence.

Now she’s part of a sweeping exhibition featuring more than two centuries of Canadian women’s war art, her fabric-based interpretations of the tools her predecessors used and weapons and accoutrements of war displayed alongside works by the likes of Mary Riter Hamilton, Molly Lamb Bobak and Gertrude Kearns.

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Sonia and Guy d’Artois. (Wikipedia)

Love Behind Enemy Lines: An Anglo-Canadian Couple’s D-Day Exploits

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

“Tell fourteen the Queen’s terrace is wide,” said the BBC presenter over radio airwaves on June 1, 1944. To most listeners in occupied France, the strange statement would have meant little. To Guy d’Artois, a 27-year-old Canadian agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)—together with French resistance fighters of the DITCHER circuit—the cryptic code signified the news they had been waiting for: D-Day would begin within the next 15 days.

There was no time to lose.

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