December 1946: A season of hope

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

Seventy-five years ago, the lights of Christmas 1946 twinkled and danced across Canada and throughout the Western world as they had for no other Yuletide celebration in what must have seemed, to many, an eternity.

Loved ones, families and friends had a lot to celebrate. The war was over, with any luck the boys were home, and 8.2 million babies had already started arriving in what would become known as the postwar baby boom. It lasted two decades.

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Our man in Angola

Story by Sharon Adams

Angola, a country of some 32 million people along the southwest coast of Africa, endured centuries as a colony of Portugal followed by long years of war to gain independence, then long years of civil war.

At the end of the 1980s, the country was politically divided; the government was supported by the Soviet Union, assisted by Cuban forces, but UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) controlled large swaths of the country, with aid from South Africa and the United States.

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Hirohito backed U.S. war months before Pearl Harbor attack, says aide’s diary

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

Japanese Emperor Hirohito was long depicted as a naïve pacifist who reluctantly acceded to the wishes of his hawkish military leaders.

But the newly released diaries of one of his closest aides suggest the emperor posthumously known as Shōwa thought war with the West was inevitable and was preparing for it earnestly two months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

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The birth of the Maple Leaf

Story by Sharon Adams

On Dec. 15, 1964, the bitter argument over the new Canadian flag came to an end when closure was invoked to shut down the debate in Parliament.

Two months later, the new Maple Leaf flag became the official Canadian national flag, replacing the Union Jack—officially known as the Royal Union Flag—and the Canadian Red Ensign.

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