First people to get gassed in war, and they just stood there and took it until their allies could get to safety...took vimy ridge in 12 hours after everyone else failed
@@adamdunn5661 My favourite Canadian war story was from my tour in the former Yugoslavia and the Medak pocket. Not as long as Ortona, but forgotten just the same. Even on my tour in Afghanistan, we did those guys proud, at least we tried too. As far as I’m concerned, we won the First World War, the last 100 days prove it.
We most certainly performed with amazing results at Vimy Ridge and The Somme, where miners, forestry workers etc. from Canada saved us all from speaking German today! A great many came from the mining town I was born and raised in. And we had LOTS of trees for ship building etc.! We have an amazing war history that has been mostly ignored by military historians and seldom taught these days. Thankfully it was standard curriculum when I was in school, and I’m thankful. 🇨🇦🖖🏻🇨🇦
There’s a huge installation not far from my home that was a German OPW camp during WW2. It was a home for severely mentally handicapped individuals when a nursing friend who worked there took me on a tour. Imagine Auschwitz in southeastern Ontario! It was amazing to see. It was a huge gated place with hundreds of long single storey buildings. The inhabitants were different, but those German POW’s lived a much better life and were treated far better than any race their Nazis captured during the war. So much history hidden away! The place was called Prince Edward Heights. 🇨🇦🖖🏻🇨🇦
When I feel I'm losing brain cells from other reactors to Canada I watch your channel to listen to someone who genuinely has an interest in the topic - thank you. I love Simon Whistler/Top Tenz and his beyond speedy delivery and sarcasm. Ask an American about Canada's contribution to the Manhattan Project - non-existent.
I saw my grandfather at timestamp 4:07!!!! The left hand column with his skis under his arm.. he smiles.. The surprise has tears welling up. Love your work, Mert. Stay sweet
The plane attack on Rommel during The Battle of Normandy. A Canadian reconnaissance pilot in a P51 spotted him. He called a Canadian Spitfire and Rommel was out of the war.
My dad was in an RCAF Mosquito pathfinder sqdn. Find the sites for the big bombers and pave the way for their missions. I had three friends who were nuclear physicists and know Candu reactors were sold to many nations. One said in the early 50's Jimmy Carter came to Chalk River to help prevent a meltdown at a nuclear reactor. He wasn't just a peanut farmer!
A couple things the video did not mention. One, RCAF was instrumental in preventing Hitler from taking over Europe in the Battle of Britain flying Spitfires, Hurricanes (also Canadian invented by Elsie MacGill) and Mosquitos turning the tide of the War (my fiather was one of them in Squadron 1). They were outnumbered by Luftwaffe 10:1. Two, CAMP X located in Oshawa Ontario east of Toronto was a Spy Training school that included Sir William Stephenson (Man called Intrepid) and Sir Ian Fleming (author of James Bond) relaying top-secret messages from Washington, Ottawa, and New York to Bletchley Park in England under Churchill.
Elsie MacGill most certainly did not invent the Hawker Hurricane. There is a heritage Canada minute for her which you can find and watch yourself here on You Tube. She was credited as a chief engineer of a manufacturing facility for these aircraft. The heritage minute does claim that she was the world's first female aeronautical engineer ua-cam.com/video/stnMHGw8qkQ/v-deo.html
Never mentioned, are the Cree Code Talkers who handled communications in many theatres of war, most of them are completely unknown, as they were sworn to secrecy and honoured it. The American "wind talkers" carried out a similar role, but according to various accounts the original "graduates" of the Cree program were immediately lent to the US Navy to handle communications in the Pacific, who at the time didn't have a program up and running yet, later they worked in Europe. As part of the program they had to develop a whole new lexicon for everything military - hardware, munitions, vehicles etc. Despite various exemptions, 1st nations, Metis and Inuit served in various military roles, but with Cree being widely spoken, it was the language of choice for the Code Talker program. The Axis forces never came close to "cracking it"
Canadians are very proud of our first nations people who served and have been recognised and honored here, in Canada. As an aside, the main character in the Windtalkers is a first nations Canadian actor who did a great performance in the movie...
It doesn't even get talked about in Canada even, but my grandfather served with the RCAF in WWII in Burma (now Myanmar) as an aircraft maintenance engineer and was an original member of the 435 Chinthe transport and rescue squadron which is still exists and is based out of Winnipeg. A lot of Canadians don't even know that Canadians were also heavily involved with fighting in Southeast Asia against the Japanese.
You’re 100% correct. Canada is not even mentioned. It is such a sad thing when the soldiers who came home DID NOT ever forget what happened during the war for the rest of their lives. My father is one of those men. A bomber mechanic posted in Yorkshire for the duration of the war (from the age of 19) he never forgot which of his friends left at night and if he would see them the next morning. It got worse and he became a multiple stroke victim and it became more “real” to him. 😢
0ne of my uncles died at Dieppe, another one was captured. He almost starved and had to endure appendix surgery performed without anaesthesia with a dull knife. He survived but suffered from war injuries and mental anguish
That was so difficult for your family. My heart goes out to your family. Too many Canadian military men and women lost and challenged with physically/emotionally injuries. That generation and the children of the next generation were and still are affected by both WWs and the Great Depression.
I've seen that video before, and always enjoy watching that. Even some of the info in that video isn't taught in Canadian school! Sad. A note about Canada and nuclear research. There is a research reactor built during that time at Chalk River, Ontario. It's still in use today, making nuclear isotopes used in medicine. At one point there was a run on the reactor, and it came close to going critical. A smart young US Navy officer who just happened to be there learning some Canadian info, helped in getting the reactor under control. His name: Jimmy Carter. Yes, that Jimmy Carter.
There's two stories when it comes to the Dieppe raid of 1942... First, the story told for decades in terms of "testing" how to conduct beach landings, making the Soviets happy, getting into the fight, etc. Second, the more recent story of a few years ago that explains how the raid was much more of a British military intelligence operation. All due to classified documents now being declassified. And so many more details coming out. This story involves none other than the author of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, who was overseeing things offshore. Dieppe was a major naval HQ with Enigma machines, secret documents, codebooks, you name it. A special commando unit, X-Troop, was to sail straight into the harbour, disembark, capture the HQ, and "pinch" every piece of intelligence they could get their hands on. Including, most importantly, at least one of the new 4-rotor Enigma machines. Once successful, all units would withdraw and return by ship. Of course, it turned into a disaster and X-Troop only got so far. All this to say that Dieppe was, more than likely, not a raid to capture or destroy a port. But a raid to capture a naval headquarters instead.
A large percentage of the aircrews for the Dam-busters Raid were Canadian. I would have liked to have heard more detail about the Commonwealth Air Training Program. You might also want look into the story of Camp X, a spy and operative training camp set up by Britain and the U.S. with co-operation from the Canadian authorities. It was located near Oshawa on the north shore of Lake Ontario.
My house was on the same shoreline, one quarter mile west of Camp X just south of Whitby, Ont..
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The last Victoria cross of ww2 was awarded posthumously to Robert Hampton Gray an RCAF pilot from Nelson, British Columbia who flew an F4U Corsair off a Royal Navy aircraft carrier and the last day of the war he dropped his bombs on a Japanese Destroyer in Onagawa Bay near Tokyo the same day as the Nagasaki blast.
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There was a German POW uprising in camp Gravenhurst in Ontario and the Canadian MPs were told to shoot anyone that they felt was a troublemaker, instead the Canadians took off all their weapons outside the gates and went into the camp and proceeded to get into a huge Donnybrook with the Germans after it was all over the Canadian seargeant said to the German in charge "Good fight eh....." to which the German smiled and said that was why he respected the Canadian army, anywhere else they would have been shot.....
My foster dad was with the Royal Canadian Regiment in the second and told me a story of when Churchill stopped by to inspect the Canadian troops and the Canadians booed him, which was re-enforced by Otto Davenport of the USMCs who served in WWII also. They also told me that the American troops wouldn't move unless they saw a maple leaf beside them, and the Germans refused to face our Canadian boys. It's said that the Germans moved their troops away from our boys, once the Canadian troops marched away from a German strong hold in front of the Germans in broad daylight and then slipped them back in during the night giving the Germans a shock.
If you are that interested i strongly recommend the documentary called simply as "Canada At War" In-depth detail of the whole second world war exclusively from Canada's perspective and a really, really good narration
There’s an interesting story behind the top secret meeting held at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec with the Allied leaders during WW II. It was a historic meeting held in 1943 where plans were discussed for the invasion in Normandy that would take place the following year. Thank you for reacting to Canada’s significant roles during the War. As has been stated before, our country was a major player but didn’t get the recognition as much as others. But we always got the job done. 👏👏👏🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
My father was part of the security detail during that meeting. He managed to scarf the written agenda showing all those allies who attended. He hid it for years until 1962. He probably would have been in big ka ka if caught.
@@billfarley9167 Why did he do that? As you said, that was a major no no during the war, or at any other time for that matter. Or was he a bit of a juvenile delinquent in his younger years, like so many young men are?
You might be interested in Canada's contribution to the winning of the Napoleonic Wars. See "Canadiana: The Toronto Forest That Brought Down Napoleon." The "Canadiana" series is well produced and often quite good.
my family had 2 dairy farms in Ontario , no one went over seas , I was born in 66 & had a an honorary grandmother , she & her husband worked on our farm post war ... they were Dutch refugees ... I had a great aunt ... a doctor in that time & place that never married because I believe her man a local farm boy was killed as a co-pilot on a RCAF Lancaster on raid into Germany my mothers father was a foreman at Dominion Bridge in Toronto that was making armour & munitions
I beleive it was July, 1942. There were close to 200,000 Canadian troops stationed on Salsbury Plain, training and bored! There were the equivilant of 1.5 charges pending for each soldier for AWOL, drunk and disorderely and similar schinanigans. Lord Ha Ha went on the air and, reportedly, said, "Mr. Churchill, if you truly want to end the war, give each Canadian a Sten gun, motorcycle, and a bottle of whisky. Tell them Berlin is off limits and to the last man the Canadians will be there within 48 hours!"
Wife of a retired Canadian Nuclear Operator (and military veteran) who was watching your video. There's all kinds of nuclear going on here. We live just about 70kms from the world's 3rd largest nuclear power site, (by capacity)Bruce Power. (On the same site as Douglas Point, the first commercial reactor, now mothballed) Lots of videos on UA-cam about our nuclear projects. We also have the Darlington plant, Pickering plant, Point LePreau, Chalk River, et al.
I had three friends who were nuclear physicists. One who worked at Sheridan Research in Mississauga had a party every year for people who came to learn about the Candu reactors that were sold to their countries. His father worked at Chalk River and in the early 50's Jimmy Carter came up to help prevent a meltdown at a reactor there.
My grandfather served at one of those P.O.W camps as a guard. As I understand it he was going to be sent to europe but the war ended first. The german prisoners found out he spoke german when he laughed at a joke one of them was telling. And they soon watched what theysaid when he was around.
Studying the actual (non Hollywood) version of WWII is extremely frustrating from a Canadian perspective. I know we are known to be “nice” but it boggles the mind to learn how many supposed American victories involved no American fighting at all. Far too many times Canadians did the dangerous work & suffered the losses of capturing critical locations. Instead of hanging around to celebrate and pose for pictures they kept going clearing the way further as Americans rolled into the “liberated” areas waving flags, news crews on hand for photo ops of celebrations with “grateful locals”. History became defined by these photos rather than the actual fighting done although in Europe, the people know who liberated them and who took the credit. A lot of the different attitudes in Europe towards Canadians and Americans still seen today began with these PR stunts in both WWI and WWII.
More info on the liberation of the Scheldt estuary: once taken, the Brits and Yanks held a huge parade and ceremony... And forgot to invite the Canadians who (insert fav cuss word here) did the job!
My Dad's 2 brothers served in the Lincoln and Welland regiment and fought in this battle and all the way through. My Dad was RCNVR and served in the Atlantic and the Med and volunteered for the invasion of Japan. My Grandma was lucky all three returned home although they carried physical and psychological scars. My one uncle only spoke to his brothers about what he saw but my Dad said it was horrendous. I have nothing but the utmost respect for all the sailors, soldiers and airmen who protected people who couldn't fight back on their own.
The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan involved facilities across Canada. The plan's mandate was to train Allied aircrews for the Second World War, including pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, air gunners, and flight engineers. At the conclusion of the war, over 167,000 students, including over 50,000 pilots, had trained in Canada under the program from May 1940 to March 1945. While the majority of those who successfully completed the program went on to serve in the RAF, over half (72,835) of the 131,553 graduates were Canadians. Also, over 100 Canadian pilots took part in the Battle of Britain helping to stop the Luftwaffe and a German invasion of Britain!!!
lol fix your contrast bro. Also, I love your videos, man. I’m a proud Canadian and watching your videos makes me even more proud of my country. So thank you for that.
the Battle of Hong Kong wasnt mentioned where canadians did well though outgunned even the japanese military mentioned were the fighting was toughest canadians were the opponents
Main thing to remember is that Canada has a small population and when WW2 started a large percent of Canada's population went to fight......Canada still only has 38 million or so for population
The only Victoria Cross won by a Canadian during the Battle of Normandy: In Normandy on 18th August, 1944, Major Currie was in command of a small mixed force of Canadian tanks, self-propelled anti-tank guns and infantry which was ordered to cut one of the main escape routes from the Falaise pocket. This force was held up by strong enemy resistance in the village of St. Lambert sur Dives and two tanks were knocked out by 88 mm guns. Major Currie immediately entered the village alone on foot at last light through the enemy outposts to reconnoitre the German defences and to extricate the crews of the disabled tanks, which he succeeded in doing in spite of heavy mortar fire. Early the following morning, without any previous artillery bombardment, Major Currie personally led an attack on the village in the face of fierce opposition from enemy tanks, guns and infantry and by noon had succeeded in seizing and consolidating a position half-way inside the village. During the next 36 hours the Germans hurled one counter-attack after another against the Canadian force but so skilfully had Major Currie organised his defensive position that these attacks were repulsed with severe casualties to the enemy after heavy fighting. At dusk on 20th August the Germans attempted to mount a final assault on the Canadian positions, but the attacking force was routed before it could even be deployed. Seven enemy tanks, twelve 88 mm. guns and forty vehicles were destroyed, 300 Germans were killed, 500 wounded and 2,100 captured. Major Currie then promptly ordered an attack and completed the capture of the village, thus denying the Chambois-Trun escape route to the remnants of two German armies cut off in the Falaise pocket. Throughout three days and nights of fierce fighting, Major Currie’s gallant conduct and contempt for danger set a magnificent example to all ranks of the force under his command. On one occasion he personally directed the fire of his command tank on to a Tiger tank which had been harassing his position and succeeded in knocking it out. During another attack, while the guns of his command tank were taking on other targets of longer ranges, he used a rifle from the turret to deal with individual snipers who had infiltrated to within fifty yards of his headquarters. The only time reinforcements were able to get through to his force, he himself led the forty men forward into their positions and explained the importance of their task as a part of the defence. When, during the next attack, these new reinforcements withdrew under the intense fire brought down by the enemy, he personally collected them and led them forward into position again, where, inspired by his leadership they held for the remainder of the battle. His employment of the artillery support, which became available after his original attack went in, was typical of his cool calculation of the risks involved in every situation. At one time, despite the fact that short rounds were falling within fifteen yards of his own tank, he ordered fire from medium artillery to continue because of its devastating effect upon the attacking enemy in his immediate area. Throughout the operation the casualties to Major Currie’s force were heavy. However, he never considered the possibility of failure or allowed it to enter the minds of his men. In the words of one of his non-commissioned officers, ‘We knew at one stage that it was going to be a fight to a finish but he was so cool about it, it was impossible for us to get excited’. Since all the officers under his command were either killed or wounded during the action, Major Currie had virtually no respite from his duties and in fact obtained only one hour’s sleep during the entire period. Nevertheless he did not permit his fatigue to become apparent to his troops and throughout the action took every opportunity to visit weapon pits and other defensive posts to talk to his men, to advise them as to the best use of their weapons and to cheer them with words of encouragement. When his force was finally relieved and he was satisfied that the turnover was complete he fell asleep on his feet and collapsed. There can be no doubt that the success of the attack on and stand against the enemy at St. Lambert sur Dives can largely be attributed to this officer’s coolness, inspired leadership and skilful use of the limited weapons at his disposal. The courage and devotion to duty shown by Major Currie during a prolonged period of heavy fighting were outstanding and had a far-reaching effect on the successful outcome of the battle. - London Gazette, no.36812, 27 November 1944[1]
I'm surprised that the German bombing of Bell Island in Newfoundland didn't make the video. The older ladies used to tell us stories of how German troops would come up on land to steal animals and other food, too.
As someone who moved from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland in my early twenties. Yes we are related. However, Newfoundland has a unique culture. My family immigrated from Ireland to nova scotia ,via Quebec to build the canal and were eventually given land, in south shore Nova Scotia. This was almost 150 years ago.
During WWII, the dam buster operation, where they skipped a spinning bomb on the water, the RAF and RCAF practiced the bombing in Jasper Alberta. Montbaton tried building an ice aircraft carrier in Jasper as well. One lake has debris from the failed carrier litters the bottom.
Monty didn't like the Canadians, especially their general Harry Crerar. Monty was more interested in his ego & political stature compared with the American generals (Patton etc.). He always assigned the shit jobs to the Canadians, which is why Canadians are referred to as the Cinderella army. Monty delayed so long to make clearing the Scheldt a priority because it was not a heroic endeavour (supporting logistics is boring). By the time Monty finally assigned it to the Canadians the task was immensely more difficult. Needless to say the Canadians just got on with the job and did it.
I don't know if that is true. Montgomery's favourite corps commander was reputedly Guy Simonds, who eventually commanded much of the Canadian army in Normandy. Some other Canadian generals were not so impressive, being mostly political appointees as is so often the case. But there was friction between the British and Canadian armies, much of it rooted in how the British army arrogantly abused the soldiers from the Dominions and colonies in WW1.
@@mako88sb General Eisenhower also stated that his Canadian troops were, man for man, the best in his army. We were an all volunteer military until quite late in the war.
Yes Monty`s ineptness allowed the Germans to re-enforce the Scheldt causing far more casualties than there was needed. Thousands of troops poured in while he was dithering.
Numerous Canadian troops came to dislike Montgomery. Leo Major turned down a Distinguished Conduct Medal, when he heard Monty would be pinning it on him.
Absolutely right. As with most entitled Britich 'Commissioned' Officers and Gernerals he (Montgomery) was a crappy tactition. Worse, his arrogance and ego were beyond. For no reason. Patton would have happlily killed him at one point.
@tjmcguire9417 Patton's ego was just as bad (maybe worse) the worst thing Allied Command ever did was assign them to the same sector. Monty and Patton trying to "one up" each other in Sicily got alot of people killed unnecessarily.
Most of what you read about Leo Major is greatly exaggerated...including the story about him turning down a medal. Its long been proven he didn't do most of the things he claimed he did, including turning down a medal.
The "D" in Dieppe stands for "Disaster"...Montgomery wanted to cancel it but Mountbatten insisted on going ahead...for Canada: 907 killed, 2,460 wounded, 1,946 captured of which one was my uncle who spent years in a prison camp until liberated...
I am in my mid 70's and grew up in postwar Canada. My uncles fought via the RCAF as fighter pilots and with the First Canadian Division in Italy as artillery officers . I would agree with much of what Simon Whistler said in his video . How a country of only 11 million people put more that 10 % of it's population in uniform while shifting from and agrarian society to being a major manufacturing hub for the allied war effort is quite remarkable . While Canadians served in many services on a worldwide basis , I would have to say that derring do aside , the two greatest contributions to winning the war would have to the the Battle of the Atlantic and the defeat of the U-Boat service of the Kriegsmarine wherein Britain was supplied and hence saved and the Training of allied aircrews (more that 150,000 ) through the aerodrome of democracy (BATF) program were probably the greatest contributions . I would also echo others comments about WW I . The actions of the Canadians in that conflict are quite remarkable . If you want to understand that look at Vimy Ridge and the last 100 days of the war when these Canucks were the pointy end of the stick
Canada contributed far above its weight to the victory in WW II on the home front and all European fronts with ferocity and ability. My Father(CBH 5th armoured)and mother included. We never got the credit deserved in subsequent histories but no doubt as always everyone will look to us for help again.
His death after WWll on take off in Italy was mysterious. DC3's were one of the safest aircraft to fly. There are rumours of sabotage. He was flying war materials to Israel during the 1948 Arab/Israeli war.
My granddad fought as a medic in Italy and most of Europe, making an especially distinct impact in the Netherlands. The daughters of the family he was billeted with there kept a decades long correspondence with my mum and aunts. To this day, Canadians are celebrated and respected in Holland as the true liberators of their country. Both Mountbatten and Montgomery are still vilified in Canada for those who know what they did to our troops. Mountbatten for his part in getting so many Canadians killed or captured at Dieppe just to satisfy his colossal ego, and Montgomery for his disrespect and arrogance towards the Canadian contribution and abilities. Both were arrogant and self-serving figures. Highly recommended watching, Mert, is a Canadian-made TV movie called Dieppe and a 1941 British movie starring Leslie Howard, Lawrence Olivier, and the great Canadian character actor Raymond Massey, titled The 49th Parallel.
Great videos Mert Can! My cousin is a Canadian who moved to Scotland to be a midwife. The crews of the famous dam busters contained a large number of Canadians!
Fun fact. My mother served as an air traffic controller with the RCAF at Gander, Newfoundland. She received a boost in her pay for overseas service as Newfoundland was not yet a Canadian province. Gander was the last North American stop for warplanes manufactured in Canada and the USA on their way to Europe. She told us some great stories.
Comments by a Canadian 6:00 The Dieppe Raid was an unmitigated disaster but the lessons learned made D-Day a success. 7:30 My mother and one of her sisters went into uniform in WW2 so 2 more men could go overseas. 9:00 One of my uncles was machine gunned in Sicily and barely survived. 10:15 My mother's brother fought in North Africa as an engineer in the Canadian Army, later moving onto Ortona and Monte Cassino in Italy. Then later in Normandy and the liberation of Holland. 10:50 The murder of captured Canadians by the SS resulted in that the SS feared the Canadians. Because among German troops that were later captured, there were almost no SS members taken alive by the Canadians. 12:16 My mother's brother was one of the Canadian Army Engineers that made that happen. Without it, the port of Antwerp would not be able to be used to get enough supplies landed in order to make the final push by the USA and Britain into Germany as soon as it did. 1953: The man on the left side leaning over with a silly grin while being ignored by Churchill and Roosevelt was the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King.
Montgomery was more politician than general. His sole claim to fame was Egypt, and he did not commit until his forces were heavily built up and they had superior numbers. When the going got tough he did not commit his fellow Brits (bad PR) but sent the Canadians into the harshest conditions. That is reflected in Market Garden and Holland. He decided not to devote much to protecting the northern flank of the invasion force, which was the most heavily armed. He decided to drive straight east and hopefully glory. He left the northern flank to the Canadians, little understood or publicized. That is understandable, all of the news coverage was the Ally push towards the Rhine and Berlin. He was a complete jerk. The most heavily contested stretch of water was the English channel. During the day fighters and bombers roamed the air and were very capable of inflicting damage on shipping, both sides. But at night, before radar became effective, each night the ships sailed out of port on both sides and engaged in a silent and unknown vicious battle. And deep in the mix was HMCS Haida, labelled "The Fightingest Ship In The Canadian Navy". If her exploits were done by the British or US, she would have definitely had a movie made about her. But we're Canadian, we don't get all puffed up and brag. We just get the job done. And commanding her was no less that "Hard Over Harry", Vice Admiral Henry George DeWolf CBE, DSO, DSC, CD. He was insanely aggressive and took his ship into battle with zero hesitation. I was a 16 year old naval reservist in Ottawa in 1967 and had the great honor of talking to this great man. I was at the armory, we were preparing for Canada's Centennial and the biggest naval reunion one could imagine, and this old gent walked in, and I stopped and we talked for about ten minutes. There was nothing about him that indicated he was anything special. But twenty minutes later a senior officer pulled me aside and told me "Do you know who you were talking to? That is Harry DeWolf." When the war began there became an immediate need to train pilots. But to have hundreds of rookies flying all over Britain just asked for them to be shot down. So a great amount of training was in Canada, safe from enemy fighters. This was not what happened to German training, they suffered heavily and were never able to create a flow of competent replacement pilots at war's end. Camp X. For the same reason Canada offer a geographical advantage by it's vast distance from Germany, a spy school was created. It was located on the shores of Lake Ontario, close to Oshawa. Many who were US citizens received their initial training and they eventually went on to form OSS that later became the CIA. Many spies who operated in German territory received their training at Camp X. Also on site was Hydra, a top secret communications station that provided the vital link between London, Ottawa, and Washington. Thing about it, there had to be some form of rapid and secure communication between those capitols, and it was Hydra. declassified.library.utoronto.ca/exhibits/show/the-many-heads-of-hydra--canad/summary After WW2 operations were not shut down. Canada had a very robust intelligence network and with the cold war looming, were not going to abandon this asset. It was geographically relocated to some unknown site. From that came Five Eyes. It is still very operational, the public knows little about it, but it is one of the major intelligence networks today.
Military doctrine advocates having a three to one advantage in the attack. D-Day finds France with 57 German Divisions There are 37 Divisions in England. They attacked and rolled it up in under a year and the Canadians had a Military Hockey Tournament on the side.
You would be wrong...The Gurkhas were the most lethal soldiers in the British Commonwealth....by far, winning 12 VC's in WW2...all from the same Regiment.
@@MrTroySinister It was a bit of a problem at times especially, because Americans would also use the Canadian flag to get Better treatment from Europeans. Later Europeans would learn the difference by the way We talked, it's quite different than in the States.
One of my father's three medals was the "Canadian Volunteer Service Medal" with silver maple leaf. The maple leaf denoted overseas service - since Newfoundland was separate from Canada, and was "overseas"; and my father's plane (anti-submarine patrol), typically based in Halifax, was periodically posted in Newfoundland.
My late Father: Fraser Peter Hutchinson MM: a resident of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada was the 1st Canadian in WWII to receive the Military Medal (MM) & it was presented to him by King George VI in London for a number of bold & brave things he did during his time in France & in German prison camp before Dunkirk but especially when he was missing & thought dead & left on the battlefield with horrid injuries but he was picked up by the Germans & put in a hospital in Brest France. When he was deemed fit to leave, he was sent to a German POW Camp in France where he & a friend eventually escaped & he then made his way back to Gibraltar via part of France & then Spain & then back to England to re-join his RCE unit where he was re-assigned to the invasion of Sicily. The Hospital in Calais France where he was held as a POW b/c he was run over by a troop truck when he was manning a machine gun on the back of another truck but was bounced off & then run over by the truck behind & he was a member of the BEF in Calais who were abandoned by Churchill during the evacuation of Dunkirk! Calais was a port & fort which held the Germans at bay for a while Dunkirk got evacuated! 2500 British, Canadian & some Polish & French lost their lives &/or were captured like my father at Calais but they helped the Brits stall for time to get 335,000 Allied troops off the beaches in Dunkirk back to UK & thus it was quite a sacrifice but it was a necessary evil & success!
If Leo Major had been American or British, by several films would have made about him. Going back to the First World War, many of the top allied air aces were Canadian, including Billy Bishop in 3rd position. And despite what the louder Australians say, a Canadian, Roy Brown, shot down the famous Red Baron Von Richthofen in WWI. And Canadians were in both wars at the very start(1914/1939), unlike the Americans who didn’t join WWI until 1917 and WWII in 1941 the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. They weren’t really that interested in saving Europe from the Nazi/Fascists as many American industrialists and politicians were pro-Nazi at the time. Sort of like nowadays… Of course watching the traditional films, the USA won all the wars on their own.
Your statements are not all correct. The highest scoring allied pilot was the Frenchman Rene Fonck with 75 victories credited, although he claimed many more than this. Bishop followed with 72. Some British sources like to credit Mick Mannock with one more at 73. But this figure is mainly due to a former WW1 colleague of Mannock (Ira Jones) and others I presume who could not accept that history would record that the highest scoring WW1 empire fighter pilot was in fact not from the UK. As for Roy Brown, there have been a number of careful studies, including one from Canada, that believe that Richthofen was indeed hit by ground fire from Australian gunners.
Really think about this.... the sheer magnitude: "By the end of the war Canada had the 3rd largest Navy in The World". (Imagine. Vs. GB, Germany, U.S., Japan, Russia and others....
That was because by the end of WW2 there were no German, Japanese or Italian navies. Thus we became 3rd largest but only by default. Nevertheless, the Canadian navy more or less ran the entire north Atlantic convoy system by 1944.
My mother worked in a munitions factory for three years during the war xraying fuses for bombs and artillery shells to make certain they were operational. When the war ended my father ordered her back into the kitchen!
My grandfather was gassed at Ypres in WWI and spent the rest of his life unable to do much physical labour. My dad was in the Canadian 1st Armoured division and the casualties were so high that he was then moved to the 4th armoured division. I had an uncle in the navy in north Africa and another in the Air force. I have my dads medals.
How about doing a video of the commonwealth air training project hidden away in Manitoba , it trained all type of pilots from all over the Empire for the British Air Force non stop .. ..
Montgomery was filled with visions of grandeur. When I was grade 6 (elementary school), our teacher fought in the Battle of Britian, as a fighter pilot. I asked him what was the scariest part of the war. Mr Dent, replied, the Americans.
Antwerp had a peacetime discharge capability of 80,000 to 100,000 tons of cargo per day. Less than half of this in wartime. Each Division required about 50 tons of material per day to stay operational and there were only shallow water ports in use. Even Eisenhower was very slow in accepting this necessity of getting Antwerp up and running..
My Dad was in the Canadian Forestry Corps a little known part of the Canadian army. They travelled with the front lines harvesting trees and milling lumber to supply all kinds of usages like telegraph poles, building materials and all kinds of other needs. At the end of July 1944 8 companies of lumberjacks moved to the continent and harvested timber in many of Europe’s well known forests. One of the lesser known facts about the CFC is that they were in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge at many times they were caught between the Allied and the German front lines with buzz bombs flying back and forth over their heads. At times soldiers from the Forestry Corps were pulled from their lumber harvesting duties to fight at the front at times when the attrition was so great that they couldn’t get regular soldiers to the front quickly enough. That’s where Dad met General Patton who asked my Dad if he could have some of his tobacco and rolling papers complaining that the British cigarettes were like smoking horse sh#%. Dad told me many hair raising situations they got into during December and January of 1944/45. I have read many History books about the battle of the Bulge but have never seen the CFC mentioned even though the Americans and the British got all their lumber from the portable sawmills that were following the troops to be where the lumber was needed.
The Italian Campaign report was somewhat skewed since it only mentioned the Cdn 1st Inf Div which was joined after Sicily by the 5th Armd Div to form the 1St Cdn Corps.
One of my great grandparents was taken a POW in the dieppe raid. I know one other was a motor cycle messenger and the other was the commander of a tank in North Africa and later France
The Great War channel has a few great Canadian WWI videos. A famous Canadian artist took part, and our top general Arthur Currie was one of the top generals of the war. Also check out Francis Pegamagabow, the top sniper of WWI.
Because Newfoundland and Labrador had not joined confederation at that time, the troops were under British command.. It remains an important part of N&L history and yet it is rarely taught across Canada. ua-cam.com/video/T-Q3FFPTAQE/v-deo.html
In highschool I had the chance to take a school trip to France and part of the tour had us attending the mass grave site of those brave Newfoundlanders laying at rest there. It was mind-boggling to see the amount of headstones there. I was 16 at the time and am now 65. It has been burned in my memory ever since...
Churchill in both WWI and WWII, as well as Montgomery in WWII used our brave and highly trained troops as canon fodder. When they didn't want to risk the UK troops they sent in the Canadians. In the long run, our men and women will never, in our minds and hearts take a back seat to anyone. At home and in battle, Canadians surpassed all that was expected of us and earned the right to forever hold our heads high. Others may not remember or bother to learn about our valour; but, we Canadians know and will never forget. As for Churchill and Montgomery, they can rot for what they did. They deserve even less. One other point: The USA waited until they realised the Axis was losing before Congress agreed to enter the war on the side of the Empire. All the bravado of saving the world cannot cover up the facts. Canada entered the battle: WWI beginning August 4, 1914, for WWII September 10, 1939, and December 7, 1941 (Japan), for WWII and the USA for WWI on April 6, 1917, and December 8, 1941, [a full day after Pearl Harbour and Canada joining] for WWII. Quite a difference between each country for both WWI and WWII. Had the USA entered the war when the rest of us did, the war would have been short-lived and we would not have lost so many women and men. Canadians also remember that. Chimo
Grandfather was a member of the Ontario Regiment out of Oshawa Ont (Armored). He was taken out of the war during the crawl up the Italian peninsula. As for the Canadians murdered in Normandy, a few were from one of my first reserve units. (SD&G Highlanders) A disgusting act.
My father fought in the Italian campaign. He fought his way north into Italy from the summer of 1943 to early 1945. vale un centesimo. Very effective truck driver.
I didn’t know the Canadian design of the nuclear reactor was used. I thought providing the uranium was our contribution. The is also Camp X plus Canadians were involved in the Battle of Britain. I’m surprised that wasn’t included.
The RCAF Is celebrating its Centennial this year, 100years. On Nuclear development that was done at Chalk River. You should look it up and see it's connection to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
My Grt Uncle, though English fought as a Canadian in WW1, 47th Batt. CEF....He suffered a serious head wound and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital in London Ontario. That is until he died by drinking corrosive acid in 1927.....Weather on purpose or not I do not know...but it is said to have been suicide.
I am most proud of the Canadian contribution to the BCATP (British Commonwealth Air Training Plan). A close second would be the fielding of First Canadian Army when the former was meant to be the main contribution. Respect to the RCN 3rd largest fleet in the world circa 1945. And lest we forget the bravest of them all the men of the merchant marine!
Monty wasn't liked is well known but i think there was some Canadians fighting to capture Rome that weren't very happy with with Clarke and the Yanks either!
I could be mistaken, but Canada was also a major training ground for allied pilots. There is a story (rumor) that bombing training was done on the Saskatchewan river by dropping oranges on mesh 'boats' in the river.
Hey my brother, you’re still looking at Canadians. Why don’t you come and visit us? Don’t worry about the mountain lions and the Bears and the moose and the wolves and the coyotes in the Wolverines you’ll be just fine.
...just stay away from the frick'n Cobra-Chickens, eh? They will honk the soul out of you.
6 місяців тому+5
Canada did all this and more but the thing that makes us so Canadian is we did the jobs saw them through and didn't ask for recognition or brag about it which was the coolest part......
Don’t forget Canada was there in the First World War as well. We were pivotal in feeding and arming Great Britain during that war as well
We were pivotal the fighting as well, would have been a very different outcome without us
First people to get gassed in war, and they just stood there and took it until their allies could get to safety...took vimy ridge in 12 hours after everyone else failed
@@adamdunn5661 My favourite Canadian war story was from my tour in the former Yugoslavia and the Medak pocket. Not as long as Ortona, but forgotten just the same. Even on my tour in Afghanistan, we did those guys proud, at least we tried too. As far as I’m concerned, we won the First World War, the last 100 days prove it.
We most certainly performed with amazing results at Vimy Ridge and The Somme, where miners, forestry workers etc. from Canada saved us all from speaking German today! A great many came from the mining town I was born and raised in. And we had LOTS of trees for ship building etc.! We have an amazing war history that has been mostly ignored by military historians and seldom taught these days. Thankfully it was standard curriculum when I was in school, and I’m thankful. 🇨🇦🖖🏻🇨🇦
There’s a huge installation not far from my home that was a German OPW camp during WW2. It was a home for severely mentally handicapped individuals when a nursing friend who worked there took me on a tour. Imagine Auschwitz in southeastern Ontario! It was amazing to see. It was a huge gated place with hundreds of long single storey buildings. The inhabitants were different, but those German POW’s lived a much better life and were treated far better than any race their Nazis captured during the war. So much history hidden away! The place was called Prince Edward Heights. 🇨🇦🖖🏻🇨🇦
When I feel I'm losing brain cells from other reactors to Canada I watch your channel to listen to someone who genuinely has an interest in the topic - thank you. I love Simon Whistler/Top Tenz and his beyond speedy delivery and sarcasm. Ask an American about Canada's contribution to the Manhattan Project - non-existent.
IKR! I’ve been bringing up the Manhattan project for years and the other things. I was so happy when I saw Simon do a video. Love his sarcasm. 😁
I saw my grandfather at timestamp 4:07!!!! The left hand column with his skis under his arm.. he smiles..
The surprise has tears welling up.
Love your work, Mert.
Stay sweet
Oh how awesome!
I see my grandfather a lot in photos of the Normady landing when the troops were being loaded onto the landing craft
Oh, that's very cool. There are various UA-cam downloaders you can use to grab a video in case you want to save this.
thank you again for showing canadian effort during the war
The plane attack on Rommel during The Battle of Normandy.
A Canadian reconnaissance pilot in a P51 spotted him.
He called a Canadian Spitfire and Rommel was out of the war.
My dad was in an RCAF Mosquito pathfinder sqdn. Find the sites for the big bombers and pave the way for their missions.
I had three friends who were nuclear physicists and know Candu reactors were sold to many nations. One said in the early 50's Jimmy Carter came to Chalk River to help prevent a meltdown at a nuclear reactor. He wasn't just a peanut farmer!
Thanks for honoring the Canadian efforts
A couple things the video did not mention.
One, RCAF was instrumental in preventing Hitler from taking over Europe in the Battle of Britain flying Spitfires, Hurricanes (also Canadian invented by Elsie MacGill) and Mosquitos turning the tide of the War (my fiather was one of them in Squadron 1). They were outnumbered by Luftwaffe 10:1.
Two, CAMP X located in Oshawa Ontario east of Toronto was a Spy Training school that included Sir William Stephenson (Man called Intrepid) and Sir Ian Fleming (author of James Bond) relaying top-secret messages from Washington, Ottawa, and New York to Bletchley Park in England under Churchill.
Sir William would later become one of the inspirations Sir Ian used for James Bond.
I attended the same school as stephenson, in winnipeg, it is now named after him, he came to unveil his plaqie and statue
My dad was in a Mossie sqdn.
Elsie MacGill most certainly did not invent the Hawker Hurricane. There is a heritage Canada minute for her which you can find and watch yourself here on You Tube. She was credited as a chief engineer of a manufacturing facility for these aircraft. The heritage minute does claim that she was the world's first female aeronautical engineer
ua-cam.com/video/stnMHGw8qkQ/v-deo.html
Never mentioned, are the Cree Code Talkers who handled communications in many theatres of war, most of them are completely unknown, as they were sworn to secrecy and honoured it. The American "wind talkers" carried out a similar role, but according to various accounts the original "graduates" of the Cree program were immediately lent to the US Navy to handle communications in the Pacific, who at the time didn't have a program up and running yet, later they worked in Europe. As part of the program they had to develop a whole new lexicon for everything military - hardware, munitions, vehicles etc. Despite various exemptions, 1st nations, Metis and Inuit served in various military roles, but with Cree being widely spoken, it was the language of choice for the Code Talker program. The Axis forces never came close to "cracking it"
ua-cam.com/video/VzkEsMYxhFM/v-deo.htmlsi=IlGB877COBkJEUm4
Canadians are very proud of our first nations people who served and have been recognised and honored here, in Canada. As an aside, the main character in the Windtalkers is a first nations Canadian actor who did a great performance in the movie...
@@markapplejohn4376 Adam is great actor, I believe he comes from Manitoba, which is where I think the code talkers were founded.
It doesn't even get talked about in Canada even, but my grandfather served with the RCAF in WWII in Burma (now Myanmar) as an aircraft maintenance engineer and was an original member of the 435 Chinthe transport and rescue squadron which is still exists and is based out of Winnipeg. A lot of Canadians don't even know that Canadians were also heavily involved with fighting in Southeast Asia against the Japanese.
You’re 100% correct. Canada is not even mentioned. It is such a sad thing when the soldiers who came home DID NOT ever forget what happened during the war for the rest of their lives. My father is one of those men. A bomber mechanic posted in Yorkshire for the duration of the war (from the age of 19) he never forgot which of his friends left at night and if he would see them the next morning. It got worse and he became a multiple stroke victim and it became more “real” to him. 😢
0ne of my uncles died at Dieppe, another one was captured. He almost starved and had to endure appendix surgery performed without anaesthesia with a dull knife. He survived but suffered from war injuries and mental anguish
That was so difficult for your family. My heart goes out to your family. Too many Canadian military men and women lost and challenged with physically/emotionally injuries. That generation and the children of the next generation were and still are affected by both WWs and the Great Depression.
I've seen that video before, and always enjoy watching that. Even some of the info in that video isn't taught in Canadian school! Sad. A note about Canada and nuclear research. There is a research reactor built during that time at Chalk River, Ontario. It's still in use today, making nuclear isotopes used in medicine. At one point there was a run on the reactor, and it came close to going critical. A smart young US Navy officer who just happened to be there learning some Canadian info, helped in getting the reactor under control. His name: Jimmy Carter. Yes, that Jimmy Carter.
There's two stories when it comes to the Dieppe raid of 1942...
First, the story told for decades in terms of "testing" how to conduct beach landings, making the Soviets happy, getting into the fight, etc.
Second, the more recent story of a few years ago that explains how the raid was much more of a British military intelligence operation. All due to classified documents now being declassified. And so many more details coming out.
This story involves none other than the author of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, who was overseeing things offshore. Dieppe was a major naval HQ with Enigma machines, secret documents, codebooks, you name it. A special commando unit, X-Troop, was to sail straight into the harbour, disembark, capture the HQ, and "pinch" every piece of intelligence they could get their hands on. Including, most importantly, at least one of the new 4-rotor Enigma machines.
Once successful, all units would withdraw and return by ship. Of course, it turned into a disaster and X-Troop only got so far.
All this to say that Dieppe was, more than likely, not a raid to capture or destroy a port. But a raid to capture a naval headquarters instead.
Canadians again being used as cannon fodder for the Brits.
A large percentage of the aircrews for the Dam-busters Raid were Canadian. I would have liked to have heard more detail about the Commonwealth Air Training Program. You might also want look into the story of Camp X, a spy and operative training camp set up by Britain and the U.S. with co-operation from the Canadian authorities. It was located near Oshawa on the north shore of Lake Ontario.
My house was on the same shoreline, one quarter mile west of Camp X just south of Whitby, Ont..
The last Victoria cross of ww2 was awarded posthumously to Robert Hampton Gray an RCAF pilot from Nelson, British Columbia who flew an F4U Corsair off a Royal Navy aircraft carrier and the last day of the war he dropped his bombs on a Japanese Destroyer in Onagawa Bay near Tokyo the same day as the Nagasaki blast.
There was a German POW uprising in camp Gravenhurst in Ontario and the Canadian MPs were told to shoot anyone that they felt was a troublemaker, instead the Canadians took off all their weapons outside the gates and went into the camp and proceeded to get into a huge Donnybrook with the Germans after it was all over the Canadian seargeant said to the German in charge "Good fight eh....." to which the German smiled and said that was why he respected the Canadian army, anywhere else they would have been shot.....
My foster dad was with the Royal Canadian Regiment in the second and told me a story of when Churchill stopped by to inspect the Canadian troops and the Canadians booed him, which was re-enforced by Otto Davenport of the USMCs who served in WWII also. They also told me that the American troops wouldn't move unless they saw a maple leaf beside them, and the Germans refused to face our Canadian boys. It's said that the Germans moved their troops away from our boys, once the Canadian troops marched away from a German strong hold in front of the Germans in broad daylight and then slipped them back in during the night giving the Germans a shock.
If you are that interested i strongly recommend the documentary called simply as "Canada At War"
In-depth detail of the whole second world war exclusively from Canada's perspective and a really, really good narration
There’s an interesting story behind the top secret meeting held at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec with the Allied leaders during WW II. It was a historic meeting held in 1943 where plans were discussed for the invasion in Normandy that would take place the following year. Thank you for reacting to Canada’s significant roles during the War. As has been stated before, our country was a major player but didn’t get the recognition as much as others. But we always got the job done. 👏👏👏🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
My father was part of the security detail during that meeting. He managed to scarf the written agenda showing all those allies who attended. He hid it for years until 1962. He probably would have been in big ka ka if caught.
@@billfarley9167 Why did he do that? As you said, that was a major no no during the war, or at any other time for that matter. Or was he a bit of a juvenile delinquent in his younger years, like so many young men are?
You might be interested in Canada's contribution to the winning of the Napoleonic Wars. See "Canadiana: The Toronto Forest That Brought Down Napoleon." The "Canadiana" series is well produced and often quite good.
my family had 2 dairy farms in Ontario , no one went over seas , I was born in 66 & had a an honorary grandmother , she & her husband worked on our farm post war ... they were Dutch refugees ... I had a great aunt ... a doctor in that time & place that never married because I believe her man a local farm boy was killed as a co-pilot on a RCAF Lancaster on raid into Germany
my mothers father was a foreman at Dominion Bridge in Toronto that was making armour & munitions
I beleive it was July, 1942. There were close to 200,000 Canadian troops stationed on Salsbury Plain, training and bored! There were the equivilant of 1.5 charges pending for each soldier for AWOL, drunk and disorderely and similar schinanigans.
Lord Ha Ha went on the air and, reportedly, said, "Mr. Churchill, if you truly want to end the war, give each Canadian a Sten gun, motorcycle, and a bottle of whisky. Tell them Berlin is off limits and to the last man the Canadians will be there within 48 hours!"
My grandmother in my dad Immigrated from Scotland 1949. My dad, Joined the air force in 1950, And fought in korea, In defense of his new country.
Wife of a retired Canadian Nuclear Operator (and military veteran) who was watching your video. There's all kinds of nuclear going on here. We live just about 70kms from the world's 3rd largest nuclear power site, (by capacity)Bruce Power. (On the same site as Douglas Point, the first commercial reactor, now mothballed) Lots of videos on UA-cam about our nuclear projects.
We also have the Darlington plant, Pickering plant, Point LePreau, Chalk River, et al.
I had three friends who were nuclear physicists. One who worked at Sheridan Research in Mississauga had a party every year for people who came to learn about the Candu reactors that were sold to their countries. His father worked at Chalk River and in the early 50's Jimmy Carter came up to help prevent a meltdown at a reactor there.
Once again, Mert, thank you so much for featuring the video and paying Canada and Canadians such respect. Chimo
My grandfather served at one of those P.O.W camps as a guard. As I understand it he was going to be sent to europe but the war ended first.
The german prisoners found out he spoke german when he laughed at a joke one of them was telling. And they soon watched what theysaid when he was around.
Studying the actual (non Hollywood) version of WWII is extremely frustrating from a Canadian perspective. I know we are known to be “nice” but it boggles the mind to learn how many supposed American victories involved no American fighting at all. Far too many times Canadians did the dangerous work & suffered the losses of capturing critical locations. Instead of hanging around to celebrate and pose for pictures they kept going clearing the way further as Americans rolled into the “liberated” areas waving flags, news crews on hand for photo ops of celebrations with “grateful locals”. History became defined by these photos rather than the actual fighting done although in Europe, the people know who liberated them and who took the credit. A lot of the different attitudes in Europe towards Canadians and Americans still seen today began with these PR stunts in both WWI and WWII.
Story of our lives sadly.
More info on the liberation of the Scheldt estuary: once taken, the Brits and Yanks held a huge parade and ceremony... And forgot to invite the Canadians who (insert fav cuss word here) did the job!
Typical, take the glory, take no pain. Canada never should have stood down!!!
My Dad's 2 brothers served in the Lincoln and Welland regiment and fought in this battle and all the way through. My Dad was RCNVR and served in the Atlantic and the Med and volunteered for the invasion of Japan. My Grandma was lucky all three returned home although they carried physical and psychological scars. My one uncle only spoke to his brothers about what he saw but my Dad said it was horrendous. I have nothing but the utmost respect for all the sailors, soldiers and airmen who protected people who couldn't fight back on their own.
The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan involved facilities across Canada. The plan's mandate was to train Allied aircrews for the Second World War, including pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, air gunners, and flight engineers. At the conclusion of the war, over 167,000 students, including over 50,000 pilots, had trained in Canada under the program from May 1940 to March 1945. While the majority of those who successfully completed the program went on to serve in the RAF, over half (72,835) of the 131,553 graduates were Canadians. Also, over 100 Canadian pilots took part in the Battle of Britain helping to stop the Luftwaffe and a German invasion of Britain!!!
lol fix your contrast bro. Also, I love your videos, man. I’m a proud Canadian and watching your videos makes me even more proud of my country. So thank you for that.
I agree the videos are great and the webcam settings could use a reset.
the Battle of Hong Kong wasnt mentioned where canadians did well though outgunned even the japanese military mentioned were the fighting was toughest canadians were the opponents
Main thing to remember is that Canada has a small population and when WW2 started a large percent of Canada's population went to fight......Canada still only has 38 million or so for population
During the 1941 census Canada's population was 9 million. The same as London, England at the time.
Canada only had 13 million population in 1967. During the 30s and 40s would have been much smaller
@@shelleybleu4903 I was around in 1967 and we had 20 million.
The only Victoria Cross won by a Canadian during the Battle of Normandy:
In Normandy on 18th August, 1944, Major Currie was in command of a small mixed force of Canadian tanks, self-propelled anti-tank guns and infantry which was ordered to cut one of the main escape routes from the Falaise pocket.
This force was held up by strong enemy resistance in the village of St. Lambert sur Dives and two tanks were knocked out by 88 mm guns. Major Currie immediately entered the village alone on foot at last light through the enemy outposts to reconnoitre the German defences and to extricate the crews of the disabled tanks, which he succeeded in doing in spite of heavy mortar fire.
Early the following morning, without any previous artillery bombardment, Major Currie personally led an attack on the village in the face of fierce opposition from enemy tanks, guns and infantry and by noon had succeeded in seizing and consolidating a position half-way inside the village.
During the next 36 hours the Germans hurled one counter-attack after another against the Canadian force but so skilfully had Major Currie organised his defensive position that these attacks were repulsed with severe casualties to the enemy after heavy fighting.
At dusk on 20th August the Germans attempted to mount a final assault on the Canadian positions, but the attacking force was routed before it could even be deployed. Seven enemy tanks, twelve 88 mm. guns and forty vehicles were destroyed, 300 Germans were killed, 500 wounded and 2,100 captured. Major Currie then promptly ordered an attack and completed the capture of the village, thus denying the Chambois-Trun escape route to the remnants of two German armies cut off in the Falaise pocket.
Throughout three days and nights of fierce fighting, Major Currie’s gallant conduct and contempt for danger set a magnificent example to all ranks of the force under his command.
On one occasion he personally directed the fire of his command tank on to a Tiger tank which had been harassing his position and succeeded in knocking it out. During another attack, while the guns of his command tank were taking on other targets of longer ranges, he used a rifle from the turret to deal with individual snipers who had infiltrated to within fifty yards of his headquarters. The only time reinforcements were able to get through to his force, he himself led the forty men forward into their positions and explained the importance of their task as a part of the defence. When, during the next attack, these new reinforcements withdrew under the intense fire brought down by the enemy, he personally collected them and led them forward into position again, where, inspired by his leadership they held for the remainder of the battle. His employment of the artillery support, which became available after his original attack went in, was typical of his cool calculation of the risks involved in every situation. At one time, despite the fact that short rounds were falling within fifteen yards of his own tank, he ordered fire from medium artillery to continue because of its devastating effect upon the attacking enemy in his immediate area.
Throughout the operation the casualties to Major Currie’s force were heavy. However, he never considered the possibility of failure or allowed it to enter the minds of his men. In the words of one of his non-commissioned officers, ‘We knew at one stage that it was going to be a fight to a finish but he was so cool about it, it was impossible for us to get excited’. Since all the officers under his command were either killed or wounded during the action, Major Currie had virtually no respite from his duties and in fact obtained only one hour’s sleep during the entire period. Nevertheless he did not permit his fatigue to become apparent to his troops and throughout the action took every opportunity to visit weapon pits and other defensive posts to talk to his men, to advise them as to the best use of their weapons and to cheer them with words of encouragement. When his force was finally relieved and he was satisfied that the turnover was complete he fell asleep on his feet and collapsed.
There can be no doubt that the success of the attack on and stand against the enemy at St. Lambert sur Dives can largely be attributed to this officer’s coolness, inspired leadership and skilful use of the limited weapons at his disposal.
The courage and devotion to duty shown by Major Currie during a prolonged period of heavy fighting were outstanding and had a far-reaching effect on the successful outcome of the battle.
- London Gazette, no.36812, 27 November 1944[1]
...and we Canadians have been largely over-caffeinated ever since.
I'm surprised that the German bombing of Bell Island in Newfoundland didn't make the video. The older ladies used to tell us stories of how German troops would come up on land to steal animals and other food, too.
As someone who moved from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland in my early twenties. Yes we are related. However, Newfoundland has a unique culture. My family immigrated from Ireland to nova scotia ,via Quebec to build the canal and were eventually given land, in south shore Nova Scotia. This was almost 150 years ago.
During WWII, the dam buster operation, where they skipped a spinning bomb on the water, the RAF and RCAF practiced the bombing in Jasper Alberta. Montbaton tried building an ice aircraft carrier in Jasper as well. One lake has debris from the failed carrier litters the bottom.
Monty didn't like the Canadians, especially their general Harry Crerar. Monty was more interested in his ego & political stature compared with the American generals (Patton etc.). He always assigned the shit jobs to the Canadians, which is why Canadians are referred to as the Cinderella army. Monty delayed so long to make clearing the Scheldt a priority because it was not a heroic endeavour (supporting logistics is boring). By the time Monty finally assigned it to the Canadians the task was immensely more difficult. Needless to say the Canadians just got on with the job and did it.
I don't know if that is true. Montgomery's favourite corps commander was reputedly Guy Simonds, who eventually commanded much of the Canadian army in Normandy. Some other Canadian generals were not so impressive, being mostly political appointees as is so often the case. But there was friction between the British and Canadian armies, much of it rooted in how the British army arrogantly abused the soldiers from the Dominions and colonies in WW1.
@@ToddSauve. Yes. I’m currently reading Monty’s biography and he referred to our troops as “the magnificent Canadian’s”.
@@mako88sb General Eisenhower also stated that his Canadian troops were, man for man, the best in his army. We were an all volunteer military until quite late in the war.
Yes Monty`s ineptness allowed the Germans to re-enforce the Scheldt causing far more casualties than there was needed. Thousands of troops poured in while he was dithering.
Numerous Canadian troops came to dislike Montgomery. Leo Major turned down a Distinguished Conduct Medal, when he heard Monty would be pinning it on him.
Absolutely right. As with most entitled Britich 'Commissioned' Officers and Gernerals he (Montgomery) was a crappy tactition. Worse, his arrogance and ego were beyond. For no reason. Patton would have happlily killed him at one point.
@tjmcguire9417 Patton's ego was just as bad (maybe worse) the worst thing Allied Command ever did was assign them to the same sector. Monty and Patton trying to "one up" each other in Sicily got alot of people killed unnecessarily.
Most of what you read about Leo Major is greatly exaggerated...including the story about him turning down a medal. Its long been proven he didn't do most of the things he claimed he did, including turning down a medal.
@@michaelhamm6805 Got a source for that one? I'd be interested in reading more about that.
The "D" in Dieppe stands for "Disaster"...Montgomery wanted to cancel it but Mountbatten insisted on going ahead...for Canada: 907 killed, 2,460 wounded, 1,946 captured of which one was my uncle who spent years in a prison camp until liberated...
I am in my mid 70's and grew up in postwar Canada. My uncles fought via the RCAF as fighter pilots and with the First Canadian Division in Italy as artillery officers . I would agree with much of what Simon Whistler said in his video . How a country of only 11 million people put more that 10 % of it's population in uniform while shifting from and agrarian society to being a major manufacturing hub for the allied war effort is quite remarkable . While Canadians served in many services on a worldwide basis , I would have to say that derring do aside , the two greatest contributions to winning the war would have to the the Battle of the Atlantic and the defeat of the U-Boat service of the Kriegsmarine wherein Britain was supplied and hence saved and the Training of allied aircrews (more that 150,000 ) through the aerodrome of democracy (BATF) program were probably the greatest contributions . I would also echo others comments about WW I . The actions of the Canadians in that conflict are quite remarkable . If you want to understand that look at Vimy Ridge and the last 100 days of the war when these Canucks were the pointy end of the stick
Canada contributed far above its weight to the victory in WW II on the home front and all European fronts with ferocity and ability. My Father(CBH 5th armoured)and mother included. We never got the credit deserved in subsequent histories but no doubt as always everyone will look to us for help again.
Dieppe was to try capture a Enigma machine and they almost got it. "Gather intelligence" was one of the objectives.
As well as being the "test" run for landings. The lessons learned were harsh
Mert, look into the flying career of Buzz Beurling. Very interesting story.
His death after WWll on take off in Italy was mysterious. DC3's were one of the safest aircraft to fly. There are rumours of sabotage. He was flying war materials to Israel during the 1948 Arab/Israeli war.
My granddad fought as a medic in Italy and most of Europe, making an especially distinct impact in the Netherlands. The daughters of the family he was billeted with there kept a decades long correspondence with my mum and aunts. To this day, Canadians are celebrated and respected in Holland as the true liberators of their country.
Both Mountbatten and Montgomery are still vilified in Canada for those who know what they did to our troops. Mountbatten for his part in getting so many Canadians killed or captured at Dieppe just to satisfy his colossal ego, and Montgomery for his disrespect and arrogance towards the Canadian contribution and abilities. Both were arrogant and self-serving figures.
Highly recommended watching, Mert, is a Canadian-made TV movie called Dieppe and a 1941 British movie starring Leslie Howard, Lawrence Olivier, and the great Canadian character actor Raymond Massey, titled The 49th Parallel.
Great videos Mert Can! My cousin is a Canadian who moved to Scotland to be a midwife. The crews of the famous dam busters contained a large number of Canadians!
Fun fact. My mother served as an air traffic controller with the RCAF at Gander, Newfoundland. She received a boost in her pay for overseas service as Newfoundland was not yet a Canadian province. Gander was the last North American stop for warplanes manufactured in Canada and the USA on their way to Europe. She told us some great stories.
Comments by a Canadian
6:00 The Dieppe Raid was an unmitigated disaster but the lessons learned made D-Day a success.
7:30 My mother and one of her sisters went into uniform in WW2 so 2 more men could go overseas.
9:00 One of my uncles was machine gunned in Sicily and barely survived.
10:15 My mother's brother fought in North Africa as an engineer in the Canadian Army, later moving onto Ortona and Monte Cassino in Italy. Then later in Normandy and the liberation of Holland.
10:50 The murder of captured Canadians by the SS resulted in that the SS feared the Canadians. Because among German troops that were later captured, there were almost no SS members taken alive by the Canadians.
12:16 My mother's brother was one of the Canadian Army Engineers that made that happen. Without it, the port of Antwerp would not be able to be used to get enough supplies landed in order to make the final push by the USA and Britain into Germany as soon as it did.
1953: The man on the left side leaning over with a silly grin while being ignored by Churchill and Roosevelt was the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King.
I have seen a documentary that made a case for Dieppe being a diversion for capturing some critical intelligence.
Montgomery was more politician than general. His sole claim to fame was Egypt, and he did not commit until his forces were heavily built up and they had superior numbers. When the going got tough he did not commit his fellow Brits (bad PR) but sent the Canadians into the harshest conditions. That is reflected in Market Garden and Holland. He decided not to devote much to protecting the northern flank of the invasion force, which was the most heavily armed. He decided to drive straight east and hopefully glory. He left the northern flank to the Canadians, little understood or publicized. That is understandable, all of the news coverage was the Ally push towards the Rhine and Berlin. He was a complete jerk.
The most heavily contested stretch of water was the English channel. During the day fighters and bombers roamed the air and were very capable of inflicting damage on shipping, both sides. But at night, before radar became effective, each night the ships sailed out of port on both sides and engaged in a silent and unknown vicious battle. And deep in the mix was HMCS Haida, labelled "The Fightingest Ship In The Canadian Navy". If her exploits were done by the British or US, she would have definitely had a movie made about her. But we're Canadian, we don't get all puffed up and brag. We just get the job done. And commanding her was no less that "Hard Over Harry", Vice Admiral Henry George DeWolf CBE, DSO, DSC, CD. He was insanely aggressive and took his ship into battle with zero hesitation.
I was a 16 year old naval reservist in Ottawa in 1967 and had the great honor of talking to this great man. I was at the armory, we were preparing for Canada's Centennial and the biggest naval reunion one could imagine, and this old gent walked in, and I stopped and we talked for about ten minutes. There was nothing about him that indicated he was anything special. But twenty minutes later a senior officer pulled me aside and told me "Do you know who you were talking to? That is Harry DeWolf."
When the war began there became an immediate need to train pilots. But to have hundreds of rookies flying all over Britain just asked for them to be shot down. So a great amount of training was in Canada, safe from enemy fighters. This was not what happened to German training, they suffered heavily and were never able to create a flow of competent replacement pilots at war's end.
Camp X.
For the same reason Canada offer a geographical advantage by it's vast distance from Germany, a spy school was created. It was located on the shores of Lake Ontario, close to Oshawa. Many who were US citizens received their initial training and they eventually went on to form OSS that later became the CIA. Many spies who operated in German territory received their training at Camp X. Also on site was Hydra, a top secret communications station that provided the vital link between London, Ottawa, and Washington. Thing about it, there had to be some form of rapid and secure communication between those capitols, and it was Hydra.
declassified.library.utoronto.ca/exhibits/show/the-many-heads-of-hydra--canad/summary
After WW2 operations were not shut down. Canada had a very robust intelligence network and with the cold war looming, were not going to abandon this asset. It was geographically relocated to some unknown site. From that came Five Eyes. It is still very operational, the public knows little about it, but it is one of the major intelligence networks today.
Military doctrine advocates having a three to one advantage in the attack. D-Day finds France with 57 German Divisions There are 37 Divisions in England. They attacked and rolled it up in under a year and the Canadians had a Military Hockey Tournament on the side.
I am told Canada had the best kill ratio for hand to hand combat soldiers in both world wars.
I'm from an east coast city where we trained the Americans, we already knew how to deal with difficulties of terrain and weather
When I went to Europe, my Uncle, a military guy, said, "always have a Canadian flag on your jacket " .
You would be wrong...The Gurkhas were the most lethal soldiers in the British Commonwealth....by far, winning 12 VC's in WW2...all from the same Regiment.
@@MrTroySinister It was a bit of a problem at times especially, because Americans would also use the Canadian flag to get Better treatment from Europeans. Later Europeans would learn the difference by the way We talked, it's quite different than in the States.
@@michaelhamm6805 in WW1 Canadians were known as the 'White Gurkhas'
One of my father's three medals was the "Canadian Volunteer Service Medal" with silver maple leaf. The maple leaf denoted overseas service - since Newfoundland was separate from Canada, and was "overseas"; and my father's plane (anti-submarine patrol), typically based in Halifax, was periodically posted in Newfoundland.
My late Father: Fraser Peter Hutchinson MM: a resident of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada was the 1st Canadian in WWII to receive the Military Medal (MM) & it was presented to him by King George VI in London for a number of bold & brave things he did during his time in France & in German prison camp before Dunkirk but especially when he was missing & thought dead & left on the battlefield with horrid injuries but he was picked up by the Germans & put in a hospital in Brest France. When he was deemed fit to leave, he was sent to a German POW Camp in France where he & a friend eventually escaped & he then made his way back to Gibraltar via part of France & then Spain & then back to England to re-join his RCE unit where he was re-assigned to the invasion of Sicily. The Hospital in Calais France where he was held as a POW
b/c he was run over by a troop truck when he was manning a machine gun on the back of another truck but was bounced off & then run over by the truck behind & he was a member of the BEF in Calais who were abandoned by Churchill during the evacuation of Dunkirk! Calais was a port & fort which held the Germans at bay for a while Dunkirk got evacuated! 2500 British, Canadian & some Polish & French lost their lives &/or were captured like my father at Calais but they helped the Brits stall for time to get 335,000 Allied troops off the beaches in Dunkirk back to UK & thus it was quite a sacrifice but it was a necessary evil & success!
If Leo Major had been American or British, by several films would have made about him. Going back to the First World War, many of the top allied air aces were Canadian, including Billy Bishop in 3rd position. And despite what the louder Australians say, a Canadian, Roy Brown, shot down the famous Red Baron Von Richthofen in WWI. And Canadians were in both wars at the very start(1914/1939), unlike the Americans who didn’t join WWI until 1917 and WWII in 1941 the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. They weren’t really that interested in saving Europe from the Nazi/Fascists as many American industrialists and politicians were pro-Nazi at the time. Sort of like nowadays… Of course watching the traditional films, the USA won all the wars on their own.
Your statements are not all correct. The highest scoring allied pilot was the Frenchman Rene Fonck with 75 victories credited, although he claimed many more than this. Bishop followed with 72. Some British sources like to credit Mick Mannock with one more at 73. But this figure is mainly due to a former WW1 colleague of Mannock (Ira Jones) and others I presume who could not accept that history would record that the highest scoring WW1 empire fighter pilot was in fact not from the UK.
As for Roy Brown, there have been a number of careful studies, including one from Canada, that believe that Richthofen was indeed hit by ground fire from Australian gunners.
Really think about this.... the sheer magnitude: "By the end of the war Canada had the 3rd largest Navy in The World". (Imagine. Vs. GB, Germany, U.S., Japan, Russia and others....
That was because by the end of WW2 there were no German, Japanese or Italian navies. Thus we became 3rd largest but only by default. Nevertheless, the Canadian navy more or less ran the entire north Atlantic convoy system by 1944.
If only Canadians shared your interest in our history. One aspect of our air force history is the mosquito. "Bandits of the air".
My mother worked in a munitions factory for three years during the war xraying fuses for bombs and artillery shells to make certain they were operational. When the war ended my father ordered her back into the kitchen!
Mymom did too , but my dad didnt order her anywhere, ever
My grandfather was gassed at Ypres in WWI and spent the rest of his life unable to do much physical labour. My dad was in the Canadian 1st Armoured division and the casualties were so high that he was then moved to the 4th armoured division. I had an uncle in the navy in north Africa and another in the Air force. I have my dads medals.
Also, my dad hated Americans. He swore that more troops were killed by American bombers dumping their payloads than by the Germans
How about doing a video of the commonwealth air training project hidden away in Manitoba , it trained all type of pilots from all over the Empire for the British Air Force non stop .. ..
Montgomery was filled with visions of grandeur. When I was grade 6 (elementary school), our teacher fought in the Battle of Britian, as a fighter pilot. I asked him what was the scariest part of the war. Mr Dent, replied, the Americans.
Canada was the 4th largest producer of war materials amongst the allies, but the second largest producer of food.
Wasn't the largest Argentina or Brazil? Or maybe that was just for beef specifically...it's been a while since I reviewed the stats...
Canada was the second largest producer of transportation behind the USA.
Antwerp had a peacetime discharge capability of 80,000 to 100,000 tons of cargo per day. Less than half of this in wartime. Each Division required about 50 tons of material per day to stay operational and there were only shallow water ports in use. Even Eisenhower was very slow in accepting this necessity of getting Antwerp up and running..
We Canadians are nice and polite , just don't F with us 🤗👍
Agreed. Even we have our limits.
Specifically when the word "war" is used
@@scotthodgins7975 ...sigh...I'll get my stylo/pen and start taking notes on new line entries for the "Geneva Suggestions", eh?...
(Cringey when you say it about yourself.)
yeah right.... Trudeau has been f ing with us for 8 years and we still let it happen...
Most Canadians are wimps.
My Dad was in the Canadian Forestry Corps a little known part of the Canadian army. They travelled with the front lines harvesting trees and milling lumber to supply all kinds of usages like telegraph poles, building materials and all kinds of other needs. At the end of July 1944 8 companies of lumberjacks moved to the continent and harvested timber in many of Europe’s well known forests. One of the lesser known facts about the CFC is that they were in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge at many times they were caught between the Allied and the German front lines with buzz bombs flying back and forth over their heads. At times soldiers from the Forestry Corps were pulled from their lumber harvesting duties to fight at the front at times when the attrition was so great that they couldn’t get regular soldiers to the front quickly enough. That’s where Dad met General Patton who asked my Dad if he could have some of his tobacco and rolling papers complaining that the British cigarettes were like smoking horse sh#%. Dad told me many hair raising situations they got into during December and January of 1944/45. I have read many History books about the battle of the Bulge but have never seen the CFC mentioned even though the Americans and the British got all their lumber from the portable sawmills that were following the troops to be where the lumber was needed.
The Italian Campaign report was somewhat skewed since it only mentioned the Cdn 1st Inf Div which was joined after Sicily by the 5th Armd Div to form the 1St Cdn Corps.
The Black Watch from Montreal got destroyed in the Sheldt
Yes, they did, but have never been forgotten!!
Check out the RCAFs role especially the Second Tactical Air Force in bombing V1 and V2 rocket launchers.
My father was one of the Canadian Tank corps in Italy. His tank was bogged down in mud and they couldn’t move their position for four months.
One of my great grandparents was taken a POW in the dieppe raid. I know one other was a motor cycle messenger and the other was the commander of a tank in North Africa and later France
Look up Camp X and Sir William Stephenson
The Great War channel has a few great Canadian WWI videos. A famous Canadian artist took part, and our top general Arthur Currie was one of the top generals of the war. Also check out Francis Pegamagabow, the top sniper of WWI.
I've always been proud that Canada was the first nation to choose not to develop nuclear weapons, even though they had the ability to do so.
Because Newfoundland and Labrador had not joined confederation at that time, the troops were under British command.. It remains an important part of N&L history and yet it is rarely taught across Canada. ua-cam.com/video/T-Q3FFPTAQE/v-deo.html
In highschool I had the chance to take a school trip to France and part of the tour had us attending the mass grave site of those brave Newfoundlanders laying at rest there. It was mind-boggling to see the amount of headstones there. I was 16 at the time and am now 65. It has been burned in my memory ever since...
Churchill in both WWI and WWII, as well as Montgomery in WWII used our brave and highly trained troops as canon fodder. When they didn't want to risk the UK troops they sent in the Canadians. In the long run, our men and women will never, in our minds and hearts take a back seat to anyone. At home and in battle, Canadians surpassed all that was expected of us and earned the right to forever hold our heads high. Others may not remember or bother to learn about our valour; but, we Canadians know and will never forget. As for Churchill and Montgomery, they can rot for what they did. They deserve even less.
One other point: The USA waited until they realised the Axis was losing before Congress agreed to enter the war on the side of the Empire. All the bravado of saving the world cannot cover up the facts.
Canada entered the battle: WWI beginning August 4, 1914, for WWII September 10, 1939, and December 7, 1941 (Japan), for WWII and the USA for WWI on April 6, 1917, and December 8, 1941, [a full day after Pearl Harbour and Canada joining] for WWII. Quite a difference between each country for both WWI and WWII. Had the USA entered the war when the rest of us did, the war would have been short-lived and we would not have lost so many women and men. Canadians also remember that. Chimo
Grandfather was a member of the Ontario Regiment out of Oshawa Ont (Armored). He was taken out of the war during the crawl up the Italian peninsula. As for the Canadians murdered in Normandy, a few were from one of my first reserve units. (SD&G Highlanders) A disgusting act.
enjoyed this, but boy he sure is a fast talker😂
Mert, you're more Canadian than most. Especially, pronouncing Newfoundland correctly. Drop over for a beer!
My father fought in the Italian campaign. He fought his way north into Italy from the summer of 1943 to early 1945. vale un centesimo. Very effective truck driver.
I didn’t know the Canadian design of the nuclear reactor was used. I thought providing the uranium was our contribution. The is also Camp X plus Canadians were involved in the Battle of Britain. I’m surprised that wasn’t included.
The RCAF Is celebrating its Centennial this year, 100years. On Nuclear development that was done at Chalk River. You should look it up and see it's connection to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
I'm so proud to be Canadian
You should look up the the battle of Ortona.
The Battle of Bowmanville. The only battle fought on Canadian soil in WW II.
Battle of the st Lawrence
Man, this guy speaks quick asf.
I speak french but i know my english, and I had to slow the video by 10% xd.
I think some German soldier had said, we were worried about the Russians...But we were scared shitless of the Canadians..
I love your content. I hope you keep it up.
We have ALWAYS been proud of our soldiers and their valient efforts during a war. Our soldiers were feared by the Germans.
George Beurling ( The Falcon of Malta ) Canadian air force ace pilot ...
Darlington, Pickering and Bruce are/were the largest nuclear generating stations in the world
Sadly since the British and Americans wrote most of the history books our efforts and troops are often not mentioned.
my great grandmother built bombs in a GM factory during WWII, everyone played a part
My Grt Uncle, though English fought as a Canadian in WW1, 47th Batt. CEF....He suffered a serious head wound and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital in London Ontario. That is until he died by drinking corrosive acid in 1927.....Weather on purpose or not I do not know...but it is said to have been suicide.
You are welcome. We are Canadian. That's how we roll.
Canadians were the spearhead for many US and Allied operations. We just were not given credit !
Scotty from the original star trek was a canadian vet
Holy crap Mert, read up about The Dambusters.
I am most proud of the Canadian contribution to the BCATP (British Commonwealth Air Training Plan). A close second would be the fielding of First Canadian Army when the former was meant to be the main contribution. Respect to the RCN 3rd largest fleet in the world circa 1945. And lest we forget the bravest of them all the men of the merchant marine!
Monty wasn't liked is well known but i think there was some Canadians fighting to capture Rome that weren't very happy with with Clarke and the Yanks either!
I could be mistaken, but Canada was also a major training ground for allied pilots. There is a story (rumor) that bombing training was done on the Saskatchewan river by dropping oranges on mesh 'boats' in the river.
Yep. Lot of flying schools in Ontario too.
Hey my brother, you’re still looking at Canadians. Why don’t you come and visit us? Don’t worry about the mountain lions and the Bears and the moose and the wolves and the coyotes in the Wolverines you’ll be just fine.
...just stay away from the frick'n Cobra-Chickens, eh? They will honk the soul out of you.
Canada did all this and more but the thing that makes us so Canadian is we did the jobs saw them through and didn't ask for recognition or brag about it which was the coolest part......
Perhaps to a fault. We’re only now hearing some of the stories of what our soldiers accomplished.