Memory and Valour

Canada fought a war after the war ended. Between October 1918 and June 1919, this country sent almost five thousand soldiers to Russia; a nation Canada was not at war with, to fight an enemy Canada had never declared...

Twelve days past his 21st birthday, a Winnipeg pilot named Harry V. Smith was shot down over occupied Siam with four secret agents aboard, on the last mission of his tour in May 1945. What followed involves a jungle...

Four hundred and fifty rounds a minute. Seven and a half rounds every second. One London inventor built the Maxim machine gun in 1884 after a friend joked he should help Europeans "cut each other's throats with greater...

On July 1st, 1916, the First Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment went forward at Beaumont-Hamel. Of 801 men, there were 710 casualties in thirty minutes. Every officer down. In this 110th anniversary episode, we...

A thousand men in eight days. A parade square turned into a suburb with four little lakes. A bronze general on a horse that nobody who lives there can name. His name was Griesbach. Edmonton's youngest-ever mayor, son of...

<p>In 1916, a German soldier watched the first tank loom out of the fog and ran for his life, screaming that a crocodile was crawling into the trenches.</p><p>This is the story of the tank on the Western Front, and it's...

<p>One wounded man. Sixty-two prisoners. A quarter-mile of enemy trench. Here's how an Edmonton farmer pulled it off, and why it was genius, not luck.</p><p>On 16 September 1916, on the Somme, Private John Chipman...

<p>Canada entered the First World War without an air force; not a small one, not a token one; none. </p><p>Yet, somehow produced some of the most extraordinary fighter pilots of the entire conflict. </p><p>This episode...

<p>On July 30th, 1915, at a ruined château called Hooge, the German Army turned flamethrowers on British troops for the first time. Within minutes, a battalion broke. Not from shells or gas: from fire.</p><p>In Episode...

<p>At Vimy Ridge, one man’s actions helped secure the line and cost him his life.</p><p>Lance Sergeant Ellis Sifton’s Victoria Cross is often reduced to a single moment of heroism. In this episode, I’m joined by...

<p>They saved lives, but they didn’t always leave the dead alone.</p><p>In the First World War, the Canadian Army Medical Corps stood between life and death, pulling wounded men from the battlefield and fighting to keep...

<p>They joked about dying.</p><p>Not because it was funny, but because it was the only way to survive it.</p><p>In the trenches of the First World War, soldiers turned fear into sarcasm and horror into humour. Shellfire...

<p>April 9th, 1917—Canada stepped onto the world stage at Vimy Ridge.</p><p>For the first time, all four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force advanced together in a single, coordinated assault—executed with...

<p>1915 is the year the war stopped being an "adventure".</p><p>What began as a war of movement and expectation hardened into something far more brutal: static trench lines, failed offensives, and a battlefield...

<p>When the First World War erupted in 1914, Canada answered the call without hesitation. But among those who stepped forward were men who, under Canadian law, were not even recognized as citizens.</p><p>In this episode...