Happy Canada Day

I think I'd take this a step further and remember every Canadian who ever laced on a pair of Army boots, picked up a rifle and took the Queen's shilling over the past 200 years.

The efforts and sacrifices of our citizens in uniform have largely made us what we are and have marked our place in the world, although most of the "e-generation" are only dimly aware of this nowadays.
 
Hear, hear. Thanks for starting this thread, RTS.

Everyone on this board can likely all point to a relative, or several, who stepped away from home and safety and into harm's way.

For me, it's my paternal grandfather who signed up with the 226th Battalion (Men of the North) as a 17-year old and served as a runner in the final two years of the Great War, and my maternal grandfather, who served with the Canadian Scottish (Princess Mary's) in the Second World War.

We owe them, and the countless thousands like them before and since, a great deal.
 
Rule 303 said:
Happy DOMINION Day, right back at ya!

Let's not forget Beaument Hamel as well as the Somme!
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Beaumont Hamel was a part the Somme offensive on that disastrous morning of July 1/1916.

The July Drive. Sent over the top to reinforce a perceived breakthrough that did not in fact exist, they had to attack right out of the communication trenches, as the front line trenches were already blocked with the dead and dying from the 0730 attack.

That sector was by now quieting down from the first failed attacks, and every German machine gun position for a mile up and down the line, concentrated their fire on this new, tiny moving body of men. There were no other targets now on the whole area. A lot were cut down before even reaching their front trench system.

A Major who was interviewed in the 1920's related that the only evidence to those who watched the advance could tell the men were facing such a concentration of fire with so much lead in the air, was "the men tucked their chin into a leading shoulder, as if they were walking into a snow squall back home in some tiny out port community, trying to fight their way home through the blizzard".
801 go over the top, .....68 men all that remained not killed, missing or wounded.
This was played out over and over that morning up and down the British line for 20 kilometers. 57,500 casualties, of which 20,000 were killed.

One sunny morning in the French countryside.
 
After reading this post by RTS last night I did a little reading on this subject.

What a senseless waste. Hard to imagine a whole generation of Newfoundlanders died that day.
 
AdrianM said:
After reading this post by RTS last night I did a little reading on this subject.

What a senseless waste. Hard to imagine a whole generation of Newfoundlanders died that day.
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You know what is really bad? CBC had there Canada day celebrations "coming to you from BC to Nova Scotia"....
 
About 1980 my friend Jack Snow came to me, very upset. He was disturbed because Memorial Day was being overrun by some Liberal thing called Canada Day, which all the Newfies are supposed to love.

The Liberals managed to forget a couple of things:
1. July 1 was already Memorial Day in Newfoundland, honouring the dead of the Great War, and
2. Newfoundland joined Canada on April Fools' Day.
And they very much ignored the fact that Newfoundland joined Canada by TREATY between two equal Dominions, and joined with Dominion status. No matter, Canada has violated every single one of the Articles of Confederation at one time or another. Legally, Newfoundland doesn't even have to stay with Canada if it doesn't want to.

But Jack.... who had Been There and Done That, all the way from Newfoundland to England to Gallipoli to Egypt to France to Flanders to Germany to Russia to Germany to England and back to Newfoundland, was concerned that people might be forgetting under the steady onslaught of Canadian "party hearty" propaganda. The Ottawa Liberals, at this time demonstrating their normal total disregard for any local custom apart from St.-Jean-Baptiste Day, were shipping truckloads of fireworks to Newfoundland to aid in the "celebration" of a day which many people did not even wish to mention. As well, the "day" being slighted just happened to be Newfoundland's national day of mourning. And Jack was upset. So we did something.

I managed to get my hands on a contact print of the ONLY existing photograph of Beaumont-Hamel taken during the fighting. The photo shows Australians occupying the village, but, apart from a handful of bricks, there is no village to be seen. There is a pile in one spot, about 12 feet high: that is the Church. So what to do to wake people up a bit?

As it happened, midsummer is not a great time for advertising in Newfoundland papers (the increasing rush starts in late August and builds until Christmas) and so, on press day, I had about 60% of Page 2 open: nothing on it at all. So I took my little bit of type over to Wilf House in Typography and told him what I wanted, then took my photograph out to Photomechanical to Reg the Magician. Reg was definitely a magician but he also occupied a part of reality from time to time. He pointed out that we needed 600% magnification on the small photograph... and that the big stat camera was only capable of 300%. To halftone the photo TWICE (which would be required) would introduce a dot interference factor which would manifest as a monstrous Moire pattern overlying and defacing the entire picture. So I suggested the impossible..... and Reg did it. He shot the photograph onto PMT material at 200% with a 100-line halftone screen, then shot the PMT at 300% WITHOUT a screen. The finished photograph came out at 600%, which was the exact size we needed it..... and LOOKING LIKE an original War-time photograph because the HALFTONE itself had been magnified and now was a 32-line screen: JUST like the original newspaper pictures of the period.

We slapped the photo onto the bottom half of Page 2 and applied the overlay with the huge black lettering: "THIS WAS BEAUMONT-HAMEL....." and the casualty figures for that terrible assault. The ad ended with a reminder that July 1 is Memorial Day in Newfoundland and suggesting (actually challenging) people to show their respect.

Attendance at that year's Memorial Day service was the largest since the end of the Korean War.

That felt good.
.......................................................................................................................

The Big Push lasted 4-1/2 months.

On its first day, it killed as many men as the whole 11 years of the Viet-Nam War.

And then it kept on killing......

Worth remembering........
.
 
Rule 303 said:
Happy DOMINION Day, right back at ya!
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Right on. Dominion Day it is. What is this pansy "ka-NADA day"? It sounds like some Liberal slight of hand politically cleansed version of our nation's birthday. No it IS a Liberal slight of hand politically cleansed version of our nation's birthday.
 
"Gentlemen, when the barrage lifts." Toast in British officer's mess 30 June 1916 and reprinted in the memoriam section of "The Times" for decades.
 
I remember it ( not celibrate it ) as Memorial Day . Run the Jack at half staff and visit the War Memorial on Duckworth Street in St.John's . Nice to see a good turnout yesterday . Esspecially nice to have a chat with the Vets . Then I celibrate Canada Day not forgetting all who have served (why this is such a great country ) My grandfather went over the top that morning at Beaumont-Hamel , answered the roll call next morning with 67 of his buddies , left his cousin on the battlefield MIA . He's still there .
 
We've come far enough that our national day should be called Canada Day. Sure, some of us grew up with Dominion Day and the Union Jack and Red Ensign, but we have long ceased to be a dominion of anyone and have evolved to a point where most living Canadians just could'n't relate to this idea.

I well remember the great flag debate of 1964/65 when the decision was made to adopt our own distinctive flag, rather than continue to use the Red Ensign. Emotions were pretty heated, to the point where one of our neighbours took great satisfaction from giving his TV set both barrels from his 12 ga when Lester Pearson was speaking in favour of the Maple Leaf flag:eek:. I'm no liberal, but I spent most of my 32 years of service under the Maple Leaf and was happy to do so. That said, I still have trouble weaning myself off calling 11 November Armistice Day instead of Remembrance Day.
 
People today have no idea of the extent to which the federal Liberals have changed their country and its traditions, all for pure political gain, mostly in Quebec and Ontario.

For one thing there is the myth of the "British monarchy" costing Canada too much. In truth, the Monarchy costs us precisely NOTHING. The only expense of the Monarchy is a purely private one: the annual rent paid by the Hudson's Bay Company for its grant of Rupert's Land. This can be paid in kind or (usually) cash and was fixed in the Charter..... in 1670.

The Liberals said that Canada had no national anthem. We did have one, "The Maple Leaf Forever". Certainly, the FIRST verse had to do with the taking of Quebec, but the OTHER verses had French and English Canadians fighting for their homes, side-by-side. What the hell is anti-Quebec about us all working together? So they brought in "O Canada", which is a rousing ethnocentric anthem in French..... and a boring, meaningless trudge in English. It served, and still serves, to divide us along ethnic lines..... and the "sales Anglos" don't even know it!

Then they had to get rid of the "British" flag but what they actually got rid of was the Red Ensign, used in Canada since at least 1882, distinctively and exclusively OURS by Royal proclamation since before the Great War and recognised worldwide as Canada's flag in at least FOUR overseas wars. For this, they substituted a red maple leaf on a white ground: the Liberal Party emblem. Any BLUE was deliberately kept off the flag because that was the Conservative Party's colour. And a RED maple leaf is a DEAD maple leaf; I was brought up in a part of Canada where the classic Sugar Maple cannot grow, and even I knew that much. The Liberals wanted just the red leaf on a white ground, but this is impossible heraldically (a "cloth" colour cannot be imposed upon a "metal" colour) so they altered the Peruvian naval ensign into the thing that hangs on the flagpoles today. Interestingly, the current flag was the only one (of more than 100 alternatives proposed) which was approved by the Communist Party of Canada.

As to the "Great Flag Debate", the whole thing was a sham, start to finish. Air Canada had the tails of their DC-8s painted white with a red maple leaf, 43 feet high, long before it was passed (in a forced vote) by Parliament. The planes were run into the hangar at Vancouver International out on Sea Island and painted there. I was working for CP Air at the time, so we all knew what the new flag was going to be before Pearson even introduced the thing into Parliament.

"Canada Day" is much the same. Canada was here and is here and will be here long after the last Liberal politician has finished wasting air. July 1, for Canada, is DOMINION DAY and marks the anniversary of Canada having received Dominion Status: complete internal self-government within the British Commonwealth of Nations. Pretty important.

Yeah, I guess it's time to 'fess up: I took my Oath under the Canadian Red Ensign and I have never gone back on it. Nor have I sworn to that "Safeway flag"..... and I never will.

You guys can have "Canada Day" and your Liberal Red flag; I'll have Dominion Day and the REAL flag........ and we'll all get along.

I hope.

Happy Dominion Day, guys and gals!
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smellie

Thanks for elucidating so clearly my sentiments about Dominion Day and the Red Ensign.

A post like yours, with a mix of historical fact and empirical experience, is most invaluable.
 
Smellie,.. thank you for that piece of history regarding what you guys did in regards to July1st, memorial day,that was incredible example of our thoughts and beliefs can be as high ,and as mighty, as the powers to be would lead you to believe theirs are, and the dissertation on the actual origins of the Maple Leaf is most informative. Cheers RTS

I was born under the Red Ensign, but I love the Maple Leaf as well. Guess it grew on me seeing as I was just starting school when it was new, and very impressionable.
 
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