Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany posed a double threat to Canadian Jews. The German dictatorship threatened the freedom and democracy of all Canadians. For Jews, it also threatened their very existence. Despite antisemitism in Canada, thousands of Jewish Canadians joined the armed forces. They served in a proportion comparable to that of the general Canadian...

Canada was the world’s “aerodrome of democracy” according to President Franklin Roosevelt. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) was easily one of Canada’s top contributions to victory in the Second World War. Part of the wider Empire Air Training Plan, in Canada, the BCATP laid the foundations for the training of over 131,500 aircrew...

The Second World War was a mechanized, total war. What happened on the front line depended on the home front. World economies were mobilized on both sides to produce the equipment, ammunition, and supplies needed for victory. Canada’s war production was critical to the Allied triumph in 1945. By war’s end, the nation was fourth...

Too Young to Die. That’s the title of the second volume in Dan Black and John Boileau’s book series on underage Canadians in the World Wars. Much like in the First World War, boys as young as fourteen sought to do their bit in the war against the dictators of the 1930s and 1940s. In...

Seventy-five years ago, Canadian troops spearheaded the liberation of Europe. The 1st Canadian Infantry Division — supported by the 1st Canadian Army Tank Brigade and airmen from the Royal Canadian Air Force — surged ashore at Pachino, in the island of Sicily’s southeast corner. What followed was a hard campaign against a determined enemy in...

Vimy Ridge gave us our their pride; Juno Beach gave us our identity. That’s the message Desaree Rosskopf, the Juno Beach Centre’s 2017/2018 fellow, shares on the latest episode of Juno Beach & Beyond. Tune in as she recounts the varying experiences and memories of Canada’s Battle of Normandy in 1944.

After D-Day, Canadians stopped the only Panzer counterattack that mattered, a story only pieced together 70 years later. Our first guest, Marc Milner, joins us to share “the critical role Canadians played in the planning, in the deception, and in the actual fighting on the ground” in Normandy.