Canadian Historic Moments

Discussion in 'Canada' started by U311reasearcher, Apr 5, 2009.

  1. Here are a few short videos, each about a Canadian moment of history during WW2.


    1) Andrew Mynarski- Play Video:

    Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski was the mid-upper gunner of a Lancaster bomber, attacking a target at Cambrai, France, on the night of 12 June 1944. The aircraft came under fire from an enemy fighter. The pilot ordered the crew to bail out. In an act of heroism, Mynarski remained onboard the fiery plane, determined to save his friend.

    The son of Polish immigrants, Andrew Mynarski grew up in the North End of Winnipeg. In 1932 he left school and took a job as a leather cutter to help support the family. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941 and in January 1943 was posted to England.

    Mynarski was serving with 419 "Moose" Squadron when his plane was shot down. Preparing to jump from the blazing airplane, he saw that the rear gunner, Pat Brophy, was trapped in his gun turret, struggling to break free. Immediately, Mynarski turned from the escape hatch and made his way back through the flames, ignoring his friend's shouts of, "Go back! Save yourself!" After numerous attempts to release Brophy, Mynarski reluctantly make his way back to the hatch. His parachute and clothes ablaze, he offered his friend a final gesture of encouragement: he stood at attention and saluted. He jumped, but succumbed to his burns soon after landing.

    Miraculously, Brophy survived the crash. The plane hit a tree as it crashed to earth, breaking open the gun turret and throwing him free. He thus lived to tell of Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski's bravery. Andrew Mynarski was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for his effort to save another's life.

    2) Juno Beach- Play Video

    On the evening of D-Day, musician and broadcaster Johnny Lombardi boosts morale on the edge of a Normandy beach by entertaining the troops with a rendition of a familiar Canadian song.

    On 6 June 1944, British, American, Polish, and Canadian forces poured across the English Channel and landed at Normandy to oust German forces from France. The assault began under the cover of nightfall. The Channel crossing was rough, with waves some 2 metres high and many of the men were seasick. Above, the Royal Canadian Air Force and other Allied aircraft could be heard across the night skies. By dawn, as engines roared and bombs exploded, the landing craft were launched. In a matter of minutes, 130,000 men would be landing on French soil. The Canadians were given the responsibility of taking one of the beaches, code named Juno. The first wave ashore encountered fierce opposition, but the Canadians triumphed and captured the city of Caen on 9 July and Falaise on 16 August.

    Johnny Lombardi was born in downtown Toronto to Italian parents in 1915. He was not a solider by trade but an entrepreneur and a musician, playing big band music in dance halls across Ontario. In 1942 he enlisted in the Canadian Army and soon found himself stationed in Europe as a Canadian Army Sergeant. Upon his return to Toronto, he realized there was a niche market for Canada’s many immigrants. In 1966 he founded CHIN Radio, a station devoted to multicultural programming. The song mentioned in the Minute, "I’ll Never Smile Again" was the work of Ruth Lowe a Toronto-born songwriter. This song captured the wartime sentiments of soldiers and their loved ones and soon became one of the most popular songs of the Second World War. The song was covered by Frank Sinatra and became his first great hit in 1940.

    Over 10 000 Canadian sailors and 110 Canadian ships took place in the D-Day landings of 1944. And, in June 1994, Johnny was invited by the Prime Minister of Canada to attend the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Normandy Invasion. CHIN Radio continues to broadcast today in over 30 languages.


    3) John Osborn- Play Video

    Canada’s role in World War II stretched beyond the battlefields of Europe. Canadian troops fought on land, in the air and on the seas in France, the Netherlands, Italy, North Africa and Hong Kong. It was in Hong Kong that Warrant Officer John Osborn, the Company Sergeant-Major, sacrificed his own life to save the lives of others.

    In 1940, the British regarded their crown colony of Hong Kong as expendable in the event of war with Japan. Yet as Japanese troops began to attack in 1941, the Canadian government agreed to send the Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, although they were declared officially unfit for action. In spite of this, the troops fought valiantly in defence of Hong Kong.

    During the morning of 19 December, a company of the Grenadiers led by Osborn became divided during an attack on Mount Butler. Osborn led part of the company to capture the hill. Outnumbered, they managed to hold it for three hours but were forced to withdraw. Osborn and a small group covered the retreat and when their turn came to fall back, Osborn single-handedly engaged the enemy, coming under heavy enemy fire as he assisted his men to rejoin the company. In the afternoon, cut off from the battalion, the company was surrounded by the enemy. Several enemy grenades were thrown towards them, which the soldiers picked up and threw back. Suddenly, a grenade landed in a position where it was impossible to return it in time. To protect his troops, Osborn threw himself on the grenade, and was killed instantly.

    Of 1975 Canadians who were sent to Hong Kong, 557 were killed or died in prison camps. Political pressure at home forced the Canadian government to appoint a royal commission to investigate the circumstances of Canada's involvement in this area of WWII. For his act of bravery, Osborn was posthumously awarded Hong Kong’s only Victoria Cross.

    4) Marion Orr- Play Video

    Owing to the male-biased Service regulations of the time, the wishes of Canadian women pilots to fly with the RCAF during World War II were generally shot down. Nevertheless, as least one Canadian woman managed to fly military aircraft. Marion Orr paid for her own flying lessons in 1941, then went off to England where she got a position with the Air Transport Auxiliary ferry service, moving combat planes between airfields. By October 1944 she had accumulated 700 flying hours on 67 different types of planes.

    "It was a continual challenge to fly so many different types," she recalled. "But an airplane is an airplane; maybe different speeds, different knobs, heavier, but that didn't bother me at all." After the war, Marion Orr returned to Canada and opened her own flying school. Some years later she became Canada's first woman helicopter pilot, gave helicopter lessons, and occasionally flew patrols for the Ontario Provincial Police. She received the Order of Canada in 1986, and was still flying at age 76. Marion Orr's long and colourful career in aviation ended in April, 1995, when she was killed in an automobile accident.

    The principal role of the RCAF Women's Division was to free males for combat duties. Marion Orr was one of a small number of women who flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary, a separate agency that moved aircraft from base to base in England.

    5) Mona Parsons- Play Video

    Mona Louise Parsons was born in 1901 in Nova Scotia. Although Parsons never wore a uniform, she was willing to lay her life on the line for her country and for freedom. And she very nearly lost her life when she was arrested by the Gestapo near Amsterdam in September 1941, for assisting downed Allied airmen.

    As a young woman, Parsons moved to New York City in 1929 to pursue an acting career. Soon after, she met Dutch millionaire Willem Leonhardt and they were married in 1937. They moved to Holland where they prospered until the Nazis invaded in 1940. The couple became part of the resistance and defied the Nazis by repatriating downed Allied airmen. An informer gave them away in 1941 and Parsons was condemned to death. She appealed her sentence and had it commuted to life in prison. Parsons was interned in Vechta prison where she met a young baroness, Wendelien van Boetzelaer.

    In 1945, Vechta prison was heavily bombed when the Allies pushed across the Rhein. Parsons and van Boetzelaer seized the opportunity to escape and devised a plan to get back across Germany without being captured. For weeks the two women made their way by posing as German sisters. Parsons' acting skills were invaluable as she feigned a speech impediment to mask her inauthentic German accent. At the Dutch border, the pair became separated. Parsons continued on her own and eventually met a Canadian unit, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders.

    Parsons received a commendation for her war effort from British Air Marshal Lord Tedder and US president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Still, few Canadians are aware of Parsons’ bravery and sacrifice. The headstone that marks her grave in Wolfville's Willowbank Cemetery remembers her only as "wife of..." her second husband, Major General Harry Foster. Of Mona Parsons' bravery and sacrifice, the stone remains silent.

    6) Home from the Wars-Play Video

    Following World War II, after having served their country for the long, horrible years of the war, service personnel wanted only to re-establish their civilian lives and set up households with their families. The return of more than a million Canadians to peacetime life created a housing demand that the private sector could not meet. The federal government was challenged to meet the need for a rehabilitation program to assist ex-service members. Social housing in Canada has its origins in the demand for such a program.

    Although the federal government did build housing for veterans of World War I, it was in 1935 that the foundation of a federal housing agency was laid, with the Dominion Housing Act. By 1938, the Act had helped finance almost 5,000 homes. During World War II, the Wartime Housing Corporation built 46,000 homes and renovated thousands more. After the war, the sudden huge demand for housing required further action on the government’s part. In 1946 the government created the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), a federal agency that continues today.

    Housing in the post-WWII years consisted largely of the family bungalow. They were spartan by today’s standards — small, more or less insulated, heated by hot-air furnaces and with few appliances or conveniences.

    These little houses became homes for generations of Canadians. Every city in Canada has sections where victory homes still stand, their importance to a generation of service members perhaps unknown by their current inhabitants. They are visible reminders of a time long ago when the government acted to support the men and women who served the nation.
     

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