Tag Archives: World War II
Truly Random Thoughts For Your Sunday
Watching the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the National War Memorial on television Friday I was struck once more with the passage of time. When I was younger, the elderly veterans at the cenotaph were my grandfather’s generation, men who had fought in the First World War. Those men are long dead. It has been 71 […]
Waiting On Juno Beach
I am away until the end of May. Until I get back I am re-posting some favourites so you don’t miss me too much. They knew it was coming. Not the exact date or time, but there was a sense of inevitability. One day they would look out of the bunker and the English Channel […]
A Sea of Tulips
After three days of reflections on the March For Life I still have more to say, but I thought you might appreciate something a bit lighter today. Think of it as a form of Sabbath rest. The ties between Canada and Holland are renewed every spring on both sides of the Atlantic. The Dutch remember […]
V.E. Day
On the television news all week you have probably seen them. Old men, their chests covered in medals, on the streets of Holland, there to celebrate the anniversary of the Liberation and to visit the graves of their fallen comrades, one last time. Seventy years ago today the guns fell silent in Europe with the […]
The Costs of War
When we toured the First World War battlefields in the Ypres area of Belgium last summer, the enormity of the human toll was apparent. The numbers are staggering. Daily casualty figures were measured in hundreds or thousands as more than a half a million men died in combat on Flanders fields in four years of […]
More Lies
Someone sent me this photo last year, I don’t remember who, but I remember how much I laughed when I saw it. The card on the bulletin board reads: During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of […]
They Are Lying To You
In our post-modern world Truth seems to have become a relative where it once was an absolute. Perhaps this is a logical consequence of the progression of communications methods during the 20th century. Certainly looking at wartime posters on display in a couple of European museums this past summer I was struck by the simplicity […]
An Extraordinary Story
I have mentioned before that wall plaques in the places I visit pique my interest, and that was certainly the case at St. George’s Memorial Church in Ypres. The church, built after the First World War for those Anglophones working in the area, was funded entirely by memorial donations, recorded on the brass plaques. It […]
Memories of War
Like most Canadians, I think of war as rather a remote thing. It has been a long time since a war was fought on Canadian soil. Oh there has been the odd skirmish, rebellions in the Canadian west in 1870 and 1885 as well as in both Upper and Lower Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) […]
Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy
When we visited the Juno Beach Centre I came away with a feeling of not having heard the whole story. Don’t get me wrong – we thoroughly enjoyed the Centre and spent about six hours exploring it and the Beach. But I felt like something was missing. The Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy, […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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