From Batoche to Kandahar: Canada’s Sacrifices for Peace

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

There is a grave on a riverbank near Batoche, Saskatchewan. It contains the remains of a soldier from Ontario who died in 1885 under General Middleton during the last battle of the Northwest Rebellion. It has been tended for almost 150 years by the Métis families whose ancestors had fought against him. His name was Gunner William Phillips and he was 19 years old.

Up a dirt road in the Boshof District of Free State, South Africa is a memorial garden in which are buried the 34 bodies of Canadians killed at the Battle of Paardeberg in 1900. They fell driving a Boer kommando off the heights where they had been dug in and inflicting severe casualties on the British forces below. Private Zachary Richard Edmond Lewis of the Royal Canadian Regiment lies there. He was the son of Millicent Lewis and was 27 years old.

On April 22, 1915 the German army launched its first poison gas attack on Allied trenches near Ypres, Belgium during the First World War. When French troops on their flanks broke and ran, the 1^st Canadian Division stood fast amid the chlorine cloud and repelled their attackers, suffering 2,000 casualties in the process. On the grave of Private Arthur Ernest Williams of the 8^th Battalion are the words “Remember, He Who Yields His Life is a Soldier and a Man.” Private Williams was 16 years old.

When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941, Canadian troops from the Winnipeg Grenadiers were there to resist them. Among them was Sergeant-Major J.R. Osborn whose men were surrounded and subject to grenade attacks. Osborn caught several of these and flung them back but when one could not be retrieved in time he threw himself on the grenade as it exploded trying to save his men. His body was never found after the battle but his name is inscribed on a monument in Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery.

In the hills south of Algiers is Dely Ibrahim Cemetery. This is where they buried the body of RCAF Pilot Officer John Michael Quinlan after the crash of his Wellington bomber in March, 1944. He was a movie-star handsome student from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and my father’s best friend in the squadron. I carry his family name as my middle name as does my little grand-daughter.

The Kandahar Cenotaph in the Afghanistan Memorial Hall at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa honours those Canadians who died fighting Islamic terrorists. 158 stones are bearing the faces of the soldiers who were repatriated from where they fell and now are buried in graves in their home communities across the country. One of those stones commemorates Warrant Officer Gaétan Joseph Francis Maxime Roberge of the Royal 22^nd Regiment who is buried in a cemetery in Sudbury. He was 45 when he was killed by a bomb. He left behind a wife, an 11-year-old daughter and twin 6-year-old girls.

On November 11, we pause to remember the 118,000 Canadian men and women who died fighting, among others, Fenian invaders, Islamic jihadis in Sudan, the armies of Kaiser Wilhelm, Benito Mussolini, and Imperial Japan, Nazi SS Panzer regiments, Chinese and North Korean forces, ethnic warlords in the Balkans, and the Taliban. They died in North Atlantic convoys, in French trenches, in primitive field hospitals, on beaches in Normandy, in the air over England, on frozen hills in Korea, in jungle POW camps, on peace-keeping duty in Cyprus, in the Medak Pocket in Croatia, and in the mountain passes of Afghanistan. We also remember the hundreds of thousands more who returned home alive, but mutilated, shattered in body and mind, the families deprived of sons, fathers, and brothers, and the communities who lost teachers, hockey players, volunteers, pastors, nurses, and neighbours.

We remember them because in honouring their memory we honour the values on which Canada was built. They did not die to create a Canadian empire, acquire foreign territory or satisfy some ruler’s grandiosity; they fought and suffered to protect parliamentary democracy, freedom of expression and religion, a tolerant society, and the right to live in peace.

On November 11, let us be clear that the prosperity and tranquility enjoyed today by North Americans, Europeans, South Koreans, Japanese, Indians, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Filipinos, etc., etc., were purchased with the blood of heavily-armed men in military uniform, many of them with maple leaf patches on their shoulders. A country which is contemptuous towards its duty to maintain its armed forces, where schools forbid personnel in service dress from attending remembrance assemblies lest their presence makes children and parents “feel unsafe,” or where Forces chaplains are instructed to avoid religious language or symbols in services commemorating our dead, is a nation lost to its memories and unlikely to have much of a future.

KILLED IN ACTION. BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ANGUS & MARY MAUD MACDONALD,

Nursing Sister Katherine MacDonald, Canadian Army Nursing Service, May 19th 1918

HE WOULD GIVE HIS DINNER TO A HUNGRY DOG AND GO WITHOUT HIMSELF.

Gunner Charles Douglas Moore, Canadian Anti-Aircraft Battery, September 19th 1917

BREAK, DAY OF GOD, SWEET DAY OF PEACE, AND BID THE SHOUT OF WARRIORS CEASE.

Sergeant Wellesley Seymour Taylor, 14th Battalion, May 1st 1916

Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

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Why we keep getting Remembrance Day wrong

Published on November 11, 2025

Todayville

This article supplied by Troy Media.

By Pat Murphy

Remembrance Day once honoured soldiers for their courage and conviction, but the values they fought for have long since been rejected

With the untimely death of Tim Cook on Oct. 25, Canada lost a valued historian. Military history was Cook’s oeuvre, and the First World War was a particular specialty. His ability to marry academic rigour with accessible storytelling made him a relatively rare bird.

Naturally, Cook wrote about battles, military commanders and political leaders. But he was also fascinated with ordinary soldiers, scouring the archives for personal letters from the front and other material to develop an understanding of what
motivated the soldiers and how they managed the day-to-day horrors of prolonged trench warfare in an environment characterized by cold, mud, lice and rats, not to mention the ever-present spectre of violent death.

Camaraderie was critical. To quote from an interview with Cook: “one of the ways they cope is to create their own tribe, their own group that is insulated from everyone else.”

All of which brings us to Remembrance Day.

Although formally recognized as “remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve our country during times of war, conflict and peace,” both the origins and iconography of Remembrance Day relate to the First World War. There’s the two-minute silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to observe the formal end of hostilities in 1918; the playing of the Last Post; and, of course, the ubiquitous red poppies.

The conflict wasn’t post Confederation Canada’s first military endeavour, but its scale dwarfed anything that came before it, and only the subsequent Second World War was a comparable event. Some 620,000 Canadians served between 1914 and 1918 and approximately 60,000 were killed. To get a sense of scale, adjust the fatalities for population growth and it would be comfortably north of 300,000 today.

In War: How Conflict Shaped Us, Margaret MacMillan notes the long history of cultures elevating personal characteristics associated with battlefield success, honouring bravery, endurance, toughness and the willingness to face death. It’s been pretty much a universal characteristic.

Nor should we think of war as only a male activity driven by patriarchal social structures. While it’s true that military hierarchies are traditionally male and the fighting in most wars has been done largely by men, women have always played
a key role in reinforcing the culture.

We, though, have become somewhat uncomfortable with the warrior ethos. Take, for instance, In Flanders Fields. Written in 1915 by Guelph’s John McCrae, the poem has acquired iconic status over the decades. It’s haunting and melancholy, sufficiently so to grab at your throat and send shivers down your spine. It’s also become inextricably intertwined with Remembrance Day.

There is, however, a small problem. While we now view the First World War as senseless carnage, In Flanders Fields has a very different perspective. As the third and final stanza makes unequivocally clear, the poem’s message isn’t about the war’s futility—it’s about the need to keep the faith and carry on to victory.

Much the same can be said about the music associated with the era. Those songs written in recent decades stress the sadness and futility of it all, but the actual popular music of the time was cheerful, patriotic and resolute.

Rather than seeing the soldiers as they were, we insist on recasting them as victims. Stripping them of personal agency, we ignore the fact that 80 per cent of them were volunteers, people who, for various reasons, chose to go to war.

So what motivated them?

Many were surely lured by the male affinity for adventure, compounded by patriotic fervour and enthusiastic loyalty to the concept of king and empire, however incomprehensible or disreputable the latter may now seem to us. There was also the buzz of an environment where the usual social norms regarding life, death and destruction had either vanished or become significantly attenuated. In her book, MacMillan documents how some found the whole experience “vastly exciting.”

Acknowledging this shouldn’t be confused with cheerleading. As I’ve previously written on more than one occasion, I think Britain’s reluctant decision to enter the First World War was a tragic error on many fronts. And if Britain had stood aside, Canada wouldn’t have been involved.

But respectfully remembering those who died shouldn’t be confused with turning them into something they were not. They weren’t hapless victims—they were people with beliefs and values of their own, even if we no longer look at the world in the same way they did.

Troy Media columnist Pat Murphy casts a history buff’s eye at the goings-on in our world. Never cynical – well, perhaps a little bit.

Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.

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What A Second World War Aircraft Taught Me About Remembrance Day

Published on November 11, 2025

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Michel Maisonneuve

Sitting inside a B-25 showed me why Remembrance Day isn’t something we can take lightly

Here I was, sitting in the rear gun turret of our Mitchell B-25 bomber, with all my senses on guard and my head on a swivel. The day was clear, the sky could not be bluer, and the danger of enemy fighters coming at us with the sun at their back was almost a certainty.

Luckily, we had just finished our bombing run and were on our way back to base. Our experienced pilot, Major David Rohrer, co-pilot Liam Pearson, and flight engineer Jessica Side had managed to get us to the target unscathed, and we now only had to cross the water to make it home.

Suddenly, Dave had to take evasive action, jerking the plane up and to the right in an almost barrel roll. Cool as cucumbers, the rest of the crew stayed silent as they hung on while I continued to marvel at the incredible manoeuvrability of the B-25.

With 18 machine guns and a full bomb load, the B-25 was a true workhorse. Built in 1945 in Missouri, it showed just how multi-purpose the aircraft could be.

All of this was taking place in Canada last July in the country’s only airworthy B-25 Mitchell, flown out of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario. The pilot was the museum’s CEO and the crew were volunteers. The target was Niagara Falls, then downtown Toronto (where we flew virtually at the same height as the CN Tower) and the body of water was Lake Ontario..

The experience showed the aircraft’s capabilities, but more importantly, it revealed the challenges faced by Canadian and Allied crews in the Second World War. They worked in noisy, cramped spaces that were too hot in summer and too cold in winter; faced constant danger from enemy aircraft and ground-based flak; dodged fighters and often returned with planes full of holes; flew mission after mission with little rest; and lived with the burden of seeing friends shot down or wounded.

This is what our forefathers went through. This is why we still remember and why we need to continue to honour the generations that came before and who fought for Canada and for our values. The Royal Canadian Air Force was born in 1924, 101 years ago. Its members fought gallantly alongside the Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Forces, and many Canadians also flew in RAF and other Commonwealth units.

We owe them a debt that cannot be repaid. All we can do is make sure future generations will remember them, honour them, and stand ready to take their place in the next conflict.

Freedom is not free. It is paid for by the blood of men and women warriors prepared to pick up the torch. Warriors who have no cause except that of freedom, equality, and the protection of all.

As U.S. Army general Douglas MacArthur, who led Allied forces in the Pacific during the Second World War, said, “The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”

This Remembrance Day, and at other times, let us remember and thank those who suffered wounds and scars, but let us also rededicate ourselves to follow their brave example.

Michel Maisonneuve is a retired lieutenant-general who served Canada for 45 years. He is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of In Defence of Canada: Reflections of a Patriot (2024).