I have always had a soft spot in my heart for that magnificent country in the South Pacific known as New Zealand. I have never been there, no closer than Panama City actually, but its extraordinary natural beauty, rich history and its resilient people I have always admired...

In the early spring of 1942, the fatigued and despondent citizens of Paris, the City of Lights, did not see much light on the horizon to brighten their days or their futures. The sidewalk cafés were crowded with German officers and soldiers, the theaters smelled of German tobacco, …

In early August, the aviation world was stunned to hear that an employee of Horizon Air, a regional airline of Alaska Air Group, had stolen a large twin-engine, multi-million-dollar Q400 aircraft and spent the next hour…

The Second World War was won by the Allies. Of that there is no doubt. It was not because the Allies were more capable, had better equipment or were more courageous, though they held a higher moral position and a determination born of justice. It was simply a numbers game…

The immensity and complexity of the Second World War seems beyond comprehension—a global and total war that reached every corner of the planet—from the remotest of Aleutian Islands to the estuary of the River Plate; from frozen Iceland to steamy Ceylon; from grey Murmansk…

When I was a young boy, I lived in a neighbourhood on the outermost edge of a post-Second World War baby boom growth spurt. The stolid houses of the idyllically named Elmvale Acres were just beginning to seem like they had been there for a while. In my first year of high school, I was aged 12 …

His words are soft, with a stony edge, tinted with Australian and they speak ..

Yesterday, here in Ottawa, it was a typically hot and sweltering summer day, but it felt cold and hard. The cold of a long Canadian winter with no warmth in sight. When a good man dies, the numbness sinks deep…

Just a few days ago, the fuselage of the Vintage Wings of Canada Hurricane Mk XII was pulled from the paint booth wearing her brand-new markings—those once carried by a Hurricane Mk I flown by Canadian Battle of Britain ace Flying Officer …

Yesterday, here in Ottawa, it was a typically hot and sweltering summer day, but it felt cold and hard. The cold of a long Canadian winter with no warmth in sight. When a good man dies, the numbness sinks deep…

I thought long and hard about whether to write anything at all about the recent murders of two of Canada’s proud soldiers by unstable humans who embraced religion and extremism as the final act of fragile and failure-filled lives…

These days, you wouldn’t exactly be wrong if you said that young people know little about the Second World War or the sacrifices their grandparents made during those awful years. You would be right to assume that there has…

The obscenely violent cataclysm we call the Second World War reached deep into the hearts of many social structures and tore from them the very best young boys and men from a generation of sons born to survivors of the First World War…

Spend a few moments on or around this Remembrance Day to read a story from our website about one of our heroes of the Second World War or Cold War. Scroll down, find a story that interests you and click on the image. You will be taken back to a time when duty, honour, leadership, courage, dignity and humility reigned supreme.

If one spends any amount of time researching the stories, memoirs, photo albums, service records, operational record books, logbooks and sound recordings of men and women engaged in the services during the Second World War, one begins to detect…

I’m certain that wherever you live on this tiny planet, it is for you the finest place imaginable. I understand that. That’s why people from Syria don’t really want to become refugees…

Most of us lucky enough to have flown the RCAF's de Havilland Comets had many "interesting" experiences. While having to shut down an engine shortly after departure and dump fuel…

On 15 September 1940, the future of Great Britain was unknown. The Luftwaffe’s Heinkel and Dornier bombers, accompanied by hordes of Messerschmitt fighters, had been hammering cities and airbases on an almost daily basis for more than two…

When the Westland Lysander was first conceived, it offered on paper an exceptional flying platform for reconnaissance, artillery spotting and general liaison duties. Despite its rather strange and perhaps ungainly appearance, the Lysander was…

In the late winter of 1944-45, Warrant Officer Harry Hannah had been sitting, alone, with nothing to warm him but his thoughts, in a small, cold, and damp solitary confinement prison cell in Poland for the worst part of a year…