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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Trump fires chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, appoints new military leader

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Mariane Angela

President Donald Trump announced Friday the dismissal of General Charles Brown, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump expressed his gratitude toward Brown for his extensive contributions and leadership, wishing him and his family a prosperous future. Brown’s departure marks a pivotal moment in U.S. military leadership following over 40 years of service.

“I want to thank General Charles “CQ” Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family,” Trump wrote.

Simultaneously, Trump introduced his nominee for Brown’s successor.

“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a “warfighter” with significant interagency and special operations experience,” Trump said.

Trump said Caine’s appointment comes after he was overlooked for advancement during former President Joe Biden’s presidency.

“General Caine was passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden. But not anymore! Alongside Secretary Pete Hegseth, General Caine and our military will restore peace through strength, put America First, and rebuild our military,” Trump said. President Trump also announced plans to appoint five additional senior military officials, tasks he has delegated to Secretary Hegseth.

It was reported Thursday that Hegseth plans to dismiss Brown as part of President Trump’s commitment to eliminate “wokeness” from the military. Brown reportedly appears on a list of proposed removals submitted to Congress.

Brown had previously expressed his wish to retain his position even after Trump took office, and according to sources speaking to NBC News in Dec. 2024, Trump seemingly moderated his views on the general. Biden nominated Brown as chairman in 2023, and despite a heated confirmation hearing where senators scrutinized his alleged implementation of racial quotas in Air Force hiring practices, he was confirmed.

Meanwhile, Brown’s replacement, Caine, took office as the associate director for Military Affairs at the CIA on Nov. 3, 2021, after serving as the director of Special Programs at the Pentagon. Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, an F-16 pilot with extensive experience including over 150 combat hours, was commissioned in 1990 and has held numerous key roles, from the White House staff to special operations, and balances his military career with entrepreneurial ventures.

armed forces

Canada is not a sovereign nation

Published on February 19, 2025

Todayville

There is no social service more important to the survival of a nation or a people than a robust national defence.

To quote the brilliant Lt. Col. (Ret.) David Redman, who has written extensively on the deplorable state of Canada’s ability to defend itself, quoting an anonymous Greek military philosopher,

“EVERY COUNTRY HAS AN ARMY, EITHER THEIR OWN OR SOME ONE ELSE’S”.

A more modern take on this thought was written by Niccolo Machiavelli in “THE PRINCE” when he observed that:

“THE FLORENTINES WERE EASILY CONQUERED BECAUSE THEY HAD BECOME WEAK AND EFFEMINATE FROM LONG PEACE.”

Machiavelli would be snickering if he knew that Canada has appointed a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion General” to head the Canadian Armed Forces. Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff seems more concerned to ensure that tampons are available in the men’s infantry barracks than she was in insuring that Canada could defend itself or ever meet Canada’s NATO Article 5 obligations. Canada requires AT LEAST 3 divisions of air mobile combat soldiers, with suitable cyber security, surveillance and attack drones, armour, artillery, ground attack air cover, helicopter gunships, and air superiority interception capacity. A naval force capable of asserting arctic sovereignty while developing an amphibious assault capacity in support of our international obligations is also required. The 300-500 Billion Dollars that successive Canadian Governments have robbed from our NATO spending obligation would be a large down payment on rebuilding the Canadian Military while simultaneously wiping out the trade deficit with the US. An immediate 100 Billion Dollar military equipment order from US firms coupled with an elimination of all agricultural tariffs including the elimination of the Canadian Dairy Marketing Board would go a long way towards addressing President Trump’s justifiable derision of Canada’s status as a sovereign nation and good neighbour

Canadians need to internalize that they no longer live in a sovereign country. They live in a military protectorate of the United States Of America. Canadians currently underfund their NATO Treaty obligations by more than 23 Billion Dollars a year. This is a national disgrace.

Every so-called Canadian booing the American National Anthem, needs to be embarrassed, not outraged, over the fact that we have allowed successive Canadian Federal Governments to effectively embezzle hundreds of billions of dollars from the US through Canada’s despicable refusal to meet its national defence obligation to our largest and most economically important ally. In this sense Canada is much more like a vassal kingdom of Ancient Rome governed by a Governor appointed by Rome than a modern nation state. Despite Canada’s almost complete economic and military reliance on the United States, Canada is governed by minions of The World Economic Forum, The United Nations and the World Health Organization which are all China controlled or China adjacent entities that support Chinese global hegemony in the name of “globalism” or “post-nationalism”. Canada has even seen a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada taking a Communist Party of China job as adjudicator in Hong Kong. Canada currently has a disgraced Prime Minister so stupid as to not understand why our NATO allies would be upset at Canada training the People’s Liberation Army on how to kill NATO soldiers more effectively in winter conditions at Canada’s special forces winter warfare training facility at Petawawa, Ontario.

Canadians are shocked and appalled when Americans have the temerity to elect a leader who rejects the prevailing pro-China governance of Canada. Trudeau’s contribution to US-Canada relations was to attribute President Trump’ s crushing victory over globalism and world socialism to a claim that he/she was a “feminist” and to equate the common-sense of Americans to racism and misogyny. The world is meant to believe that Canadians are horrified by a US President who insists as the military protector of Canada that Canada address its protectionism of Canadian markets, ongoing trade deficit and embezzlement of defence dollars from the US by refusing to meet Canada’s international defence obligations.

Mark “Carnival Huckster” Carney the new Liberal, wanna-be, Canadian Governor, has announced as part of his “leadership campaign” that unlike the outgoing Dictator Trudeau, he will only continue to embezzle billions of dollars a year for five more years to reach the 2% GDP NATO defence spending requirement, as opposed to the outgoing Governor Trudeau who thought he could continue to steal from the US for another 7 years. It’s like Mark “The Carney” thinks that President Trump will be gratified with his announcement that Canada will only continue stealing and freeloading off of America for 5 more years. Maybe as compensation President Trump should consider renaming “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” given that Canada’s continued refusal to meaningfully contribute to its mutual defence with America, has at the very least given Trump “naming rights” over shared geographical features. How about instead of the St. Lawrence Seaway we now have “The Melania Seaway”. Canada’s lack of the basic sovereign function of self-defence should have consequences.

It’s time for Canadians to wake the hell up and realize that the so-called Laurentian elite Canadian political class undermine Canadian Sovereignty every day. They do this by refusing to acknowledge that President Trump is right to make fun of Canada for the emasculation of the Canadian military. President Trump is right to call out Canada’s ridiculous insistence on wanting free access to American Markets while continuing to protect Canadian millionaires and billionaires from US competition to the detriment of Canadian voters who would all benefit from the lower prices that tariff free trade would bring. Every Canadian should be angry that they pay way more than they should for milk, cheese and other products because of Canadian protectionism.

Come on Canada! Canadians are known internationally for the Canadian propensity to say sorry too often.

It’s time for Canada’s political leaders to say:

“President Trump, you are right. We are sorry. We will immediately change our childish, and dishonest behaviour. We will become a much better neighbour.”

Jeffrey R.W. Rath, B.A. (Hons.), LL.B. (Hons.)

Foothills, Alberta

February 18, 2025

P.S.

Failing the above, its time for Alberta to say “President Trump, we don’t want to be part of Canada as a 51st State. Alberta will happily consider the benefits of full statehood within the American Union on the condition that you don’t let Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, or the Maritime province enjoy the same status given the extent to which they have enjoyed a parasitic relationship with Alberta for far too long.

Alberta will immediately commit to spending all dollars formerly sent to Quebec to the formation of an Alberta National Guard to be fully integrated with US Forces and chain of command, governed by the US Constitution. ”

This may be an idea whose time has come.

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