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Ellin Bessner unveils the phantastic story of brave Mitchell Sterlin outside the RCR circles. Sterlin's story, his heroism and his humanity are well known to those who served or serve in The Royal Canadian Regiment, less so to the general public. Ellin’s book, Ellin Bessner who is a Canadian journalist, a professor of journalism at Centennial College in Toronto, and a sought-after speaker on Canadian military and Jewish history. Ellin was born in Montreal and graduated with a degree in journalism and political science from Carleton University. She was a reporter and anchor for CBC News and CTV News. As a foreign correspondent based in Rome, Italy, she reported on the Mafia, Italian food, fashion, the opera, and, of course, on soccer. Ellin also covered several civil wars in Africa. She’s reported on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, the Canadian military, the Columbia space shuttle disaster, 9/11, and she’s interviewed the late Prince Phillip and the Dalai Lama.
In 2019, Ellin published Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military, and World War II. She spent six years researching, travelling, and interviewing over 300 veterans and their families, to tell the untold stories of how and why Canada’s Jewish community sent 17,000 men and women to serve under the Allied Forces during the Second World War. It is a story that has never been comprehensively told before and fills an important gap in the publicly known accounts of how a country of volunteers helped win the war. In her book, Ellin Bessner tells us who these Jewish Canadian were, why they enlisted, and what their lives were like as Jews in Canada, in the barracks, or on the battlefield. To paraphrase Peter Mansbridge, Bessner’s book brings a part of our history out of the shadows.
Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military, and World War II, can be found on Amazon, on Ellin’s website and soon in our own gift shop.
The RCRM Speakers Series will be back in 2022, with a third season.
The 8th episode of RCRM Speakers Series Season 2 is focused on the transition from burying the fallen in graves near the site where they fell to the repatriation of bodies, by comparison a relatively recent practice that has seen ramp ceremonies on the tarmac, attended by family members and senior military or government officials. As our guest, Dr. Tanya Grodzinsky will explain after reviewing the funeral procedures in the Canadian military since 1800s, this transition was made possible by changes in the policies related to the way the Canadian Armed Forces manage casualties.
Dr. Grodzinsky is a Emerita Professor in the History Department at the Royal Military College on Kingston, ON. She is also a 36-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, 16 of which were spent as military faculty at RMC, teaching history at the undergraduate and graduate levels. With an international reputation for her knowledge of the Anglo-American War of 1812, she has researched extensively other Canadian topics including 80 battlefield studies dealing with colonial North American conflicts and in Italy during the Second World War. Most recently, Dr Grodzinsky has been preparing a volume covering the history of The Royal Canadian Regiment from 1946 to 2001. Today we have the opportunity to listen to her research about how the Canadian Armed Forces is commemorating the dead in war and peace.
A graduate of University of Western Ontario with degrees in history and education, Michael Baker is well known to the regional historians as the Collections Curator at Fanshawe Pioneer Village, and the Curator of Regional History at Museum London, but also as the editor of Downtown London: Layers of Time (1999) and the co-editor with Hilary Bates Neary, of 100 Fascinating Londoners and Street Names of London – An Illustrated Guide, both published by James Lorimer of Canada. He is a former president of the London Branch of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario and of the Heritage London Foundation and a past President of the Elgin Historical Society. Mike Baker is returning to our program after presenting a very informative account of the BCATP in southwestern Ontario during the Second World War. For this year’s series, Mike has looked at some of the memorials created to honour sacrifices made in the First and Second World Wars. ‘A Fitting Tribute’: Some Southwestern Ontario War Memorials is a talk about what has happened to these memorials, now that many years have passed since the end of those two conflicts.
While most Canadians are familiar with the cenotaph, they are but one type within a range of memorials that appeared to honour soldiers in the years following both world wars. Others included public buildings and parks, as well as a variety of monuments. It was also common for schools, churches, office buildings, and even factories to enshrine a list on their walls of those students, parishioners or staff members who had volunteered to serve their country.
Mike Baker has seen many of these memorials including a chapel dedicated to the 91st Battalion CEF arrive at his museum. Do they fit the museum’s mandate and where will they be placed?
In this episode, Brian McClure will be following the transformations around the First World War grave markers which, a century after their creation, became a medium to inform the public about the First World War. Bryan is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Western University in London Ontario. He has an undergraduate degree at Queen’s University before beginning to travel overseas to complete his Master of Philosophy in modern Irish history at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. After examining the nature of First World War commemoration in Dublin, he returned to Canada to research personal memory and commemoration of the First World War in the British Empire. Brian researched memorials to individuals across the Commonwealth including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and his Ph.D. dissertation is titled, ‘He Gave His Life for the Empire: Memory, Memorials and Identity in the British Empire after the First World War.
Initially managed by the Red Cross, during the First World War, the burial of the dead became an official enterprise of the British Army in 1915. Two years later, the organization was named the Imperial War Grave Commission, and from 1921 to 1931 managed to setup 2,400 cemeteries in France and Belgium. Thousands of families were affected by the tragedy of losing their own and the depleted communities shared the grief.
The RCRM speakers Series Season 2 episode 5: The Surprising History of War Junk by Dr. Alex Souchen, who is a historian specializing in warfare, society, and the environment. He is the author of War Junk: Munitions Disposal and Postwar Reconstruction in Canada (UBC Press, 2020). He received a PhD in History from the University of Western Ontario in 2016, and has held Postdoctoral Fellowships at Wilfrid Laurier University and Trent University. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Royal Military College of Canada.
Highly mechanized, with great mass-production of material necessary to defeat the enemies, the Second World War brought the newest discoveries of science and technology in battle or helped develop them: airpower, radar and sonar, radio communications, nuclear fission, to name but a few. Industrial plants of Bombardier and Montreal Locomotive Company in Québec, General Motors Oshawa or Canadian Pacific Railway produced more than 800,000 military transport vehicles, 50,000 tanks, 40,000 field, naval, and anti-aircraft guns, and 1,700,000 small arms.Merchant ship-building was adapted to meet warfare requirements, with 348 ships produced during the war. Victory Aircraft Limited, Federal Aircraft Limited were established as crown companies and many sub-contractors rolled on the assembly lines 16,418 aircraft for the Allies. Lancaster, Mosquito and Hawker Hurricane are only three of the 16 types of aircraft produced in Ontario during the Second World War. Very interesting to learn that Canadians had little choice but to get thrifty which led them to reduce, reuse, and recycle war junk for a better postwar live.
On 6 April 1942, the Cabinet War Committee approved the creation on British soil, of the First Canadian Army. This act allowed the Canadian units already in Europe to be organized into two army corps, including three divisions of infantry and four of armoured vehicles; 10 artillery regiments and other support formations added to the effectives of some 170,000 Canadians. International army formations (mostly Polish) would later complete the operational needs of the First Canadian Army throughout the remaining of the war, bringing the total count up to 400,000 people at times.
As we are moving on with this season’s theme An Economy of Loss, a very interesting aspect will be brought to attention: the foreign forces participating to the Second World War as part of the Canadian First Army. In "Hussar: My Grandpapa and the Polish Experience Under British Command in the Second World War" Sean Campbell follows the displaced soldiers of Poland who were on a personal journey of redemption. In the British Army, they found themselves contributing to the Allied cause on several fronts from Bomber Command's air war to the Invasion of Italy of 1943. This talk will chart the unique journey of General Stanislaw Mazcek’s 1st Polish Armoured Division, attached to Crerar’s First Canadian Army, during the liberation of Western Europe. It will highlight men such as my grandpapa who helped to redeem the Polish homeland as a member of the division's 2nd Motorized Artillery Regiment.
Sean is the Visitor Experience Manager at the Diefenbunker: Canada’s Cold War Museum in Ottawa. He is a graduate of Western University’s Masters in Public History program in London Ontario. His primary research interest in Canadian military history has taken him to the First and Second World War battlefields of Europe to explore and bring to life the lives of his military ancestors from both conflicts.
The third episode of the RCRM Speakers Series, season 2 features Brad St.Croix, who shares the results of his research on the topic of the Battle of Hong Kong (December 1941).
Brad St.Croix is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Ottawa. He also runs the Twitter account On This Day in Canadian Military History, where we first met. He profiles here a different event of Canada’s military past each day of the year. His research interests include the Canadian involvement in the two world wars as well as Commemoration and Remembrance. He is currently working on his dissertation about the Canadian legacy of the 1941 battle of Hong Kong. Brad was a researcher for the Canadian War Museum, but he also worked with the Canadian Research and Mapping Association by providing narratives to accompany interactive maps on the Second World War. He has written and published several articles on the world wars, such as “Close Encounters” on the topic of the ambiguous role of the fifth columnists during the battle of Hong Kong (in War Journal, 2018). He also signed the article on Canadian labour during the First World War for the 1914-1918 Encyclopedia of the First World War.
“Fighting It Out: The Battle of Hong Kong’s Contested Legacy” is the title of our third episode and Brad's presentation.
In November 1941, Britain requested support for guarding their remote Asian colony, Hong Kong. A small force known as “C” Force, formed of Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles of Canada, basically two infantry battalions were shipped to the Pacific. A former member of The RCR, Brigadier John Kelburne Lawson, was appointed to command this unit. Expecting to perform routine garrison duties, they were taken by surprise on 11 December 1941, when the 38th Division of the Japanese Army first attacked. Outnumbered, poorly equipped and unprepared for combat engagement of that scale, the two Canadian units held positions, but eventually suffered a heavy defeat, with many killed in action or in prisoner of war camps, and as many wounded. On Christmas Day 1941, Britain surrendered Hong Kong to the enemy, which brought bitterness among the survivors.
As Brad St.Croix will show in his presentation, the battle of Hong Kong occupies a unique place in Canada’s Second World War. It was the first land battle fought by the Canadian Army in the conflict while simultaneously being one of the worst military defeats in the nation’s history. To put it succinctly, the battle of Hong Kong has a contested history, which is Brad’s vantage point for this episode.
Chad Martin is an avid researcher, mostly of his hometown, Palmerston, ON. Chad’s love of history led him on journey through schooling at Wilfrid Laurier University and Sir Sandford Fleming College. Following a tenure as the Curator of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Chad moved on to consulting for museums, specializing in artifact collections storage and preservation and exhibit development. In his personal time, Chad started the No One Goes Project, a prolific digital platform focused on the “continued preservation and documentation of the diverse history of Palmerston.”
Episode 2 of the RCRM Speakers Series, Season 2 does just that because Chad presents his research on a native of Palmerston, Arthur Leith Ross, whose memory is preserved on a small plaque in the Palmerston Public Library. The plaque also states about Ross: “Late of the Lancashire Fusiliers and Northern Nigeria Regiment West African Frontier Force and Subsequently Chief Transport Officer of the Protectorate, who died 26th August, 1908.” Inspired by his fathers’ service in the 30th Wellington Rifles, Arthur joined the militia as a teenager and dreamed of achieving a Field Marshal’s baton someday. His ambitions took him on a perilous journey across the Atlantic to South Africa and then on to some of the many wars of burden for the Empire. His adventures not only led him to the love of his life, but ultimately his tragic demise.
Professor Gordon Heath, Professor of Christian History and Centenary Chair in World Christianity at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. Among his published titles are Doing Church History: A User-friendly Introduction to Researching the History of Christianity (2008), and A War with a Silver Lining: Canadian Protestant Churches and the South African War, 1899-1902 (2009).
Europe was in crisis, uncertainty and alarm for the future dominated. As you very well explained, Canadians were not immune to the uncertainty, but many grew disenchanted with notions of “just” war.