Memory and Valour

Four hundred and fifty rounds a minute. Seven and a half rounds every second. One London inventor built the Maxim machine gun in 1884 after a friend joked he should help Europeans "cut each other's throats with greater facility." Thirty years later, that joke had built the Western Front. This episode traces the machine gun from Hiram Maxim's workshop to the beaten zones of the So...

On July 1st, 1916, the First Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment went forward at Beaumont-Hamel. Of 801 men, there were 710 casualties in thirty minutes. Every officer down. In this 110th anniversary episode, we follow two brothers — Harry and Alfred Hynes of F Company — from a railway town on the Gander River to the worst morning of the First World War. One never came home. The other was wound...

A thousand men in eight days. A parade square turned into a suburb with four little lakes. A bronze general on a horse that nobody who lives there can name. His name was Griesbach. Edmonton's youngest-ever mayor, son of Canada's first Mountie, and the officer who raised the 49th Battalion in a single frozen week of 1915. The north-Edmonton neighbourhood built on his old army base is now on...

In 1916, a German soldier watched the first tank loom out of the fog and ran for his life, screaming that a crocodile was crawling into the trenches. This is the story of the tank on the Western Front, and it's a Canadian story from beginning to end. Canadians were there at the machine's terrifying combat debut at Courcelette in September 1916; the day before Chip Kerr of the 49th Battalio...

One wounded man. Sixty-two prisoners. A quarter-mile of enemy trench. Here's how an Edmonton farmer pulled it off, and why it was genius, not luck. On 16 September 1916, on the Somme, Private John Chipman "Chip" Kerr of Edmonton's 49th Battalion was clearing a German trench with a bombing party that was running out of grenades. So, with a finger freshly blown off, he climbed out onto the parados,...

Canada entered the First World War without an air force; not a small one, not a token one; none. Yet, somehow produced some of the most extraordinary fighter pilots of the entire conflict. This episode tells the stories of five of them: Billy Bishop, whose Victoria Cross action may have been embellished; Raymond Collishaw, who outscored almost everyone and came home almost unknown; William Barker,...

On July 30th, 1915, at a ruined château called Hooge, the German Army turned flamethrowers on British troops for the first time. Within minutes, a battalion broke. Not from shells or gas: from fire. In Episode 27, we trace the full arc of the flamethrower in the First World War — from Hooge to the mud of Passchendaele and the German Spring Offensive of 1918. At the centre of the story is the Canad...

At Vimy Ridge, one man’s actions helped secure the line and cost him his life. Lance Sergeant Ellis Sifton’s Victoria Cross is often reduced to a single moment of heroism. In this episode, I’m joined by historian Blair Ferguson to place that moment back into its full context: Sifton's life pre-war, what was happening on the ground, what the records actually show, and why Sifton’s story still matte...

They saved lives, but they didn’t always leave the dead alone. In the First World War, the Canadian Army Medical Corps stood between life and death, pulling wounded men from the battlefield and fighting to keep them alive against impossible odds. But behind that story lies a lesser-known truth. Drawing on the work of Dr. Tim Cook, this episode explores the hidden side of Canada’s medical war, wher...

They joked about dying. Not because it was funny, but because it was the only way to survive it. In the trenches of the First World War, soldiers turned fear into sarcasm and horror into humour. Shellfire became “just a bit of a strafe.” Terror was softened into “the wind up.” And sometimes, a wound meant a darkly joked-about “ticket home.” But it went further than that. They wrote parody songs, s...

April 9th, 1917—Canada stepped onto the world stage at Vimy Ridge. For the first time, all four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force advanced together in a single, coordinated assault—executed with precision, preparation, and discipline that set them apart on the Western Front. In this episode of Memory and Valour , we go beyond the familiar story to explore how Vimy Ridge became more tha...

1915 is the year the war stopped being an "adventure". What began as a war of movement and expectation hardened into something far more brutal: static trench lines, failed offensives, and a battlefield dominated by machines rather than men. From the costly assaults at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and Battle of Festubert… to the devastating lessons of the Battle of Loos, we trace how Allied strateg...

When the First World War erupted in 1914, Canada answered the call without hesitation. But among those who stepped forward were men who, under Canadian law, were not even recognized as citizens. In this episode of Memory and Valour, we uncover the powerful and often overlooked story of Indigenous men who volunteered to serve in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Drawn from communities across the co...

In 1916, an explosion tore through the Barnbow Munitions Factory in Leeds, killing 35 women in an instant. They were known as the Barnbow Lasses. Young workers fueling the First World War from the factory floor… until disaster struck. For decades, the truth of what happened that night was softened, reshaped, and in some cases, silenced entirely. In this episode of Memory and Valour, I sit down wit...

During the First World War, Canadian POWs faced starvation, forced labour, and brutal marches in German camps, while thousands of civilians in Canada — many Ukrainian and German immigrants — were imprisoned as “enemy aliens.” Through diaries, letters, and rare firsthand accounts, this episode uncovers the parallel worlds of captivity that shaped Canada’s WWI story. “We were not soldiers, yet we li...

On June 2, 1916, the ground beneath Canadian soldiers at Mount Sorrel exploded. German mines and artillery shattered the front line near Ypres, killing hundreds in minutes and throwing the Canadian position into chaos. After weeks of preparation, German forces opened a massive artillery bombardment against the Canadian lines. Beneath the trenches, carefully planted mines detonated, tearing apart t...

In 1917, as Canadian soldiers bled at Vimy Ridge and endured the mud of Passchendaele, the war exploded at home. With First World War casualties mounting and enlistment collapsing, Prime Minister Robert Borden introduced conscription. The result was the Canadian Conscription Crisis of 1917; one of the most divisive moments in our history. Riots in Quebec City. English and French Canada set against...

By 1918, the Canadian Corps had earned a reputation across the Western Front: shock troops. They were chosen for some of the most difficult assaults of the First World War — at Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Amiens, and during the Hundred Days Offensive. British command relied on them for complex, coordinated attacks. German sources warned of their aggressiveness. A narrative took hold: that Canadians...

When the guns fell silent in 1918, the war did not end for thousands of Canadian soldiers. In this episode, we explore shell shock during the First World War and how it reshaped the lives of those who returned home carrying invisible wounds. Through personal accounts, medical responses, and shifting public attitudes, we examine how Canadians struggled to understand trauma in an era before PTSD had...

In a war defined by trenches, machine guns, and industrial slaughter, Canada sent horsemen into the storm. This episode follows the Canadian Cavalry Brigade from the mud of the Western Front to the desperate charge at Moreuil Wood; an action often remembered as one of the last great cavalry charges in history. It’s a story of soldiers caught between eras, fighting a modern war with the tools of an...

The 107th Battalion — known as The Timberwolves — was one of the most remarkable and overlooked units in Canada’s First World War history. Made up largely of First Nations soldiers, these men brought extraordinary skill, resilience, and cultural strength to a war that demanded everything from them… and then asked for more. In this episode, we uncover the story Canada rarely tells: how Indigenous s...

When the air turned poisonous, the Canadians didn’t retreat; they stood and fought. This episode dives into the first poison‑gas attack at Ypres and the brutal legacy it left behind. From the shock of the green cloud to the lifelong scars of gas exposure, we follow the Canadians who faced a weapon the world had sworn never to use. A visceral journey into terror, survival, and the moment modern war...

Four snapshots from Canada’s Great War: the lost Levi Cottage Cemetery now buried within Tyne Cot; Sir Arthur Currie’s fraught rise to knighthood; the deadly work of CEF runners threading messages through chaos; and the 107th Battalion, the Timberwolves, carving identity in the mud of the Western Front. A brief episode with the weight of a century behind it.

Beaumont‑Hamel marked one of the darkest moments in Newfoundland’s history. On the morning of July 1, 1916, the Newfoundland Regiment advanced across open ground during the first day of the Battle of the Somme, straight into unbroken German fire. Within minutes, the unit was devastated, suffering catastrophic losses that echoed across every community back home. Beaumont‑Hamel became a symbol of ex...

From Frezenberg to Kapyong, the Second World War, and the Medak Pocket to Afghanistan; this episode explores the courage, identity, and legacy of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Featuring the incredible story of Major Mike Levy. Once a Patricia, Always a Patricia is a tribute to more than a century of service, sacrifice, and identity, and to the enduring spirit that binds Patricia...