Your hosts this week, Lynn Desjardins, Carmel Kilkenny,and Marc Montgomery
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Canada is a land of immigrants, like the US.
Like the US with its Ellis Island arrival centre where vast numbers of immigrants arrived before spreading out across the US, Canada too for decades had a central arrival area. Ships full of hopeful immigrants would arrive at Halifax harbour in Nova Scotia and unload and pass through the Customs and Immigration processing at Pier 21.
Much later Canada set up a museum to immigration at the old Pier where about one million immigrants passed through on their way to becoming Canadian citizens.
Now after a major renovation, the Pier 21 museum has reopened.
Lynn spoke to the CEO of the Museum, Marie Chapman
Canadians landed on Normandy’s beaches and against fierce resistance pushed further inland than any other of the Allied forces that day.
Vastly outnumbered, they had already fought heroically in Hong Kong in an impossible defence against invading Japanese forces. they had fought their way across Sicily and up through Italy, had been fighting the Battle of the Atlantic for years, and also for years had been flying missions over enemy territory.
By spring in Europe, the end was in sight, though desperate German forces fought tenaciously. The Canadians pushed across the Netherlands accepting German defeat a few days before the ultimate German surrender.
Marc spoke with Gen (ret’d) Ernest Beno who recently returned to the Netherlands with a group of young Canadian military personnel to take part in an event called “the final push” which recreated the liberation of several towns leading up to German surrender.
In this conversation he begins by talking a little about the European campaign and the strong bond between the Dutch and Canadians even 70 years later.
It was an idea inspired by a similar event in Boston.
Carmel lives in a borough of Montreal called Notre Dame de Grace, but better known simply as NDG. Last weekend, crowds of people gathered on a sunny weekend afternoon to hear local musicians playing on the porches or verandahs of neighbourhood houses.
it was called Porchfest, and it proved to be quite a popular event, and raised some money for charity.
Carmel spoke with the orgarnizer, Aurora Robinson.
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