My biography of Joseph Alfred (Joey) Jacobson has been published online in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
Tag: Canadian History
Remembering VE Day, 8 May 1945
This is my uncle Joey Jacobson’s grave in Lichtenvoorde General Cemetery in the Netherlands. The photo was sent to me by a man I know only because he read my book, Joey Jacobson’s War, a few years ago, and who went out of his way last week to visit Joey’s grave. I was deeply moved that he would honour my uncle that way. Joey lies next to his fellow crew members, all of whom perished in a bombing raid on Germany on 28 January 1942.
Photo credit: Steve Clayman
Our family visited Joey’s grave and took part in Netherland’s Remembrance and Liberation Day observances on May 4thand 5th, 2008. These are important days in the Netherlands, not simply remembered but observed with gratitude and reverence. Yesterday, as on that day that we were present, the ceremony of observance in Lichtenvoorde would have been followed by a walk to the cemetery where Joey and 22 other Commonwealth airmen are buried. Children would have laid flowers by their headstones.
This week is the 80th anniversary of VE Day, when Nazi Germany was finally defeated. I see too little sign that we in Canada plan to observe the day with the same depth and intensity as the Dutch people, but we should. They do not forget, and neither should we. Yes, the fighting was very far away from us, and we were neither occupied nor liberated, but Canadians were front and centre in the struggle, at the cost of many thousands of lives. And we should remember what they fought and died for, and against.
This is what Joey’s father recorded in his diary that day in Montreal when victory was declared.
My own feelings were mixed. I was glad … that is putting it mildly for the millions of people who could again feel with relief that their own were safe. I knew that I had in my thoughts rather feared the day when the realization of our personal loss would be … well I will leave it at that … I just felt lost for a while. I sat in Murrays drinking coffee for an hour, then walked along St. Catherine Street watching the crowds celebrate. … We closed our offices at noon. I went home to lunch in the usual way. Arranged to send some V Day flowers, red and white, to May whom I knew was feeling very much the same as I felt. We spent the afternoon quietly together. … Sounds a very trite description of one of the greatest days in history but my spirits were flat and I am not going to embellish this account with stuff that I did not feel.
80 years later, it is still appropriate to observe VE Day as the occasion for celebration, reflection, loss, and remembrance.
On This Day — 30 March 1942
Eighty-two years ago today, on 30 March 1942, Britain launched a desperate attempt. to destroy Nazi Germany’s largest battleship, the Tirpitz. The Allies’ fortunes were at a low ebb at that point in the war, and the Tirpitz, anchored near Trondheim, Norway, posed an immediate threat to Murmansk-bound convoys carrying aid to Soviet Russia. The Royal Air Force despatched 34 Halifax bombers from three squadrons for that difficult and dangerous task. Positioned at forward bases in northern Scotland, they took off in fading daylight for a target at the very limit of their range.
Had the raid been successful, it would be remembered today as among Bomber Command’s most spectacular achievements of the entire war. Instead, it was an utter failure. It was ill-conceived and unpracticed, undertaken by brave men who were insufficiently trained for the purpose, and defeated by adverse weather and the German air defences in Trondheim Fjord. Six of the 34 aircraft were lost, and the raid itself remained shrouded in secrecy until after the war ended. It would be years before the families of the men who perished learned the nature of the raid and the details of their fate. The Tirpitz raid of March 30/31 became a forgotten episode in a long war.
One of those aircraft that failed to return was Halifax R9438, on which my Dad’s cousin Moe Usher was wireless operator and air gunner. Perhaps crippled by anti-aircraft fire, perhaps weighted with ice, R9438 was also very likely running out of fuel. After eight gruelling hours, long after midnight and still 200 km short of the Scottish mainland, the pilot sought to make an emergency landing at the only possible airfield, RAF Sumburgh, at the southern tip of Shetland. On approach from seaward in low cloud, fog, and darkness, he failed to clear the high cliff at Fitful Head.
No one learned what became of R9438 until evidence of it was discovered a week later by crofters calling in their sheep along the top of Fitful Head, nearly 300 metres above the pounding sea below. The difficult and drawn-out identification, recovery, and burial of the crew became an exceptional and long-remembered event in the wartime history of Shetland. Moe and two others are buried in the Commonwealth War Graves plot in Lerwick General Cemetery, the rest are commemorated at the Air Forces Memorial near London for those with no known grave.
This monument near Trondheim, erected in 1985 and topped by one of the unexploded mines, is the only memorial to the March 30/31 raid, and to the two equally unsuccessful ones four weeks later.
This monument at the top of Fitful Head in Shetland, placed by the Dunrossness Community Council in 1995, is the memorial to the crew of Halifax R9438 who lost their lives on 31 March 1942.
Two and a half more years would pass before the RAF finally destroyed the Tirpitz. By that time, the war was nearly over, and the task less urgent.
On This Day — 21 March 1974
FIFTY YEARS AGO ON THIS DAY – 21 March 2024
Fifty years ago today the Government of Canada established the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. Its purpose was to hold hearings and report on the social, environmental and economic impact of the proposed Mackenzie Valley Gas Pipeline, and to recommend terms and conditions that should govern its construction, operation, and abandonment.
The Liberal government of the day didn’t do this just because it seemed like a nice idea. The proposed pipeline was meeting with determined opposition by Indigenous people in the Northwest Territories, and substantial public concern across Canada about its environmental effects. The New Democratic Party, which held the balance of power in Parliament, made the Inquiry happen, and that it would be chaired by Justice Thomas Berger, as the price of its continued support.
I was living in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, at that time, working for the Inuvialuit on a mapping project for their land claim. They asked me to stay on and assist them in their participation in the Inquiry, which I did. The next three years, during which I acted as advisor to and expert witness for the Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement, changed Canada very much for the better, and also set the course for the rest of my working life.
I already knew who Tom Berger was. As a socialist I admired his politics, and we in the Western Arctic were well aware of his role in the seminal Calder case on Indigenous land rights. Yet in the circumstances of Canada’s headlong rush at that time to develop the energy and mineral resources of the North, from Churchill Falls in Labrador to the oil and gas resources of the Mackenzie Delta, I was not optimistic that much would come of Berger’s Inquiry.
As it turned out, my limited expectations were much surpassed. Not only did Justice Berger recommend against construction of the pipeline unless several key conditions were met, not least the resolution of Indigenous land claims. The very title of his historic report, Northern Frontier Northern Homeland, changed Canadians’ perceptions of the North profoundly and for the better. Canada’s ruling elite, and indeed many ordinary Canadians, thought that the concept of Indigenous title was laughable, that the North was a vast treasure house of riches ripe for exploitation, that its unrestrained development would be unambiguously beneficial, and that there was no need for public consultation and participation on matters of such fundamental national interest. In short, much of what we now believe to be normal and right with respect to Indigenous rights, careful consideration of the environmental consequences of resource development, and public consultation, simply did not exist fifty years ago.
We owe that change in very large measure to Tom Berger’s wisdom and action, and to his courage, his empathy, his capabilities, and his quiet determination. And he didn’t stop there, he continued to act and to advocate for the rest of his life. Individuals do matter in history, and Tom Berger was one of them. To the extent that we live in a better country now than we did then, we owe him a debt of gratitude and honour. He stands in the select company of truly great Canadians.
Tom Berger did not do this alone. His Inquiry succeeded mainly because so many Indigenous residents of the affected communities in the North turned out to express their views and concerns at the community hearings, aided by the key intervenors at the Inquiry, with the Dene and Inuvialuit organizations at the forefront.
Yet nothing is forever. If we do not defend and advance the achievements initiated fifty years ago that made Canada better, they will wither away and we will go backwards.