Canada hasn’t had to worry about looking up into the sky to see swarms of hostile planes, armed with machine guns and bombs, like many other nations have through recent history.
With a bright blue sky above, memorial services started on the fields of Memorial Park for the Battle of Britain, Sunday afternoon.
Although peaceful now, 76 years ago, the skies above the United Kingdom were the hotspot in a three-month long battle between the Royal Airforce and the Royal Canadian Airforce and the German Luftwaffe.
The ceremony included a parade of a 30-person fight from the 22 Wing/CFB North Bay and a flight of Veterans.
22 Wing Commander Colonel Henrik Smith said it was important to keep the stories of those who fought in the skies during that battle, alive.
“Starting in World War One, Canada had really started to present itself as its own country,” he said. “When World War Two started, at the time we didn’t have massive navies or armies, but we went in there.”
Smith said the Battle of Britain was significant for Canadians, who developed a reputation for being adept pilots—to the point of even commanding some British squadrons.
He spoke of around 100 Canadian pilots who took to the skies and the hundreds more who worked on the ground in radar stations that allowed British and Canadian forces to effectively engage the German planes.
“We have a role to play in this world and we’ve had Canadian forces and personnel across the world providing assistance for the last century,” Smith said. “We’re so fortunate in this country that war has generally not come here. But people can’t forget that there are Canadians out there who do experience these horrors and not all of them come back.”
Members of the community watched, from across the street, from park benches or standing in the field around the memorial as a wreath laying ceremony took place, with a number of wreaths being laid at the base of the memorial statue.
