The Baby Boom

Baby's being held at a Hospital

 Baby boom

The end of World War Two sparked a baby boom in many countries around the world but mostly in North America. As men came back from the war, they wanted to start making family's starting the post World War Two baby boom. In Canada between the years of 1945 and 1946, Canada had the largest annual birth rate in history with a rise of 15% in those two years. United States had  a total 79 million babies born between the years of 1946-1960. A large increase of baby's were seen everywhere in Canada and the United States post world war. People from the baby boomer's era are now about 60 years or age and almost ready to retire and when they do Canada will see a large influx of retirement homes and seniors. Also today's youth might notice many jobs now becoming available which before belonged to the people from the baby boomer era.

The cancellation of the Avro Arrow

The Avro Arrow

Avro Canada 

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow was a interceptor aircraft designed and built by Avro Canada a aerospace design company. The construction of the Avro Arrow began in 1953 and its first test flight took place in on March 25th 1958. The aircraft was a state of the art machine capable of flying up to speeds of Mach 3. Despite such a well designed plane and the opportunity to bring the aviation industry to Canada and put us on the map, it was suddenly cancelled. The cancellation of the Avro Arrow sparked a long, never ending debate as to the reasons why. At the time of the cancellation the reasons to justify such an act were; The mounting cost of the project and the cost to maintain such a project in the long term was too high, another reason was because the United States thought that long range missiles were the way to go and that such use for aircraft like the Avro Arrow will no longer be needed. The last reason was politics, United States who was planned to be the biggest customer of the Avro Arrow would not have wanted to purchase such a plan because it would want to produce its own top gun fighter. The real reasons as to the cancellation are still debated today, and the reason it was not re opened, nobody knows for sure, but  I think it was a missed opportunity.

The start of the Cold War

A picture depicting the two sides of the Cold
War.

Cold War

The Cold War was a period of high tensions between the USSR (Communist) and the United States (Democratic and Capitalist). The Cold War had high political hostility between the two nations and it was the fight for either a communist Europe or a Democratic/Capitalist one. The Cold War started in 1945, but there was not event that we could say marked the start of the Cold War. It was just a build up political fear.After World War 2 Russia controlled most of Eastern Europe and set up a strong Eastern Bloc. This Eastern Bloc included many countries such as; Poland, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. These were all countries that were independent but were heavily influenced by the Russian superpower and its Communism. Since Russia had such a powerful Eastern Bloc, the weaker Western Europe and the United State feared a further spread and influence of Communism around the world. In order to stop this the United States took up a strong position. Harry Truman, the President of the United States at the time around the start of the Cold War set up a policy called the "Truman Doctrine" . This policy was to support Greece and Turkey with monetary and military aid to prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere of influence. Truman believed that the stronger a nation was the harder it would be for it to fall under Soviet control. So again Truman set forth another policy this time called "The Marshall Plan".  The program was to aid all of Europe this time and help them rebuild their economies after World War 2. The Soviets saw theses attempts as a way of trying the get the countries in Europe to side with the US to then ultimately attack the USSR. This fear caused many outbursts, events and political hostility until 1991, the fall of the Soviet Union. 

The selection of the Jews at a concentration camp

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was a mass genocide of about 11 million  Jews, Gays, and Handicapped. The killings of these people were performed by Hitler's Nazi army during the years of World War Two. It was a systematic genocide where Nazis would round up people, mainly Jews, and send them in cattle cars attached to trains to the nearest concentration camp. A concentration camp was a place where Jews were either killed on arrival by either a bullet or gas or were worked to death inside these camps, making munitions and other supply's for Hitler's Army. As Hitler was capturing more and more of Europe, he would find and track down all the Jews in his newly captured town/city/country and send them to theses camps or he would have parts of towns closed off and be built into ghettos. Ghettos were an area of a city where only Jews could live and theses ghettos had extremely terrible conditions, it was disease ridden,full of dead bodies, had little to no food or water,  and there were people cramped into every corner and left to work and die.This to Hitler was called the "Final Solution" , the solution to ending the existence of Jews in the world. 6 million Jews were killed in either camps or ghettos but there were still many more alive in them, and when the Allies invaded Normandy and created a Western front, they began to liberate the Jews from these camps and ghettos as they slowly moved closer to Berlin. Even though some Jews were liberated from the concentration camps, they still had no place to go, no money and  unfortunately in most cases no family or friends. Many found their way into Canada and the United States and tried their best to start new lives. Others were not so lucky and still died in the war.This was the 3rd largest Genocide in human history and one that we will never forget. 

Canadians landing at Juno beach.

Juno Beach

On June 6th 1944 the Allied invasion of the beaches of Normandy began. Operation Overlord, the objective, to open up a western front and force Germany to fight on two fronts and then box them in. The landing took place on the coast of Normandy, France. The coast was divided into five beaches; Utah beach, Omaha beach, Gold beach, Sword beach, and lastly Juno beach. Juno beach was assigned to be landed by Canadian troops and their objective was to capture the beach and provide flanking support for the British on Sword and Gold beach. The landing was scheduled to occur at 6 am but was delayed because of rough waters, when Canadian troops did land on Juno beach at 7:30 am, they encountered heavy resistance from the German 716th Division, the bombardment that occurred before the landing prove to have little effect and left Canadian to have to do most of the work. The Canadian had to face multiple MG nests ( Machine Gun positions), however the 30,000 Canadians that landed by the end of the day pushed through the heavy defences and penetrated further into France than any other of it Allies. Along side Utah, the assault on Juno beach by Canadian forces proved to be the most strategically successful. Canada proved its self in D-Day, but Canada did suffer its fair share of casualties, the total count showed 340 killed, 574 wounded, and 47 taken prisoner. Canada showed that it was a force to be reckoned with and showed it by successfully capturing the beach and pushing the Germans back at Juno.

Canada and the home front during WW2

Workers assemble a Sexton self propelling
gun in Montreal Locomotive Works

Home front during World War II

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1st of 1939, it took Canada only 9 days after that to join the war effort. After delaying a week to show their independence, Canada quickly switched to a wartime economy and ramped up munitions production quickly, unemployment slowly disappeared across Canada. As the war raged on Canada became one of the largest pilot trainers for its allies overseas because of the BCATP (British Commonwealth Air Training Plan).Once again Canada answered the call of duty, with many men volunteering to fight for their country. Now with men overseas and production at a boom, women once again fill the roles of the men to help in the war effort. Shipyards and repairing facilities expanded to double their size, producing over a thousand warships and cargo ships. Also many other auxiliary vessel, and other small craft. Women also took on the role to recycle and salvage anything they could so that they could get the needed supply's to make munitions and other things. Women were a big part of the war effort and to helping stabilize the economy and bringing Canada out of the Great Depression. It was said that around 1-1.2 million women stepped up and worked full time to help the men overseas, and many more women worked part-time. This was the Canadian Home Front.

The Policy of Appeasement

Appeasement

Appeasement is the policy of acceding to the demands of a potential enemy in order to maintain peace. This is commonly associated to the actions of British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain between 1937 and 1939. After World War One the world was still getting back on its feet and rebuilding what has been destroyed over the war. At the same time Germany had just elected a new chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was a man who wanted to get Germany back to its former glory after being completely destroyed by the Treaty of  Versailles. Hitler began to do so by taking a risk and re militarising the Rhineland, hoping that Britain and France wont intervene. Britain and France went to the League of Nations and protested Hitler's action, but nothing was done.  Later the British Prime Minster Stanley Baldwin (predecessor to Chamberlain) said that Britain lacks the forces to back up France if they choose to go to war and that it was opposed by public opinion. It was thought as Germany merely walking into their own backyard. In 1937 Neville Chamberlain took office and a year later was faced with a challenge. In April of 1938, Nazis in the Sudetenland( and area created by the Treaty of Versailles, that was taken from Germany and made into the Czechoslovakia)  asked for autonomy, and Chamberlain thought that because of this there might be a possibility of a German invasion, and warned Hitler that Britain might attack if Hitler does so. Hitler wasn't shaken and ordered an attack on Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain quickly then sent a person to Prague to convince the Czech Government to grant the Sudeten autonomy, and the Czechs agreed, war is avoided. Later that year Neville Chamberlain flew over to Austria to speak with Hitler himself, hoping to set up and agreement and to permanently avoid war. When they met Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland shoudl be absorbed into Germany, and as Chamberlain desperately wanted to avoid war, he appeased Hitler and allowed for such a thing to occur. Chamberlain thought that because of him another war was forever avoided. Yet, even after giving Hitler more land(which lead to more power), Hitler on September 1st,1939 invaded Poland, marking the start of World War Two. The problem with Neville Chamberlain using the appeasement policy was that he really was just delaying the inevitable and also by doing so was making the enemy stronger , in the long run the appeasement policy was a bad decision I think. If they acted upon Hitler re arming the Rhineland then I think things could have gone favourably for Britain.