King Sausage Fingers opening the Canadian Parliament inspires me to write a few words about the Canucks. Charlie boy opening the Canadian Parliament as their head of state was a a powerful image and a master stroke by the dreadful Carney. Their cousins the other side of their southern border have nothing to compete with it.
Surely if Canadians are anything it is “not American” in the sense of citizens of the USA. That is one of the deepest parts of their identity. The Donald slipped up badly when threatening to take over and make it the 51st state. All he did was drive the voters into the arms of arch globalist Mark Carney. His opponent Polievre had been only luke-warm in his condemnations of the USA’s plans and he paid the price by losing his seat.
My dad volunteered for the RAF in 1940. During the Battle of Britain he was at Manston. After that he moved to a Canadian squadron based at Kenley. He always spoke warmly of the Canadians, less so about the Americans whom he met later on. After a while at Kenley he was moved to North Africa during Operation Torch.
Anyone who has seen the film the Battle of Britain may remember the officer at Manston who was one of the first guinea pigs for the very early days of plastic surgery. I think in the film he was not made up as badly as he looked in real life. Anyhow I am reliably informed that he was a real mean bar steward.
On to Kenley, my dad was based at one of the houses on the Webb Estate in Purley. One of the Status Quo chaps lives there but these days it is mainly full of pesky injuns. Back in the day it was like living in the country, massive gardens, massive houses, roads named after WW1 battles (i.e. Avenue de Verdun) and nobody poor at all. One or more of the houses had been requisitioned and he went the few miles in a lorry every day to the airfield. Kenley is still an RAF base but is only used for gliders these days.
Those of a certain age may cast their minds back to the 50s and will remember Bernard Braden and his wife Barbara Kelly, both Canadians, appearing on the TV regularly. I feel sure there were quite a few Canadians on our TV at the time. As countries we were much closer to the Canadians than we are now. The only recent one I can remember is the aforementioned Mark Carney at the BoE and we would have been better off without him. Thanks are due to Nobsore.
My dad had no contact with the Americans until he was in North Africa and his opinion was scathing to say the least. I believe this was based on their initial disastrous performance when meeting the Germans, from memory the Cassarine Pass, and the fact that he claimed when the RAF was escorting American bombers they managed to shoot down quite a few of our planes. They call it blue on blue these days.
The picture for this article is my dad at the grave of his brother (#2 in line, my dad was #3). This brother was killed at Monte Cassino in 1944. They hadn’t seen each other for 4 years and had arranged to meet when my dad moved to Italy. Sadly he was in his grave by then.
My dad has been dead for quite a few years now but I am sure he would be enraged at the Donald trying to annexe the place. I think he preferred the Germans to the Americans, nevertheless I am less than convinced that he really knew the Hun.
© text & image well_chuffed 2025
