Canada Now
Born from budget cuts, Canada Now defied its controversial origins to become a popular supper-hour newscast. The newscast was designed to replace the hour-long 6 p.m. local newscasts after budgets were clipped in 2000. The first 30 minutes of the show were national in scope, anchored by Ian Hanomansing out of Vancouver. A half-hour regional newscast followed, presented by each station's local anchor. But a strategic decision by CBC-TV executives to focus on local news led to a return to a one-hour regional newscast in February 2007, when Canada Now became the title for the Vancouver broadcast.
Battle of the Somme
Broadcast Date: June 30, 2006
By 1916, the First World War has become a stalemate. The battlefields of Europe have been dug into 800 kilometres of trenches. Men are dying, but no ground is being won or lost. On July 1, 1916, 150,000 Allied troops – including thousands of Canadians and Newfoundlanders – go over the top in an attempt to open up the western front. The result is a bloodbath. In this clip from the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, historian Martin Gilbert describes the futility of "The Big Push."Battle of the Somme
• The Somme is a region of Picardie in northern France. It was the site of three battles during the First World War.• According to Wikipedia, the 1916 Battle of the Somme remains the sixth most lethal battle in human history, with more than one million casualties (the top five all took place in the Soviet Union over two world wars.)
• The Battle of the Somme was the main Allied attack on the Western Front in 1916. The Allies attempted to break through German lines and draw them away from the French at the Battle of Verdun. Though that goal succeeded, the fighting at the Somme dragged on into the fall, becoming a war of attrition.
• On the first day of combat alone (July 1, 1916) more than 57,000 British troops were injured or killed, a one-day record that still stands. The German defenders lost just 8,000 that day.
• One assault in September earned the Allies only one kilometre, at a cost of 82,000 casualties.
• The September battle in Flers-Courcelette also marked the debut of the tank, which the British hoped would break the stalemate of trench warfare. Though they were impervious to barbed wire and rifle fire, the tanks proved unreliable and most broke down or got bogged down in trenches or shell holes.
• With tank assistance, the Canadian Second Division captured the village of Courcelette and advanced a kilometre from there. Despite hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides (25,000 were Canadians, and 2,000 were from Newfoundland) little was achieved. The Allied forces lost as many as 600,000 men to capture a mere five kilometres of land.
• Two more battles were fought at the Somme toward the end of the war, in March-April 1918 and in August 1918.
• One of Canada's most interesting heroes of the Somme was piper James Richardson of Chilliwack, B.C. When his company went over the top, they were pinned down by enemy fire and barbed wire. Richardson marched the length of the wire playing his pipes, inspiring the troops to push forward. He then put his bagpipes down to help a wounded soldier, and was killed when he went back to retrieve them. He won a Victoria Cross.
• A military chaplain later picked up the pipes and took them to Scotland, where they were stored at a school. Ninety years later, a piper from Richardson's Canadian Scottish battalion identified the tartan on the bagpipes and they were returned to Canada. You can watch this story in our additional clip Canada's most famous bagpipes come home.
Battle of the Somme
Medium: Television
Program: Canada Now
Broadcast Date: June 30, 2006
Guest(s): Martin Gilbert
Reporter: Danny Globerman
Duration: 6:14
Photo: W.I. Castle/Library and Archives Canada/PA-000832
Last updated:
Nov. 10, 2006
Battle of the Somme.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: Nov. 10, 2006.
[Page consulted on Feb. 13, 2012.]