Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

Page 23 text:

w e ,,,,,,,, ,, X LOYOLA Page 5 COLLEGE REVIEW Any general review of the naval situation is indeed encouraging, but we must not blind ourselves to the fact that we must now turn to the offensive and suffer the losses such a move entails, nor overlook the fact that the enemy seeks to cripple us by striking not at our navies, but at our merchant shipping. Canada has taken, and will continue to take, a full share in the task of protecting the everyday heroes of our merchant marine. It is a task truly worthy of her proud traditions of valor and con- stancy in the face of any odds, and a brave portent of a still more glorious future. 1 f 1 A TRIP TO VANCOUVER, 1842-1942 BY EDWARD MCINERNEY N the year 1843 Montreal was not the thriving city we know it to be today. It was hardly much more than a collection of huts on the side of Mount Royal. Now let us see what a trip to Vancouver was like in that year. Travelling in those days was work. We leave Montreal on a beautiful Spring morning in a train consisting of ten wagons. You had better be friendly with your neighbors, because for the next three months you are going to see them often and them alone. It may happen that they will be the last human beings that you will ever see. We have travelled all day, leaving the few farms behind, pushing on through the wilder- ness, across the St. Lawrence and up the Ottawa River. In those days the rugged beauty of the Ottawa River meant only pain, hardships and sometimes even death. We make camp at sun- down. Tired? You will soon get over that, and you had better go easy on the food, remember we have women and children with us. What time is it? Why it is five o'clock in the morning and we must get an early start. You know, after breakfast we break camp and trudge on. The hours turn into days, the days into weeks. Will it never end? What is that you see in the distance? It is the Rocky Mountains. We meet the hardest part of our trip there. An awful thought you say. VVell it will be better than the last three weeks of the journey with the prairie stretching out in front of you, in back of you, on every side of you: Everywhere! Remember back in Montreal I told you that death might overtake you. Now you know what I meant. Those Indian raids leave us only seven wagons, and lucky we are to have even them, and that arrow wound in your arm is painful, isnit it? Well at last we are in the foothills of the Rockies. No roads here, the wagons are dismantled and packed on those extra horses. It is getting cold now. Even in Summer, Kicking Horse Pass retains its Winter cloak. Keep your chin up. Only one more week and we will be in Vancouver. That hegdtack isnit so good, but it keeps life in you, which reminds me we are running low on hardtac . Well there it isl Where you say? 'Why those tiny huts huddled around the wharf. That was Vancouver in 1843. Three months of pain, sorrow, bloodshed and tears, but we have made it. The end of a slow, tedious, hazardous journey. Let us now travel back to our present day. The year 1943. Montreal is now the largest city in Canada, a rich beautiful metropolis. VVe step into Windsor Station, buy a ticket to Dorval and board our train. What changes have taken place in the last hundred yearsl We board our sleek T.C.A. plane at Dorval and glide gently into the fresh morning air. Settle back for you are going to be in that seat for eight hours. The Ottawa is now a river of beauty, as are the few trees on its banks that remain uncut. Look below at the Laurentiansg now we fly over that limitless prairie country in a few fleeting hours, now the Rockies and their majestic peaks, which no longer hold death, cold and pain, 1'oll away beneath us. Then in an hour we are landing at Vancouver Municipal Airport. As we drive to the hotel in our taxi, we see the gem of the Pacific, a truly beautiful city. Different from our last visit, isn't it? This is what Canadian heroes have won from nature, a good job well done. But think of 2043? What will the improvements be then?

Page 22 text:

LOYOLA S COLLEGE Page 4 REVIEW amazing feat when we compare the pre-war navies of Canada and Great Britain and their relative ship-building capacities. The struggle has been ferocious, and still hangs in the balance, though the scales have begun to tip ever so slightly in our favor. Isolated on the other side of the fortress of Gibraltar lie the ships of the Royal Italian Navy, holed up in Cagliari, Spezia, Naples, Taranto, and Brindisi. The history of Italy's paper navy resembles that of the youngsteris paper bagg blown up to such colossal proportions that Mussolini called the blue inland sea mare nostrumn, it emitted a loud bang under the blows of Taranto and Cape Matapan and suffered subsequent deflation. Despite its heavy losses the Italian Navy constitutes a formid- able force on paper with five battleships, two of the new Littonov class, 12 cruisers, the fastest-of necessity-in the world, and several destroyers, submarines and lesser craft. But the unknown quantity is the morale of its crews, who have already shown themselves poor battle-sailors. The once mighty fleet of France has been dispersed about the world and has suffered the scuttling of its main strength in Toulon harbor. In 1939 it numbered nine battleships, 18 cruisers and about 70 destroyers, including i'Le Terriblev, the world's fastest, and a large undersea fleet. The huge new battlewagons, g'Clemen- ceaun and Kflascognev, on the ways at Brest, were said to have been dynamited in June 1940, and whether the tale be true or false, the invaders' have been unable to put them to their use. An hemisphere away the conflict rages between the navies of Japan and the United States. The greatest surface naval strength of the Axis here has full play. Here, too, the aircraft carrier has come into its own as a weapon of attack in the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Solomon Islands. Since the disastrous crippling of eight capital ships and numerous auxiliaries at Pearl Harbor the U. S. has commissioned four new 35,000-ton dreadnaughts, and launched the first two of her coming fleet of 45,000-ton giants, the Iowan and HN ew Jerseyn. She now out- numbers the Japanese in capital ships by a margin of 19 to 12, of which 12, five are new ships of 40,000 tons, the Nissin', and Takamatic', being at present in action. However, some of Americays battleship strength is on duty in the Atlantic and so cannot be brought to bear on Japan. Japan, on the other hand, which entered the war with a preponderance in carriers, has tumbled to second place in this category with the American launching of four large carriers of the Essen, class, and five smaller carriers converted from 10,000-ton cruisers, and the conversion of many merchantmen to plane carrying duty. The cruiser strength of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which stood at 42 on the day of Pearl Harbor, and which since has been completely obliterated by over- enthusiastic American reporters, has been at least seriously depleted. Cruisers flaunt- ing the Stars and Stripes numbered 44 on the same date, and although eight of that 44 have been lost, and at least six seriously damaged, new launchings and destruction of enemy vessels have given them the upper hand over their enemy counterparts. In destroyers and smaller craft Japan suffered severely in her Indies conquests, and in these categories American shipbuilding has far outstripped Japan. ..-all-vii.

Page 24 text:

Francis Monalian Vic:-Pru infant f-vnu,-v 'f aw P , Robert Brodrick Desmond Pol Prexiflent .fnrclary 2111 Y 1.1 If A