Ah Teribus - I'd forgotten that so much time elapsed between the landing at Dieppe and D-Day. I remembered the story from my dad, who served in the CAF from the 50s to the 80s. He made sure all of us understood how important the Canadian "experiment" at Dieppe was in eventually defeating Hitler on the ground in Europe, starting with the D-Day landing.

My father often says the Canadians were used as "guinea pigs" to find out if landing on the occupied beaches would "work" - and the Canadians paid the price at Dieppe. Canadians are still regarded as heroes in that part of the world today - the Belgians especially hold us in the highest regard. At least that's what I discovered when I visited there a few years ago!

delphinium I'm speechless (well, almost!) that you found those news stories! I searched all those sites yesterday morning in vain! I've bookmarked the pages so I can navigate those sites better in the future - thank you!

As to the questions about Canadian 'character traits', I could go on and on but I think I'll just offer these little quote for now ...

"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia." - Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer

"Britons put up with, Americans fix, and Canadians cope." - Margaret Mead, American anthropologist

Cheers!   daylia