Heroes of the True North, Strong and Free Quiz

Answer: Billy Bishop

Billy Bishop (1894-1956) was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, and entered the Royal Military College in Kingston in 1911. When war broke out in 1914, Billy, along with thousands of other Canadians, enlisted in the army and was shipped overseas to England for training before heading for the battlefields of Europe. It was in 1915 that Billy fell in love with flying, and he transferred from the army to the British air force to serve as an Observer. In 1916, he earned his wings as a pilot.

When he was 23 (with 47 downs to his credit), he was promoted to the rank of Major, and by the end of the war he had downed 72 enemy aircraft (the last five in the final days of World War One). He was the most decorated Canadian in World War One, receiving both the Military Cross and the Victoria Cross in addition to other medals. His World War I exploits were chronicled in the very popular musical play 'Billy Bishop Goes to War".

Answer: Tommy Douglas

Tommy Douglas (1904-1986) is known in Canada as the Father of Medicare. Born in Scotland, Tommy came to Canada with his family in 1910, and they settled in Winnipeg. A dedicated Socialist, Tommy was a Baptist minister who ran in the 1935 federal election under the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation banner in Weyburn, SK. He won his seat and served Weyburn as MP in Ottawa for nine years. In 1944, Tommy was elected as leader of the Saskatchewan CCF (the CCF later became the New Democratic Party - the NDP), and as Premier of that Province he brought in his dream of a universal health care program. The plan was adopted by the federal Liberal Government in the 1960s, and now all Canadians are covered by Medicare, which means everyone has access to health care at no cost. No wonder he's our hero!

Oh, that internationally-known grandson of Tommy? That's Kiefer Sutherland, son of Shirley Douglas and her former husband Donald Sutherland. The late Pierre Eliot Trudeau was Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party from 1968 to 1982(short break in 1979), Arthur Erickson is a top Canadian architect of international renown, and the late Peter Gzowski was a much loved CBC Radio personality and champion of literacy.

Answer: Terry Fox

Terry Fox lost a leg to cancer in 1977, but he refused to let that get in the way of an active lifestyle. On April 12, 1980, Terry dipped his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland, and started his Marathon of Hope, a run to the Pacific Ocean on the other side of Canada to raise money for cancer research. There was very little fanfare at the beginning, but as Terry ran his 42 kilometres a day (that's 26 miles) through the Atlantic Provinces, people started to sit up and take notice. He ran through Quebec and Ontario, often with people lining his route to cheer him on.

Sadly, on September 1, after running over 3,000km in 143 days, Terry was forced to quit just outside Thunder Bay, Ontario. Cancer had invaded his lungs. He died on June 28, 1981, at age 22. Now, the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope takes place in cities and towns across Canada and around the world every year, fulfilling Terry's goal of raising funds for cancer research. To date, over $CND360 million has been raised. We won't let Terry's dream die! Cancer can be beaten.

Answer: Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Vilhjalmur Stefansson was born November 3, 1879, in Gimli, Manitoba (my home province) of Icelandic parents. He studied anthropology and went on his first Arctic expedition in 1906/07, to Herschel Island in the Beaufort Sea. On this trip Stefansson began studying the language and culture of the Inuit and the Mackenzie River Dene people. (On this trip he also met famed explorer Roald Amundsen.) On his second Arctic trip in 1908, Stefansson encountered the Copper Inuit, a previously unknown people who used copper tools. He lived with them for four years, and theorized that since many of the Copper Inuit had European features and blue eyes, they were a mixture of Inuit and early Norse explorers or lost members of the Franklin expedition. His theory didn't gain much acceptance in anthropological circles, but it certainly put Stefansson in the limelight.

In 1913 Stefansson was appointed head of a Canadian scientific expedition. The ship he sailed on got stuck in ice north of Alaska in August 1913. In September, with provisions running low, Stefansson took a small group and left the ship to hunt for food. While they were gone, the ship drifted away as the ice moved west, and later it was crushed by the ice, but most of the crew survived. Meanwhile, Stefansson and his group drifted on ice floes, and continued their explorations and recording of scientific data! He returned to southern Canada five years later, in 1918. He wrote many books, and spent the latter part of his life as Director of Polar Studies at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

He died in 1962. Robert Service was a poet who chronicled life in the Yukon Territory during the 1898 Gold Rush, Sir Sam Steele was the Mountie who sat at the top of the Chilkoot Pass between Alaska and Yukon during the Yukon Gold Rush and told American gold seekers that they could cross into Canada but they couldn't bring their guns (they did as he told them!), and Tom Thomson was an artist who brought the beauty of Northern Ontario to vivid life on canvas. He died in a mysterious drowning accident in 1917.

Answer: Jean Vanier

Jean Vanier (1928-2019), son of the late Governor General of Canada Georges Vanier and Pauline Vanier, was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1928, where his father was serving in the Diplomatic Corps. Jean originally intended to make his career in the Royal Canadian Navy, but later resigned his commission and embarked on a life of humanitarian work. In 1964, he founded L'Arche (the Ark), a home for mentally challenged adults at Trosly-Breuil in France. His foundation spread and there are L'Arche Homes throughout the world.

After his death, an internal report by L'Arche in 2020 concluded that Vanier sexually abused six women in Trosly-Breuil, France, between 1970 and 2005. In 2023 a fuller report was released: he abused 25 different women. Subsequently, all Canadian schools that were named after him were renamed.

Justin Trudeau is the older son of the late Pierre Eliot Trudeau, William Lyon Mackenzie King was Canada's 10th Prime Minister who dabbled in Spiritualism, and Joey Smallwood was the Newfoundlander who engineered that province's entry into confederation in 1949.

Answer: Agnes Macphail

Agnes Macphail was a teacher-turned-politician. She was first elected to the Canadian federal parliament in 1921, and was re-elected in the 1925, '26 and '30 federal elections. A Socialist, she became the first president of the Ontario wing of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation when it was formed in 1932.

She championed such causes as pensions for seniors and workers' rights. She was the first Canadian woman delegate to the League of Nations in Geneva, where she was a member of the World Disarmament Committee.

In 1943 she ran for and won a seat in the Ontario Legislature. When not serving in government, Macphail worked as a journalist and political organizer. Nellie McClung was a member of the Famous Five, Charlotte Whitton was the first woman in Canada to be elected mayor of a major city (Ottawa), and Lucy Maud, of course, gave the world Anne of Green Gables.

Answer: 12

This amazing young man has been an international spokesman for children's rights since 1995, when he was 12 years old. His Free the Children Foundation was first established to bring attention to the plight of children as young as five in developing countries who work long hours in sweatshops, and has since expanded to include all children, everywhere.

As an advocate of children's rights, Craig has travelled to 40 countries, meeting with political, business and religious leaders, including Queen Elizabeth II and the late Mother Teresa, the late Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama.

He has even been nominated for a Nobel prize!

Answer: Tommy Prince

Tommy Prince was an Ojibway, born on the Brokenhead Reserve in Manitoba. He enlisted in the Canadian army in June, 1940, and by 1942 he was a sergeant in the 1st Canadian Special Service Battalion. An expert marksman and tracker, Tommy was one of a select group of Canadian soldiers who trained with an American unit to form a skilled 1600-man assault team. They became the 1st Special Service Force, known to the enemy as The Devil's Brigade. The team saw service in Italy and France. He won the Military Medal, the American Silver Star, as well as six service medals.

Tommy also served in Korea, until he was wounded and invalided out of the service in 1953. Despite his hero status, as a civilian Tommy lived and died in poverty, but he continued to fight - his own battle with alcoholism, and for aboriginal rights in a Canada which marginalized its own first nations. Chief Dan George was a member of the Salish Band in B.C., and was also a spokesman for native rights, as well as an actor (remember him in 'Little Big Man' with Dustin Hoffman?). Lorne Cardinal, who is an Ojibway from Alberta, is also an actor, one of the stars of the hugely popular Canadian sit-com 'Corner Gas' and Phil Fontaine, a lawyer from Sagkeeng Ojibway First Nation in Manitoba, is the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada.

Answer: Nellie McClung

Nellie McClung was born Helen Letitia Mooney in Chatsworth, Ontario, in 1873, but it's amazing how many provinces claim her as "one of ours" simply because she lived there at one time or another: Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia all have a stake in "Our Nell". Nellie trained as a teacher, but her marriage to Wesley McClung put paid to her teaching career. (Married women did not teach back in the early days of the 20th century). In addition to being a teacher, Nellie wrote 16 books and a newspaper column while serving as a member of the provincial Legislature in Alberta, was an ardent member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and campaigned against alcohol and drug abuse and its effect on families, particularly women and children.

In Manitoba, Nellie is remembered for her activism on behalf of women's suffrage. Women in Manitoba were the first in Canada to gain the right to vote (1916) and to hold provincial office, due largely to Nellie's efforts. However, all of Canada honours Nellie as one of the Famous Five (Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney, Emily Murphy, and Irene Parlby were the other four), a group of Alberta women who, in 1927 undertook an initiative which would open appointment to the Canadian Senate to women. The Five petitioned the government asking that the Supreme Court examine the word 'persons' in the British North America Act (the document that established Canada as a country in its own right) to determine whether or not that word meant both male and female persons. In 1928, the Court responded in the negative, holding that the Act should be interpreted in light of the times in which it was written (1867), when women were not active in politics. The Famous Five, refusing to take this "no" for an answer took their case to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, which was the highest Court of Appeal for Canada at that time. On October 18, 1929 the five Lords of the Judicial Committee returned a unanimous decision that "the word 'persons' in Section 24 includes both the male and female sex ..." It was their view that the exclusion of women from holding public office was "a relic of days more barbarous than ours."

Later in life, Nellie was appointed to the first Board of Governors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and also represented Canada at the League of Nations in 1938. She died in Victoria, B.C. in 1951. Agnes Macphail's story has been told in the question relating to her earlier in the quiz, Kim Campbell was (briefly) Canada's first female Prime Minister, and Margaret Atwood is an internationally-acclaimed Canadian novelist.

Answer: Norman Bethune

Norman Bethune graduated from Owen Sound Collegiate Institute in 1911 along with another Canadian hero, Billy Bishop. He obtained his medical degree at the University of Toronto and later moved to Montreal, where he was on the Faculty of Medicine and taught thoracic surgery. A Socialist (he later joined the Canadian Communist Party), Bethune was an early proponent of universal health care and provided free medical care to the poor in Montreal. In 1936 he went to Spain to fight against the Fascist forces of Francisco Franco. It was here that he developed the concept of mobile medical units, the model for the now familiar MASH units. It was during his time in Spain that he developed the first practical method for transporting blood in order to perform battlefield transfusions. He also invented several surgical instruments which bear his name.

In 1938, he went to China to serve as a medical officer in the Communist Party of China's Eighth Route Army during the Sino-Japanese War. He died on November 12, 1939 of blood poisoning contracted when a cut on his hand made while he was performing surgery became infected. He is buried in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, where his tomb has become a place of pilgrimage. To this day, the Chinese honour his memory - they call him Bai Quien - and there is a hospital in Beijing that is dedicated in his name. While it took Canada a while to catch on to his great contributions to medical science, there are now hospitals, colleges and schools named for him in his homeland, too, and in 1990, to mark the centenary of his birth, Canada and China each issued postage stamps of the same design honouring Bethune. Dr. Bethune was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 1998. Lester B. Pearson is a former Canadian Prime Minister, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (he originated the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces at the time of the Suez crisis), as was Pierre Eliot Trudeau, who gave us the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Joey Smallwood was the man who brought Newfoundland into Confederation in 1949, and served as Premier of that province.