Canada

The 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students in Pyongyang, North Korea

  The 13th World Festival of Youth and Students was held from 1–8 July 1989 in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. It was the largest international event staged in North Korea up until then. Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google Podcasts The event took four years of preparation by the North Korean … Read more

Born into a family of Canadian Communists

Fred Weir was a third-generation red diaper baby from Toronto and a long-time member of the party. His uncle, trained at the Lenin School in Moscow in the 1920s as an agent of the Communist International, the Comintern and spent many years in the USSR. Fred had visited a few times, had studied Russian history … Read more

The Gouzenko Affair – the start of the Cold War

Igor Gouzenko exposed Soviet intelligence’s efforts to steal nuclear secrets as well as the technique of planting sleeper agents. The “Gouzenko Affair” is often credited as a triggering event of the Cold War,  with historian Jack Granatstein stating it was “the beginning of the Cold War for public opinion” and journalist Robert Fulford writing he … Read more

The first western pilot to fly the MIG-29 Soviet fighter plane

  What was it like to be the first western pilot to fly the most advanced Soviet fighter aircraft? At the 1989 Abbotsford Air Show, during the dying days of the Cold War, Canadian CF-18 pilot Major Bob Wade became the first Western pilot to fly a Soviet MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter aircraft. This episode tells … Read more

63 – Flying the CF-104 Starfighter over Germany

  Laurie Hawn is a retired Canadian Member of Parliament and former career fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.    Laurie tells the story of low level delivery of nuclear weapons via the Starfighter as well as conventional missions. Also we get insight into the escape, evasion and interrogation training given to NATO … Read more

54 – Canucks Hunt For Red October

  Colonel Terry Chester spent a good portion of his RCAF career hunting for Soviet Submarines in both the Pacific and Atlantic area’s of operation.   He was instrumental in the design criteria for sub hunting capability’s when Canada procured the, then new Aurora, for anti-submarine hunting in the early 1980’s. Terry has great stories to … Read more