Relaxing

This collection of specialty pieces and old favourites includes songs in two languages - English and Gaelic.

The Second World War was a less poetic war than the First had been, but there were enough amateur poets in the Canadian army in Italy to fill this collection of poems, all of which had originally been published in the military newspaper "The Maple Leaf."

Broadcast on the CBC from 17 August to 5 October 1944, this weekly program highlighted the work of Canadian composers such as Healey Willan, J.J. Weinzweig, J.J. Gagnier, and Alexander Brott.

John McCrae's famous poem inspired countless responses, including this one by R.W. Lillard, reprinted in a leaflet distributed at an exhibition of captured war trophies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This concert, typical of wartime patriotic events, featured musical selections from local artists and one of the city's military bands and a lecture entitled "On land and sea, with our veterans."

Already nearly fifty years of age when he enlisted in the 193rd Battalion, Stanley Fullerton of Amherst, Nova Scotia, was plagued by ill health while in uniform and never got closer to the front than England.

Al Pat or "the Irish soldier poet" had served in the infantry in the First World War, and wrote about his experiences in a collection called "Rhymes of an Old War Horse." A sergeant in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, he also published this volume of rough doggerel about life on various Canadian airfields.

Nova Scotian John Bradford served as a conducting officer during the First World War, but his poetry turned to more unusual subjects, such as Armenian refugees and the story of a horse that was killed in action at the front.

At the end of the Second World War, this amateur poet from Nova Scotia published a verse tribute to the Royal Canadian Navy, and to its political chief, Angus L. Macdonald.

Four ensembles, the Originals, the London Life Troupers, the Tweedsmuir Revue, and the London Little Theatre, performed to entertain men and women in uniform and raise funds for the Citizens Auxiliary War Services Committee.