People say that we should never look back at the past because it is a waste of time and you will gain knowledge that you shall not need because it’s the future but they are wrong, these incidences that have happened in the past have now shaped our future and what we have now. There have been a lot of battles that have happened from World War 1 but the worst event was the Battle of Passchendaele, then, during the 20s the worst thing that happened was the Stock Market Crash, after when World War 2 came along the Battle of Hong Kong and Canadian POWs in Japan. These battles that they had to deal with are really incredible, so many lives were lost in Passchendaele, people lost so much money in the Stock Market Crash, and sending inexperienced people going to battle for their country and putting their life on the line.
Passchendaele was also known at the time as the third battle of Ypres, this historical battle took place in the first World War, July 31st to November 10, 1917. This battle was taking place in Belgium, and where the German had been staying there not moving for the past three years with the Allied armies, the specific spot the battle is was on the Ypres salient. On the 31st of July, the British were trying to capture a ridge near the destroyed village in Passchendaele by using a new offense they created to try and break through the German lines. After every troop had launched failed assaults including the countries such as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, on the 26th of October the Canadian Corps decided to join the battle, 10 days later the Canadians captured the ridge (November 6) even though there was a lot of heavy rain pouring and shelling that had changed the battleground into a Quagmire(A very soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot). Arthur Currie was the new commander of the Canadian Corps and he was the one that was ordered by Douglas Haig to bring all of his four divisions to Belgium, Currie had objected against bringing his troops because it would cost him about 16,000 men for no reason or no great strategic gain. However, in the end, he had little to say about what was going to happen because he was given orders. What happened now Arthur Currie knew what would happen and he lost almost all of his men for something that was pointless, the battle had so many deaths and injuries around 16,000(4000 killed) Canadians were killed or injured in that battle(over 275,000 British killed and 220,000 Germans killed). This battle did nothing for the allied effort instead it had become an image of the senseless slaughter that had happened on Passchendaele in World War 1.
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The Stock Market Crash was really horrible for the people of North America at that time, late in October of 1929, a huge scare impounded the stock exchanges of North America. A party called the Capitalism speculative party, with all of its rising share prices and all of its celebrity millionaires, had just out of nowhere come to a complete stop. It was called The Great Crash or The Stock Market Crash, after this created a horrible event called the Great Depression. The Crash Began on October 24th, 1929, on Black Thursday. The next day on the front page of the Toronto Globe it said that there were stock speculations of the wild day of panic. The recovery was very hard after the crash because on October 29th, 1929, a day called Black Tuesday came around the corner and investors traded 16 million shares on the New York Stock Market Exchange in only one single day of it happening. It was incredible because Billions of dollars were lost because of it, which caused thousands of investors to wipe out. Also, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. After Black Tuesday, North America and the rest of the industrialized world went down into the Great Depression, the longest and deepest long-lasting downturn of the Western industrialized world at that time.
In the second World War, the Canadian soldiers had their first engagement in battle while protecting the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong against any Japanese attacks that may come which was in December 1941. The Canadians that were in Hong Kong fought against outstanding odds and showed that they had the heart and courage of people that have been in the army for much longer than they were, they also had very limited to no time to train for this war. They had no chance of victory but they refused to surrender to the enemy until they were surrounded and/or overrun by the enemy. The British Colony surrendered on Christmas Day, December 25 is the day this horrible battle finished. Those who had survived were brought back to the Japanese and became prisoners of war and so many of them had to go through torture and starvation by the Japanese. The battle was only 17 days from December 8 to 25 of 194, Canada sent 2,000 troops to Hong Kong from Winnipeg and Quebec City with basically no training whatsoever. Over 290 Canadians had died in the war while they were on the battleground, but another 264 would have died from the horrendous conditions they went through at the Japanese prisoner of war camps.
Canada has had such a horrible 20th century, so many people lost their lives in the war of Passchendaele over 16,000 which is really hard to think about, and all the billions of dollars lost in the Stock Market Crash, and those people that were held captive and tortured after fighting and the extremely hard war they had just fought. People really take losing their lives for granted but the people that fought for Passchendaele did not care for what happened to them as long as their people are safe which is really inspiring. The Stock Market Crash made people lose so much money, and many people were not able to get a job. The battle of Hong Kong was really interesting because Canada sent over 2000 men over to a foreign country to fight a war they did not even train for. In the end, all of these amazing things that have happened in the past if they had never happened we would have never been where we are today.