Legion Magazine March-April 2015 Back Issue

Veterans Benefits Guide 2015
Everything you need to know about disability awards, pensions and benefits that are available to Canada’s military veterans. Our second annual Veterans Benefits Guide includes the latest on benefits for military and RCMP members, educational and vocational programs, tips for filling in forms, the latest rates for 2015, and the results of our readership survey on the quality of services from Veterans Affairs Canada. If you or a veteran you know may qualify for benefits, this guide is a must-read.

Canada’s dangerous dance with NATO
Staff Writer Adam Day is embedded aboard the HMCS Toronto for Operation Reassurance, Canada’s contribution to a multinational naval patrol on the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, where the frigate met Russian fighter jets head-on in one of the tensest confrontations since the Cold War’s end. Article 5, a little-known NATO clause, enrages Russia and binds Canadians to a life-or-death defence of countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. What’s at stake here? Maybe not much. But it also may be the start of a cycle of conflict and war the outcome of which no one can predict.

Assault on Italy, the forgotten front
Canadians fought continuously on Sicily and the Italian mainland from July 1943 to February 1945, losing more than 5,000 men. Why then is the Italian Campaign so overlooked today? Noted historian J.L. Granatstein takes us from the Sicilian coast to the Gothic Line on the Adriatic coast, following the brutal battles, and victories, of I Canadian Corps. As one war correspondant put it, “If it wasn’t hell, it was the courtyard of hell. It was a maelstrom of noise and hot spitting steel.”