Christmas, 1939 on Yorke Island, taken at night by the light of a Coleman gas lamp in the 1st HQ hut, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery.  The island was a small, isolated outpost, and the gunners uniforms suggest how dated the entire post was.  A lot of ww1 gear found use in the early days of the war.

Christmas 1939

A 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion corporal has a chat with a little boy on his own level.  The little boy is leaning against the soldiers knee showing a level of trust that seems to justify everything the soldiers endured. 

 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion

August 1939, on board the Canadian mine sweeper HMCS Comox headed for Yorke Island, where there was a battery to protect the northern entrance to the inland waters off Vancouver.  By the 1930s, Japan had become an aggressively expansionist power.  The threat of an attack by Japanese armed merchant vessels and submarines was serious.  Gun batteries would enforce security regulations and protect the air station, moored vessels and port facilities.