Gordon Finnie was born March 2, 1931 in Toronto, where he grew up in the Parkdale neighbourhood. Gord grew up during the tough times of the Great Depression and the Second World War, and he and his brothers delivered newspapers to help the family out. His parents worked at the Palace Theatre on the Danforth. […]
Ron Kirk served in the Canadian Forces in the post-WW2 period, when Canada’s peacekeeping reputation was being established. Ron served in the navy, and he spent time in Korea during that nation’s 1950-53 war. Ron and his shipmates patrolled the Korean west coast, doing their part to counter North Korea’s efforts to export communism. He […]
During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of Korean civilians, along with thousands of others in the occupied territories, were conscripted for Japan’s war effort, a topic that is only on the periphery of Western historiography and education. During their visit to Seoul, members of the Alpha Education Peace Tour were able to meet […]
Lee Yong Su is a halmeoni, or “grandmother”, a name Koreans use for the women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during the Second World War. The Japanese military developed the term “comfort women” to describe these women who were coerced into this terrible existence. Ms. Lee was kidnapped at the age […]
Kim Han Soo was born in northern Korea in 1918, during the time of Japanese occupation. When the Japanese invaded the Chinese in 1937, Mr. Kim remembers an offhand remark from a Japanese officer, bragging about a Chinese girl he had raped and murdered. It would prove to be a powerful lesson for Mr. Kim, […]
Roger McLean was born in Scituate, Massachusetts. An avid baseball fan and player, he went to Andover and Princeton, and went on to serve as a forward artillery observer in Korea and after the Armistice worked with the local Korean population building a primary school with materials sent from the U.S. He received his discharge […]