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Lord Selkirk had long been in-- terested in Canada and its possibil-- ities for future development. He had studied _ conditions there and had even published articles on such topiecs as "The Civilization of the The future Lord Selkirk was born in June, 1771, at St. Mary's Dale in Scotland. He entered Edinburgh University at the age of 15 and re-- mained there for four years. In 1797, on the -- death of his elder brother, he inherited the title of Baron Daer and Shortclsugh and two years later, on the death of his father he became the Fifth Earl of Selkirk. He was then 26 years of age, full of energy and always en-- gaged in plans for the improvement of conditions in his native land. He was much disturbed by the poverty of large numbers of the people in the -- Highlands of Scotland which had been aggravated by the Napol-- eonic Wars, and he began search-- ing for a means to help them. It was thus that he came upon the idea of establishing colonies of British settlers in Canada and so, finally, to | the founding of the Red River set--\ tlement. Selkirk is a very familiar name in Western Canada, and especially in Manitoba, where towns, districts and streets are called by that name. Behind the name of Selkirk, so well known to every Scotsman, there is a very interesting story. It was then vouglas Fifth Earl of Selkirk who, more than a hundred years ago, made the name famous, for he was instrumental in founding the first settlement in the Canadian West. Lord Selkirk and the Red River Settlement. For the Canadians it was an im-- portant week. Under the command of Lt--Gen. Tommy Burns, the Can-- adian Corps in Italy went into ac-- BRIEF CANADIAN BIOGRAFIES front and the Anzio beachhead be-- came one front. With each passing day the pres-- sure on the enemy increased. The Hitler Line and the Gustave Line, carefully prepared in the long win-- ter months, now had a significance that was -- mostly -- historical. The weight and scale of the Allied on-- slaught had burst and shredded the lines of pill boxes, barbed wire and gun _ emplacements. Town after town fell to the advancing Allies. The 8th Army shouldered its way up the Liri Valley and the 5th Ar-- my thrust its way up the coast to the Pontine marshes until the main The hot dust of summer choked the roadways and valleys of the Italian countryside to the south of Rome, dust raised and ceaselessly stirred by modern armies on the move. The tanks and trucks and scout cars, the guns and tractors churned forward, and with them the grimy, sweating men -- Canadians, Britons, Americans, Poles, French-- men, New Zealanders, Indians, Ital-- ians. Always there was the thunder of the artillery, the crack of mor-- tars and the chatter of machine guns, and always there was the roar of the planes overhead. g Our î i $ È English è È Section È THE BATTLE OF ITALY PAGE--8 The Canadians take Frosinone 'LThe C Lord Selkirk had spent some' oi time in, Montreal where he had'forc' made the acquaintance of the trad-- | tal.{e ers of the Nor' West Fur Trading | V_Vm] Company. From them he had learn-- time ed about Rupert's Land, the great | the c section of land in Western Canada | P8CK which, at that time, had not yet treat been opened for settlement. It was PÒ f' then that he began to think of the 2010 possibilities of Rupert's Land as a '.SU® new home for those whom he had Of 2 seen struggling _ unsuccessfully to final secure a decent living in the high-- Lo lands of Scotland. tle 7 Indians in British America" and "The British Fur Trade.'" He nad also studied the possibilities of large scale immigration to Canada from Britain, and, having conceived the idea of such immigration, he set about putting it into action. Many difficulties had first to be over-- come. The financial risk was very great; Lord Selkirk was, however assisted in this respect by the fact that he possessed a large privave fortune; he devoted a great part of it to this project. Another difficul-- ty was the attitude of the British Government which was not anxious to allow any of its able--bodied men out of the country while the Napol-- eonic Wars were still in progress. However, in 1803, Selkirk succeed.-- ed in establishing a colony in Prince Edward Island on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. -- This colony suffered many hardships but persevered and eventually prospered. Those who settled there were the forefathers of many of the people living in Prince Edward Island today. choice, either to reinforce or to re-- treat fast and far. That the enemy high command would dare to syphon troops off from other parts of vul-- nerable Europe was _ doubted by most observers. The only alternat-- ive seemed retreat. The number of Germans taker prisoner went beyond the 13,000 mark, and it was conceded that as many or more of the enemy were casualties. With the pressure una-- bated it seemed clear that the Ger-- mans would soon have to make a The offensive from the Anzio beachhead opened what was official-- ly described as a new phase in the battle. These 5th Army units bat-- tered their way forward to slice the Appian Way and its parallel rail-- way and thus cut off one of the main retreat routes for the Ger-- mans. Then they plunged on to cap-- ture the key town of Cisterna, as-- tride the Appian Way, and p\ushed forward toward Valmontone on the Via Casilina. If they could cut that route the Germans between them and the onrushing 8th Army would be in a trap. tion as a complete formation for the first time. The Canadian were as-- signed the Pontecorvo sector of the Hitler Line as their first task, and they smashed their way through for a five--mile gain in the initial on-- slaught and are now in Frosinone. Canadas Only English--Italian Weekly Newspaper anadian Citizen MONTREAL, SATURDAY, June 3rd 1944 back to the Red River and made treaties with the Indians who gave no further trouble. Now, at last, the colony was left in peace and a mea-- sure of security. The foundations of a settlement in the West were finally laid. Lord Selkirk himself received lit-- tle reward for his «struggles and Still the strife between the set-- tlers and the Nor' West Company continued until it reached a climax in 1816, in a pitched battle in which many were killed -- including the Governor, Robert Semple. The con-- dition of the settlers after this af-- fair was very tragic. They were forced to abandon the colony and take refuge on the shores of Lake Winnipeg. At this most critical time, Lord Selkirk himself visited the colony. He brought the settlers The difficulties which the colon-- ists had to overcome were many and great. Before the cultivation of the land could be begun, it was diffi-- cult to maintain an adequate sup-- ply of food, especially during the winter months, and the whole col-- ony was forced to move for the winter to Pombina, near the United States border, where the buffalo, a chief source of food, were moure plentiful than on the lower mea-- dows around the Red River settie-- ment. The Nor' West Company was most hostile and stirred up the In-- dians and half--breeds in its service to many unfriendly acts against the new settlers. These conditions con-- tinued through the years immediate-- ly following the establishment or the colony. But nevertheless a few more settlers continued to icome out each year. Finally the Nor' West Company persuaded a num-- ber of the colonists to abandon the Red River settlement and to move east to the shores of Georgian Bay. Then the Governor, Miles MacDon-- ell, was forced to return to the East and, for some time, the colonists were left without a leader. Lurù Selkirk, however, found a new Gov-- ernor, Robert Semple. He also sent out more settlers to replace those who had moved to Georgian Bay. He purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company a tract of land in Rupert's Land, lying east and west of the Red River and comprising some 110,000 square miles. When purchasing the land, he promised to provide transport for the settlers, to give them the means of livelihood for a time and to give them parcels of land from his holdings on the Red River. He encountered much opposition to his project. Besides the opposition of the British Gover-- ment, he met with stubborn and de-- termined resistance from his for-- mer acquaintances in the Nor' West Company who felt that his plan was directly aimed at their position and influence in the West. But Selkirk pushed on in spite of opposition ana in 1811, the first group of colonists set sail frm Stornoway in Scotland. As their leader, Selkirk chose Miles MacDonell from Glengary, Ontario, who went to Scotland some months before the expedition set sail in order to assist in assembling the colonists. Sixtyone days after leav-- ing Scotland, the colonists arrived at York Factory on Hudson's Bay where they were forced to remain for the winter. They started the last lap of their journey on June Ist, 1812, and reached the _ Red River in late autumn, the first set-- tlers to arrive in Western Canada. esns 0 eo _ o co o o o o noo oooo Lord Selkirk left behind him a living memory. It might be said that the settlement of the West had its real beginning through his immigra-- tion scheme. Many a Scot of Mani-- toba is the proud descendant of the small band of determined settlers who came to Canada under his direction. sacrifice. During the dispute of 1816, both sides had seized ever advantage, not always with stric. regard to fairness. In the succeding years, each side brought law suits against the other for various acts committed -- during the struggle. While it cannot be said that either side was blameless, there is little doubt that the Canadian courts were prejudiced against Lord Sel-- kirk. He lost his case and suffered heavily financially. He returned tc Europe, worn out and exhausted, and died, in 1820, at Pau in France. He was not yet fifty years of age. Mediterranean _ based _ aircraft have made something like 20,000 sorties during the past week. Thai means about 3,000 sorties a day. Their bombs have dropped on rail-- ways running through the strategic northern passes; on highways and junetions and the whole railway system north of the Hitler Lime. The Nazis depend upon these to It is doubtful whether the ad-- vance of Fifth and Eighth Army ground troops through the Gustav and Hitler lines and the junction of troops in the salient formed by the Anzio beachhead would have been so rapid had air power not beer employed to destroy the enemy's lines of communication and harass his line of retreat. The advance of the ground troops has received the greater share of news space, but since the opening barrage was fired the air forces have been hammering away steadily, and it is evident now that a great deal of the preliminary work was entrusted to aircraft. The destruction of the Pescara Dam, for example, was doubtless part of the grand design and contributed to the discomfiture of Nazi troops once the ground offensive got under way. AIR POWER SUPREME When a terrific aerial onslaught failed to nullify Cassino's value as a Nazi stronghold there was a great deal of speculation about the stra-- tegic and tactical value of the air weapon. Some commentators, here and abroad, drew somewhat hastily the conclusion that air power had been over--rated as a weapon. What has happened in Italy since the opening of the Allied offenstve against the Gustave Line restores air power to its proper place as a co--ordinate weapon and reduces the earlier assumption to absurdity. (7 Zagreb mentions also fighting in the Japce, Vakuf, and Kresovo ar-- eas but carefully omits any men-- tion of German and Ustashi losses. In the fighting at Bosiljevo, near the town of Karlova, the German-- Croat source speaks of 360 Parti-- sans killed. In eastern and north-- eastern Bosnia, approximately the the same number wounded. A German--organized broadcast from Zagreb (May 5) boastfully an-- nounces '"vietories" over the Parti-- sans and reports losses supposedly sufferd by Partisan forces in these encounters. RUMANIA A report from Vienna (May 12) announces that Rumanians are ex-- ecuting paesants and gypsies in Bes-- sarabia for "keeping secret the hide--out of enemy parachutists and granting them asylum". YUGOSLAVIA Italy has exhibited on a smaller scale what has been going on all over Europe and, notably during the past week, along communica-- tion lines close to the invasion coast. By steadily pounding away, it is breaking down the enemy's capacity to resist. If air power failed at Cas-- sino against strongly entrenched troops, it has nevertheless been proved a brilliant weapon against lines of communication and the en-- emy's war economy. if, today, Nazi--controlled radios speculate about the possibility of withdrawal' to a line north of Rome, such a withdrawal could be attributed not alone to overwhelm-- ing ground strength fighting val-- iantly but to the difficulties created by destruction of communication lines from the air. Kesselring must extricate his fif-- teen or more divisions if they are not to be cut off. They must re-- treat along roads and over railways made wholly vulnerable by superior air power. supply troops in the battle area and Brief News ooo noo no noo no TEL. BELAIR 2534 YEAR IV.-- No. 23 \1