Tory Redux

Author: Jon Siemko

  • The Torch Is Ours Now

    They’re disappearing

    Canada’s firsthand witnesses to one of the greatest conflicts that shaped the world are slowly passing away. Our remaining veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War are down to just above 4,000. Every year, that number gets smaller. Every year, fewer people remain who can tell us, in their own words, what it cost.

    One man’s voice

    Bill Wilson was one of them. The Manitoba-born sailor served aboard HMCS Ottawa and took part in the D-Day landings. He died this year at 101. Looking back on that day, he didn’t hesitate:

    “I think D-Day was the best day of the war for the world. We did free all of Europe, and Canada was there. For a little nation like ours, it still amazes me. Would I do it again? In spades.

    What they never got

    Generations of young men never came home. They never fell in love, started families or had the chance to grow old.

    From Vimy Ridge to Juno Beach to Kandahar, our history is one of service and sacrifice.

    It wasn’t just Canadians who felt this

    One of Scotland’s last surviving D-Day veterans, who died this year at 100, put it plainly:

    “I’ve had another 82 years. I came home, fell in love, got married, had children, and watched my family grow. Thousands of young men never had the opportunity to experience any of those things, and that is tragic.”

    He continued: “I will never forget the men who didn’t come home. All I ask is that, when we are no longer here to tell you ourselves, you don’t forget them either.”

    We’re forgetting

    Fewer and fewer people take the small amount of time each year to wear a poppy in recognition of that sacrifice. It’s become a worrying trend.

    Another reason remembrance is losing its personal connection is that fewer people have a veteran or someone who served in a conflict in their lives. The further we get from the firsthand experience of war and its cost, the easier it becomes for remembrance to feel like an obligation rather than something that genuinely moves us.

    Why it’s happening

    Alongside the decline in poppy-wearing, there’s a deeper problem: younger generations simply don’t know enough about their own history.

    It isn’t helped by the fact that most students take only one mandatory history course before graduating high school. History is important, but it has to be reinforced every year, with practical examples, not left to a single class.

    Remembrance Day ceremonies need to be meaningful opportunities for students to understand our history and honour those who served, not just another obligation to sit through.

    Our turn

    Now it’s our turn to hold the torch high.

    John McCrae captured it in In Flanders Fields: the dead speak to us still — short days ago, they lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow. Now they ask only that we remember.

    Lest we forget.

  • Canada Shouldn’t Exist

    Canada shouldn’t exist.

    It got carved out of raw wilderness, stretched across a continent, and held together by stubborn people who wanted their kids to have a country.

    Most of us never learned that story right. School gives you dates and names in fragments. Nobody connects the dots. So I decided to connect them myself — with AI.

    The result: a two-minute film on Confederation and the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

    Why it almost didn’t happen

    The first fight was getting separate colonies to become one country. The Americans next door gave them the push they needed — after their Civil War, Irish-American raiders started hitting the border. Macdonald, Cartier, and George Brown figured out the colonies were safer together than apart. That’s Confederation in one sentence.

    How I actually built this

    I wrote the script in Google Docs. I brainstormed first, then locked in the scenes I knew had to be there—a train and the building of the railway. Research filled the rest, including Macdonald’s trip west.

    Macdonald himself was the hard part. I built him as four different men: the young Macdonald of 1867, the PM of the 1870s, the 1880s version, and “Old Tomorrow” around 1890. Splitting him up gave the AI cleaner instructions for each stage of his life — and it’s the only reason the aging works in the second half.

    For the images, I used Nano Banana, Google’s image tool. Feed it two or three reference photos and a master prompt, and it holds a character steady. Tougher subjects — guys with fewer surviving photos — needed more. Library and Archives Canada was my go-to.

    It’s not perfect. I fed it Macdonald’s photos once, and it handed me back Sanford Fleming. Had to name him outright and throw more photos at it before it got the message — and then gave me the line every guy who’s used AI knows by heart: “You’re right.” Lesson: it won’t read your mind. Tell it exactly what you want.

    Everything then ran through Seedance 2.0 to turn stills into motion, built inside Flow AI, with ElevenLabs doing the voices.

    The scene that almost broke me

    The train scene was the toughest in the whole project. In the script, Macdonald’s sitting across from his wife Agnes on that 1886 trip west. First pass, the AI gave me a stiff, lifeless Macdonald — the man who built this country looking exactly like what he was: a computer’s guess.

    The fix was the prompt. I kept rewriting until he was actually doing something — turning to Agnes, the two of them smiling, him pointing out the window at the country going by. Give the AI an action instead of a pose, and it comes alive.

    Voices gave me the same headache. I wanted a different voice for every quote but couldn’t get them to sound human. And the AI butchered “Craigellachie” — the last-spike scene — over and over. Took rewrite after rewrite of the script and the narration before it landed. In the end, I went with one voice for the whole film. Simpler, cleaner, and it told the story better than five mediocre ones would have.

    What this actually taught me

    AI didn’t do the work for me. It just changed what the work was.

    I still had to know the history, pick what mattered, and decide if a scene felt true. AI can generate a picture. It can’t tell you if that picture is right.

    What it does give you is a shot at something that used to need a studio and a real budget. One guy, one laptop, a script to a finished film — no production company required.

    But it’s still slow, still stubborn, and it’ll burn hours of your evening on one small detail. You need patience, you need the research done right, and above all, you need a story worth telling.

    For me that’s Canada. A handful of men talked separate colonies into becoming one country, then built a railway across a continent of rock and muskeg to prove it could hold together. That’s not a footnote. That’s the whole ballgame — and I wanted people to see it, not just read about it.

    This film is step one. More Canadian history is coming, built the same way.

    One dream. One railway. One nation.

    Watch it. Share it with someone who still cares about this country’s story. Tell me what you think.

    This is just the beginning.

  • Brock’s Last Charge

    Early in the morning, a riurgedshed his horse hintord a battlHe It was Major-General Sir Isaac Brock, commander of British forces in Upper Canada (now Ontario)

    Saviour of Upper Canada

    Brock was more than a commander. He led and organized Upper Canada’s defence. A soldier since his teens, he took charge in 1812 of a small, poorly supplied force that was badly outnumbered. He built alliances with Indigenous leaders, including the Shawnee chief Tecumseh. He won over recent settlers from the United States to fight for Canada instead of switching sides. Then, in August, he captured Detroit and broke the first American invasion of Upper Canada. That earned him the title Saviour of Upper Canada.

    What Was at Stake

    Recently, we marked the 214th anniversary of the Battle of Queenston Heights, fought on October 13, 1812. It was a pivotal moment, not just in Canadian history, but in the struggle for North America’s future.

    This was not the first time the Americans had tried to conquer Canada, and it would not be the last. Had we lost this battle, they could have had a foothold in Upper Canada, a base for further invasions, and possibly the colony itself. Alongside the Plains of Abraham, it is one of the battles that shaped what would become Canada.

    The War Behind the Battle

    The War of 1812 began over British trade restrictions and the Royal Navy’s seizure of American sailors, known as impressment. It grew into a fight over the continent’s future. Some Americans wanted to take Canada for good. Others wanted it as leverage against Britain. Either way, the plan was to invade.

    The Battle

    Before dawn on October 13, 1812, American soldiers began crossing the Niagara River in boats. They landed at Queenston and drove back the small British force there.

    Brock was at Fort George, about 11 kilometres away. Cannon fire woke him. He mounted his horse and rode hard to the fight.

    By the time he arrived, the Americans had climbed the heights and taken the gun battery that guarded the river. He did not wait for reinforcements. He gathered the few men at hand and led a charge up the hill. A bullet struck him in the chest, and he died on the field. An American rifleman most likely shot him, though the shooter was never identified for certain. He was 43.

    His death instantly became legend. Historians still argue over what he did, whether it matters more than what he said. He died leading from the front.

    Brock Did Not Fight Alone

    Mohawk and other Six Nations warriors fought beside the British, including John Norton and John Brant. Local militia, including the York Volunteers from what is now Toronto, did too. These were not career soldiers. They were settlers defending their own homes, and many had come to Upper Canada from the United States. Tradition says Brock’s last words were “Push on, brave York Volunteers.”

    Brock’s attack

    The Americans held the heights. The Canadians looked defeated. It wasn’t. That afternoon, Major-General Roger Sheaffe arrived with reinforcements: British regulars and Canadian militia, joined by Mohawk warriors. They attacked, and the Americans were pinned against the river. Many American militia on the far shore had refused to cross, so no help came. Roughly 900 American soldiers surrendered.

    What It Did to the War

    Queenston Heights proved the Americans could be stopped. It gave the outnumbered defenders the confidence to keep fighting on, and it ended the Americans’ hope of an easy conquest. The war was far from over. It ran two more years. In April 1813, American troops took York, now Toronto, and burned its Parliament buildings. In August 1814, British troops burned the White House. But the Americans never conquered Upper Canada. After Queenston Heights, the colony held out.

    A Legacy Still Felt

    Queenston Heights was more than a battle in a war. It became part of Canada’s cultural fabric.

    Next to the great wars of the Canadianry, the War of 1812 was a minor affair. But it shaped the character of the scattered colonies that became Canada. It’s hard to picture Canada with a different border or a different culture.

    In the first half of the 20th century, Brock’s defeat became a source of cultural pride, and thBrock’se became part of Canada’s national mythos. It was the day we stood up to a Canadian American force and won. We still honor him. Streets, schools and parks across the country carry his name. Yet too few remember the story. That is a loss.

    Macdonald Remembered

    Even Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, thought the war was worth honouring. In 1866, he spoke at a banquet in Cornwall. Veterans of 1812 were in the room, and he saluted them as men who had bled for king and country. He praised the militia and the small band of regulars who, in his words, fought “against enormous odds, met the foe in the cause of their young coun”ry.” More than half a century later, Canada’s founders still remembered”who held the line.

    Why It Still Matters

    A country needs touchstones from its past. Our identity is more than a charter, a flag, and a list of social programs. It was also forged by people who stood their ground in 1812. Remembering Brock and the men who fought beside him is long overdue.