Vincent J. Curtis
13 Sept 2019
TACCOM, in its 2019 version, is Canada’s
largest gun show. It brings together the
world’s largest and most important gun manufacturers, equipment suppliers,
Canada’s largest distributors, and allied businesses into one trade show. If you’re a gun-guy, TACCOM 2019 is
hog-heaven.
Yes, the usual suspects were there. Sig
Sauer featured its P series of firearms, Glock, FN Herstal featured its FN509;
and even Canik had a small display. You
touch, feel, and even dry fire some of these military style handguns.
Allied and related businesses also had
substantial presences, like Durham Military Vehicles, and Hudson Supplies. I’ll bet an LSVW hadn’t had such TLC than the
one on display at the Durham booth.
Hudson was there to cultivate interest in
its line of carry gear for which it is a master distributor: Tasmanian
Tiger. Hudson head honcho Marc
“Buckleman” Beaudoin got his start marketing extremely tough and secure
lock-unlock buckles for attaching MOLLE gear to each other. And the buckles and tactical gear were
certainly featured in his booth. But the
star of the show was the extraordinary array of the Tasmanian Tiger gear.
Tasmanian Tiger is a line of premium
professional grade carry equipment for military, police, first responder, EMT,
and generally people who have to carry heavy loads long distances. Hikers and backpackers would find the line
interesting to browse, and they could find something of use to them, so
versatile, modular, and varied are the systems.
In Tiger you have carry systems all designed to work together no matter
which pieces you mix and match.
The foundation of the carry system are the
X1 and V2 frame systems. The bare X1
frame reminded this writer of the legendary 1966 pattern pack frame with its
bottom shelf-frame and tubular construction.
But this frame ran up to the shoulders.
It also had reinforcement bars that crossed into an X. The X1 system is designed for bulky, heavy
loads that are to be carried on the back for long distances and for a long
time. The frame is designed to stabilize
and distribute the load.
The lumbar area is extremely well padded,
as is the hip belt generally.
Well-padded shoulder straps ease the burden on the shoulders. In addition, care has been taken to ensure
good ventilation across the back.
The V2 frame is size adjustable and
intended for medium to heavy loads. It
is designed as an inverted-V frame with fiberglass reinforcing bars. Like the X1, the V2 frame comes well-padded
in all the right places, and is extremely comfortable to wear.
Those are the bases of the systems. The really interesting part is the wide
variety of packs that attach to these frames.
They are all modular, MOLLE attachable, and made with weight-saving 700
cordura nylon.
The TT series of packs range in size from
nine to an incredible 100 litres. There
are the simple “Essential” packs, a 22 L, 25 L, 30 L, 37 L, combat and mission
packs; a 25 L radio pack. There’s a 45
L, 50 L, 75 L, 80 L pack, and the incredible 100 L range pack. These packs come with internal and external
division for mission specific applications.
Colours include black, olive, khaki, coyote, and multicam.
Then there’s vests and web gear designed to
work with the packs. These can carry
plates, as well as a variety of pouches for rifle and pistol mags, cuffs, and
loads of other stuff.
If you plan on carrying anything on your
back, your front, or even the back of your front seat or headrest, you got to
have a look at the Tasmanian Tiger line from Hudson Supply. Military, police, EMT, or just a plain hiker
or back packers like me there’s got to be something interesting to you.
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Vincent J. Curtis
20 Sept 2019
The latest unwise promise from Justin
Trudeau is that if re-elected he would ban “semi-automatic assault weapons” and
allow municipalities to restrict or ban handguns. These promises are all constitutionally
and legally dubious. They certainly won’t
achieve anything.
Since any weapon can be used to assault, I
assume he means assault rifle. A “semi-automatic
assault rifle” is a contradiction in terms since the distinguishing feature of
an assault rifle is that it is capable of fully-automatic fire.
As for municipalities being given legal
authority by the Federal government, it is a pure play for Toronto votes and is
constitutionally dubious. The provincial
governments have full authority over municipalities, and possess the power to
block any by-law pretending to ban the possession and legal use of private
property.
The recent TACCOM 2019 gun show in Toronto
showed how useless any such an “assault” ban would be. On display were irearms that are “assault-like”
in character but are entirely unrestricted under current law. The gun designers are smarter than Liberal
gun-banners, and already have the solution to a Trudeau gun-ban ready for
market.
A gun-ban will be met with massive
non-compliance. Is Trudeau prepared to
create several million scoff-laws in Canada just for the sake of his
progressive vanity?
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Vincent J. Curtis
11 Sept 2019
What Canada can do about climate change
will undoubtedly be an election issue, though it shouldn’t be. Why it shouldn’t be can be explained with a
few incontrovertible facts that even ardent believers cannot ignore.
Canada produces 1.5 percent of world CO2
emissions annually, of which Ontario contributes about a third. If every car, factory, and person in Ontario
were vaporized and the land returned to primordial forest, it would reduce
Canada’s contribution from 1.5 to 1.0 percent.
That reduction of 0.5 percent is equivalent to reducing atmospheric CO2 content
from 408 to 406 ppm. That 2 ppm
difference has no impact at all on CO2 induced climate change – if it
exists. The wildest hopes for the
Trudeau carbon tax won’t cut Canada’s CO2 emissions by anywhere near a third.
So what are we talking about – tiny fractions
of ppm in this election? Seriously?
Canada’s contribution to world CO2
emissions is too small for anything we do to make a difference. Talk of “what Canada can do so save the
planet” is happy-talk, virtue-signalling.
It is playing on ignorance.
Serious people should speak of serious
things, especially in an election. Speaking of what Canada ought to do to affect climate change isn't serious.
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Vincent J. Curtis
4 June 2019
After the destruction of Worthington Force,
an enraged Guy Simonds ordered GOC 4th Canadian Armoured Division, George
Kitching, to take Hill 195. The division
commander passed the order onto OC 10th Brigade, J.C. Jefferson. who
in turn passed it on to Lt-Col Dave Stewart, CO of the Argyll & Sutherland
Highlanders. “I mentally wrote the
Argylls off, as well as myself” recalled Stewart.
With the fate of the Black Watch on Verrières
Ridge in mind, Stewart began his planning process with a map recce. He found a concealed route through the German
lines to well up the slope of the feature from an unexpected direction. Bringing his scout platoon with him, Stewart
reconnoitered the route, and dropped off members of the platoon as guides on
the way back. Stewart’s plan was to lead
the Argylls in single file back along the route in darkness, infiltrate the
German position, and occupy Hill 195 silently.
Routine sounds of battle would, hopefully, cover the sound of five
hundred men tromping in the darkness and banging shovels into rifles.
Stepping of at midnight 10/11 August, the
Argylls with “an almost incredible smoothness” occupied Hill 195. The companies were deployed around the summit,
and the troops began digging in by 04:30. Over one hundred Germans occupying the feature
were surprised and captured. Stewart contrived
to bring along a troop of 17 pdr anti-tank guns, and sited them to enfilade the
most likely route of a tank assault.
Hill 195 was not a bald knob. Located in the center of the German line, it
had trees, scrub, hedges, and a wheat field for concealment. It lacked much cover, and chalk bedrock lay
less than two feet below the surface. Slit trenches were shallow. When the sun came up and the Germans realized
that Canadians held the dominant feature of their line, they tried to dislodge
them with artillery and mortar fire.
When that didn’t work, tank and infantry assaults were launched from the
direction Stewart expected. The 17 pdrs
left the tanks smoking wrecks, and machine guns made short work of the German infantry. Canadian field artillery and Typhoons shot up
an assembly area where heavy German tanks were massing.
With their main line of resistance
breached, the Germans pulled back closer to Falaise.
Operation Tractable was launched on August
14. It was another Simonds special. This time, eight hundred Lancasters would
bomb targets along the road from Hill 195 to Falaise. Then, at noon, the 3rd Infantry and
4th Canadian Armoured Divisions, forming a main effort, would strike
southwards cross-country two miles east of the road. They would cross the Laison River, and bear down
on Points 184, 115, and 159 north-east of Falaise. (The aerial bombardment
savoured of a ruse, but the Germans weren’t fooled. Captured documents told the Germans where the
main effort was.) A heavy smoke screen
was used to impair the effectiveness of long range German anti-tank and machine
gun fire. Of course, some of the bombs landed in Canadian and Polish lines and
caused about four hundred casualties.
Tractable was another heavy slog. It took until the 16th to push the
six miles from east of Hill 195 into Falaise, and another two days to clear the
town. But taking Falaise was not enough
to close the gap. The places of real
tactical significance were two small villages seven miles south east of
Falaise: Trun and Chambois. These were
to be taken by 4th Div and the 1st Polish Armoured. These two armoured divisions thrust south on
August 16th while Falaise was still being cleared.
Suddenly, a spark of generalship
appeared. The commander of the 1st
Polish, General Stanislaw Maczek, swung east and outflanked German defenses. Then, he split his division into three battle
groups, sending one in rear of Trun, one to Hill 262, and one to Chambois, all in
the German rear. Aided by the Poles, 4th
Div captured Trun on the 18th.
The final drama was to occur at St.
Lambert-sur-Dives and Hill 262, where the Canadians and the Poles would choke
the gap closed.
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