To launch 2024, The duty offers an overview of the 24 anniversaries that will mark this new year, from the creation of Dungeons and Dragons to the move of the Expos, through Watergate and the landing in Normandy. Second part.
June
June 6, 1944: Allied ships landed nearly 130,000 American, British and Canadian soldiers on the beaches of Normandy under heavy fire from German machine guns from the IIIe Reich. The waterlogged soldiers are confronted with the “Atlantic Wall”, made up of barbed wire, mines, anti-tank ditches and concrete turrets. This amphibious operation mobilizes 285,000 sailors spread across 7,000 boats of all sizes. It will mark the Western imagination to the point of leaving in the shadows the sacrifice of the millions of Soviet soldiers who contained the expansionist delusions of Adolf Hitler during most of the conflict. In fact, the Second World War was fought on the Eastern Front, the blind spot for Hollywood filmmakers.
June 16, 1984: Cirque du Soleil gives its first show in Gaspé as part of the 450e anniversary of the arrival of Jacques Cartier in Canada. The company founded in Baie-Saint-Paul by Guy Laliberté, Daniel Gauthier and Gilles Ste-Croix stood out from other circuses of the time by the absence of animals and its large-scale theatrical shows staged by Franco Dragone . Its initial development was made possible by financial assistance of $1.5 million granted by the government of René Lévesque. The Quebec entertainment flagship, established in Las Vegas since 1993, was acquired by an American investment firm in 2015. Cirque du Soleil survived the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the temporary shutdown of the vast majority of its approximately 6,000 employees.
June 28, 1914: Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip shoots Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand dead in a Sarajevo street. Vienna reacted to the attack by declaring war on neighboring Serbia. This localized conflict quickly spread to the rest of Europe through military alliances. For four long years, Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire faced an alliance bringing together France, Great Britain and Russia. The Dominion of Canada enters de facto in the conflict due to its membership in the British Empire. This First World War will cause nearly 18 million victims, including civilians. Gavrilo Princip would not see the end of the conflict he had started, since he died of tuberculosis on April 28, 1918.
August
August 9, 1974: American President Richard Nixon resigns in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The case dates back to June 17, 1972: that night, the police surprised five men equipped with microphones in the offices of the Democratic Party at the Watergate Building. One of them, James McCord, was part of the committee responsible for financing Nixon’s election campaign. Bits and pieces of this spy story were revealed to the general public by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Washington Post. The two men are guided in their investigation by an anonymous source, the now famous “ Deep Throat “. Entangled in his contradictory statements, the president must resolve to resign. This is a first in the history of the United States.
September
September 7, 2004: Judge John Gomery opens the hearings of the Commission of Inquiry into the federal sponsorship program, which was set up by Jean Chrétien’s Liberals to promote Canadian unity following the 1995 referendum. The commission marked by the memory lapses of many witnesses attracts thousands of viewers. A third of the funds from the sponsorship program were diverted to advertising agencies close to the Liberal Party of Canada, confirms Judge Gomery’s report. The scandal gave a momentary boost to the Quebec sovereignist movement, which came close to the 55% support mark in a May 2005 Léger poll.
September 12, 1994: The Parti Québécois of Jacques Parizeau takes power with 44.7% of the vote. The party obtained a majority of seats, but only collected a few thousand votes more than the Liberal Party of Daniel Johnson Jr. This close result worries sovereignists in the run-up to the referendum on the independence of Quebec which is scheduled for the following year. “Sovereignty as we understand it is the opposite of withdrawal,” explains the designated prime minister, Jacques Parizeau, the day after the election of his government. “We are extremely sensitive to the problems of our own minorities in Quebec, and we intend to be impeccable on this subject. »
September 29, 2004: The Montreal Expos play their last game at Olympic Stadium in the moments following the official announcement of the franchise’s move to Washington. The team led by the charismatic Felipe Alou was crushed by the Florida Marlins in front of 32,000 melancholic spectators. The Expos suffered another beating in New York on October 3 during their final game against the Mets. The team never recovered from the Players’ Association strike which ended its dream season in 1994. This disappointment was followed by the dismantling of the star team led by Pedro Martinez, Larry Walker, Moises Alou and Marquis Grissom.
October
October 22, 2014: Armed with a Winchester rifle, Montreal-born Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shoots Corporal Nathan Cirillo dead in front of the Canadian National War Memorial in Ottawa. The terrorist opposed to Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan then rushed towards the doors of the federal parliament, which he passed under the noses of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Zehaf-Bibeau crosses the hall of honor passing between the rooms where the Conservative and New Democratic caucuses are held. This crazy race ends at the entrance to the Parliament library, where the 32-year-old man is shot dead during an exchange of gunfire with members of the security service.
November
November 11, 2004: The President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, dies in a hospital in the Paris suburbs at the age of 75. For nearly 40 years, the politician wearing his famous black and white keffiyeh embodied the stubborn resistance of a people without a state. Arafat notably survived the Black September massacres, perpetrated by the Jordanian authorities in 1970, and the bombing of the Tunisian headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization by Israeli F-15s in 1985. The discovery of polonium on his clothes at the aftermath of his death will fuel the theory of poisoning, which will be refuted by his autopsy. Arafat’s remains are buried in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
November 17, 1974: The Parti Québécois modifies the method of Quebec’s accession to independence by adding the holding of a referendum in its program. The proposal, which will be known under the name of “etapeism”, is notably defended by the former senior civil servant Claude Morin, for whom the election to the National Assembly of a majority of deputies favorable to independence would not would not have sufficient legitimacy to secede. She received the support of René Lévesque and two-thirds of the delegates of the fifth national congress of the PQ, held at the Petit Colisée in Quebec. Statism will allow the election of a first PQ government two years later, in November 1976.
December
December 15, 1964: The maple leaf becomes the new standard of Canada following a vote by elected representatives of the federal Parliament. The flag displaying a red maple leaf with 11 points on a white background bordered by red bands receives the support of 163 deputies, against 78 who oppose it. This two-tone standard prevails in particular over a variant of the same model, whose side bands were blue. The adoption of the Unifoliate led to the scrapping of the Red Ensign British which had been in use since the creation of the Canadian dominion. However, it was not until the end of January 1965 that the new flag was made official by a royal proclamation from Elizabeth II.
December 26, 2004: A magnitude 9.3 earthquake occurs about a hundred kilometers off the island of Sumatra, in the Indian Ocean. The earthquake triggers a gigantic tidal wave, the waves of which reach heights of up to 35 meters. The tsunami left nearly 250,000 dead and five million affected on the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The international community is mobilizing by raising a little more than 13 billion dollars for the reconstruction of devastated areas.