The bayonet is a British Enfield P(attern) 53 socket type, introduced in 1853, used in the Crimea, the US Civil War, and, in the British Empire, officially till 1871.

The 1853 Enfield was a muzzle-loading musket, replaced in 1867, with the cartridge loading Snider-Enfield. The bayonet fit both.

Canadian militiamen also used these long guns. And one of them, mindful of his Bible, literally, used a forge and a hammer on an anvil, to convert his milita bayonet into a sickle to cut his grain at harvest time.

Of course Canadians were old hands at this by then. The bayonet-sickle by then, had, for decades, already been gathering dust in the attic, where it would be found over 100 years later.

A Canadian pioneer farmer has whittled a wooden handle which he has carefully fitted into the hole where the musket muzzle once had fit.

It is finely carved with a sort of pistol grip, with places for the fingers cut out so that it fits the hand comfortably like a modern car steering wheel.

The original locking ring, which was used to fasten the bayonet on to the gun muzzle, was removed. It would have been an inconvenient jangling nuisance and would have given blisters in short order.

Right is the P.53 Enfield bayonet as it looked, before the conversion and with the locking ring still in place.

Below it, on a blue background, is a similar looking but slimmer barrelled, later bayonet, for the 1871 Martini-Henry, which became the standard British military rifle that year.

The goose neck also extends the blade further out from the barrel.

Clearly our bayonet is the earlier, fatter barrelled one, which was made sometime between 1853 to 1871.

It was probably converted into a sickle in the 1850s or 60s, when farmers were used to making their own rakes, shovels, spades, scythes, hammers, and sickles, before factory made tools were widely available.

The flip side of the P.53 bayonet shows again the total similarity to the bayonet-sickle.

Defensive Wars by Civilians - A fabulous symbol of Canada's military heritage, from 1602 till 2002, during which Canadian civilians, routinely, in overwhelming numbers, dropped, momentarily, their tools on civvy street, to pick up the tools of war when their homes, and farms were attacked or threatened by ruthless and powerful high-tech invaders, which were almost always, the war-mongering Americans and in World War II, the NAZIS.

The need was great; the enemy real and powerful; the overwhelming number of Canadians approved putting down the sickle and grabbing the bayonet....

Aggressive Corporate Wars by Professionals - In the 21st century, this noble 400 year history was ruthlessly trampled into the dirt when the Canadian Forces - now professionals, and specifically recruited by General "our job is to be able to kill people" Hillier below right - were sent to "fight" and "kill" (his words) to invade, "rape and pillage" Afghanistan, and to shoot up someone else's homeland.

The corporate media ratchetted up the propaganda to try to fool the electorate into believing that somehow, the wretched pajamahadeen, in the world's poorest country, were a threat to anyone but themselves.

The need for war was nonexistent, predictably in inverse proportion to the war mongering hype of Christie Blatchford, Margaret Wente, Rosie DiManno, and Michael Ignatieff; the enemy hapless, in pajamas, living on the run in hovels.

The overwhelming majority of Canadians, saw the con in Conservative from the beginning, and never stopped disapproving, totally, of Canada joining George Obama (near right) and his Coalition of the Willing to do the Killing For Fun and Profit (CWILLKILLFFP). Or is it Barack Bush? We can never tell the difference... Luckily there's no need to...

The hand that wielded this bayonet-sickle would be incredulous at this historic reversal, but no more than the vast majority of Canadians who never approved this US and Canadian corporate war, engineered to grab, for themselves and their gas and oil magnate cronies, total control over a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan. They very well knew Afghans would never approve US capitalist exploiters from kicking the locals aside, and using their country as a corridor to make American industrialists, like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsveld, rich beyond their wildest dreams...

That is why corporate Canada engineered spending billions on new war toys, so the generals can try to exterminate the pajamahadeen, and their opposition to white Christian foreign invaders from half way around the world from exploiting Muslim lands for their own selfish economic and political ends...

Early Canadian Heroine

Right from the beginning, of her history, Canada's military tradition was founded in the heroic efforts of her citizens.

French-Canadian history is full of stories of brave civilians who challenged death, and often found it, in order to defend their fledgling communities against American attacks, from both Indian and white armed forces.

On October 22, 1692, Madeleine de Verchères was 14 years old and working , with a group, in the fields outside the fort, near Montreal, when the Iroquois attacked.

She alone survived, to run back to the fort, shouting - not, as some books would have you believe "To Arms! To Arms!" but actually, "Aux armes! Aux armes!"

Inside were only two frightened soldiers, an old man, crying children and screaming women - they had just watched their husbands and sons being killed!

In spite of the overwhelming sense of fear, rising panic, and utter hopelessness that reigned, Madeleine organized the defence of the fort, with her 12 year old brother, getting everyone to shoot guns, and a cannon, to keep the Indians at bay.

At night she posted sentries who called out constantly that all was well. The ruse of a large garrison worked well for eight days - the Indians feared to make an all out attack. Then a relieving force from Montreal rescued them.

You can bet that the day after the attack, they were all back in the fields working away... To them, unlike General Hillier, life is about working, not killing, for a living...

Go to More Madeleine's Heroics

Early Agriculture:

Another fine preliminary watercolour which JD once mocked-up to tell a story he though was worth telling.

A soldier stops to investigate a complaint with a frontier farmer.

"There, over there, that's were the Yankee terrorists came across and tried to burn down our barn. But we chased them off. Hopefully they will leave us in peace from now on."

But JD was not into politics. He wanted only to portray the hardships of pioneer life, and the genius it took to make it all work when all the odds were against you.

After the British took over Canada from the French in 1759-1763, defence against Americans still fell largely into the hands of the locals, who formed part time militias to learn how to fight back effectively.

In Early Agriculture JD shows a settler plowing while stumps still litter the field. After he built his home to assure shelter for the winter, he had to fell the trees to make fields.

Crops were grown around the stumps; it took too much time, and effort, to remove them. Let them rot in place. Got to get the seed in fast. Before you know it, winter will be upon us. So little time, so few hands, and so much to do.

In the caption below the watercolour JD had typed up notes on the history of the plow in early Canada.

JD Kelly shows the enormous amount of intellectual research that lay behind every painting he did.

No one in the Group of Seven bothered with any of that. They just sat down - anywhere - and painted - anything. They only wanted exercise for their brush, and their eyes, not their brains.

Go to Pioneer Axes & Cabins

UNE HÉROÏNE QUÉBÉCOISE MODERNE

In the heroic civilian tradition of Madeleine de Verchères...well not quite. Madeleine had a daytime job in her community. Karine, like the first Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan, Robert Short, was lacking enough education to get hired on anywhere else. So, like many others, out of desperation to make a bit of money to lay aside so they could get "out" and do something more rewarding, they signed on with the full-time "professional" Canadian Forces, which quickly sent them into Harm's Way... and for over 150 others like them, the end of the road for a young life before it had even begun to be more than full of dreams...

We Protest the Death of Trooper Karine Blais - Killed in Afghanistan, April 2009, at 21, just days after first setting foot in that wild and distant country.

She offered her life - not her dead body - to be of service to her country, which betrayed her...

Canadian generals and politicians squandered her priceless offering, uselessly, by putting her in the line of fire in Afghanistan, in a corporate war that the vast majority of Canadians opposed.

They took the light from her eyes, and then sent her dead body back to her parents, saying "Take her, she's no further use to us." But as a parting gesture, they promoted the dead girl to corporal... Well that at least gives her a pay raise...

Lamentably she will never, ever, be able to do anything for Canada, her family, or friends, let alone fulfill her dream of marrying her partner "Kermit," (below right) and starting a family with him that she spoke of to friends when they last saw her.

She will never see her dog Molly again, or get to start a business she dreamed of doing in her home town of Les Méchins, Quebec.

99.9% of the caskets which contain bodies of the over 150 Canadians killed in Afghanistan, are covered with the Canadian flag during funerals and ceremonies (See: Google images). The military and the top Ottawa politicians want it that way.

Not so in Quebec where the population is hugely against the war, to the point they will not allow the Canadian flag to be draped over their loved ones' remains. When Cpl. Steve Martin, the 154th Canadian soldier to be killed, just a few days before Christmas in 2010, his casket left in his home town in Quebec was covered with a minimal "Canadian Forces" flag.

It was a Québécois protest started by Karine's parents. They are saying their daughter died doing her duty as a member of the Canadian Forces. She did not die for "Canada," or Canadians, the vast majority of whom, like Quebeckers, oppose this stupid slaughter of their young people sent to die on behalf of a corporate organized war against Muslims.

Again, the Martin family won out over the wishes of the military who wanted to use Steve's funeral to "show the flag," the Maple Leaf, in Quebec, and make a crass political statement.

Neither the parents, nor Quebeckers, wanted any of it...