August 1939, on board the Canadian mine sweeper HMCS Comox headed for Yorke Island, where there was a battery to protect the northern entrance to the inland waters off Vancouver.  By the 1930s, Japan had become an aggressively expansionist power.  The threat of an attack by Japanese armed merchant vessels and submarines was serious.  Gun batteries would enforce security regulations and protect the air station, moored vessels and port facilities.

On board HMCS Comox

Christmas, 1939 on Yorke Island, taken at night by the light of a Coleman gas lamp in the 1st HQ hut, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery.  The island was a small, isolated outpost, and the gunners uniforms suggest how dated the entire post was.  A lot of ww1 gear found use in the early days of the war.

Christmas 1939

A Canadian dispatch rider somewhere in Normandy nonchalantly strikes a match on a mannequin's hip.  Alex Gray took this human-interest shot, hoping that this Dr's home-town paper might run it.  Such pictures gave reassurance to families in Canada that life on the line wasn't without it's lighter side.