It's 1936, and a group of Canadian veterans of the Great War have traveled to France for the inauguration of the Vimy Ridge Memorial. Part of this delegation includes amateur film-maker Wilfred Prissick, who records the proceedings with his 16mm camera and several rolls of colour film. At his side is his wife Ruby, who notes her thoughts in her diary, and who is overcome by the site of so many on "that blood soaked ground." So begins Rumours of War, the first episode of Canada's War in Colour.
In this first episode, Marion Walwyn, a travel agent from Bluevale, Ontario, films the rise of Nazism in Germany, while on a tour there in the late 1930s. Her camera captures an eerie scene: several SS officers marching in full uniform. Once war is declared, Walwyn, who volunteered in the First World War, returns to London, England, to work at Canada House, where she tends to Canadian servicemen, and camera in hand, captures the devastation of the Blitz.
Percy Jacobson, a businessman from Montreal, decides to keep a diary throughout the war years, recording his thoughts and impressions. His diary becomes increasingly poignant, as his own son, Joe, and his nephew, Moe, both enlist.
Through colour film footage and letters and diaries, we see Canadians enlisting, training at bases across the country, and leaving for war. Previously unseen footage of the 48th Highlanders shows these men, known as the "glamour boys" as they pass the time on board ship, playing impromptu games on deck, seemingly unaware of what they'll face once overseas.
Colour film footage culled from European archives also shows German troops in action; poignant film shows the devastation of the Battle of Dunkerque.
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One haunting scene in Rumours of War is of German soldiers in a town square in Poland, taking stock of Jewish boys, each of whom is wearing a white armband with a blue Star of David.
Back home in Canada, families open their doors to youngsters from England, known as the "guest children", who arrive on the doorsteps of the University of Toronto and Branksome Hall (a private girls' school in Toronto). This plan to save thousands of youngsters continues, until one of the ships, the City of Benares, is torpedoed and destroyed, killing 293 people, most of them children.
In England, Leonard O'Brien, a businessman and politician from New Brunswick, is part of a Canadian delegation that visits Chequers, Churchill's official residence. There, O'Brien takes note in his diary of the occasion, and films the Prime Minister in his "playsuit", the first time, says Churchill, that anyone has done so.
Meanwhile, the world continues to change. Manchuria and much of China is burning, and then on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour, plummeting the United States into the conflict of the Second World War. Newly discovered colour film footage of this attack makes its debut in Canada's War in Colour.
It's a sharp contrast to Christmas in Toronto; as the Santa Claus Parade makes its way down city streets, and a local family gathers around the Christmas tree, Chaplain James Barrett writes from St. Stephen's College Hospital in Hong Kong, describing the horrors he witnessed on that dark morning of December 25.
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