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The Battle of the Plains of Abraham (13 September 1759), also known as the Battle of Quebec, was a pivotal moment in the Seven Years’ War and in the history of Canada. A British invasion force led by General James Wolfe defeated French troops under the Marquis de Montcalm, leading to the surrender of Quebec to the British. Both commanding officers died from wounds sustained during the battle. The French never recaptured Quebec and effectively lost control of New France in 1760. At the end of the war in 1763 France surrendered many of its colonial possessions — including Canada — to the British.

(This is the full-length entry about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. For a plain-language summary, please see Battle of the Plains of Abraham (Plain-Language Summary).)

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was fought during the First World War from 9 to 12 April 1917. It is Canada’s most celebrated military victory — an often mythologized symbol of the birth of Canadian national pride and awareness. The battle took place on the Western Front, in northern France. The four divisions of the Canadian Corps, fighting together for the first time, attacked the ridge from 9 to 12 April 1917 and captured it from the German army. It was the largest territorial advance of any Allied force to that point in the war — but it would mean little to the outcome of the conflict. More than 10,600 Canadians were killed and wounded in the assault. Today an iconic memorial atop the ridge honours the 11,285 Canadians killed in France throughout the war who have no known graves.

This is the full-length entry about the Battle of Vimy Ridge. For a plain-language summary, please see Battle of Vimy Ridge (Plain-Language Summary).

The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was fought during the First World War from 31 July to 10 November 1917. The battle took place on the Ypres salient on the Western Front, in Belgium, where German and Allied armies had been deadlocked for three years. On 31 July, the British began a new offensive, attempting to break through German lines by capturing a ridge near the ruined village of Passchendaele. After British, Australian and New Zealand troops launched failed assaults, the Canadian Corps joined the battle on 26 October. The Canadians captured the ridge on 6 November, despite heavy rain and shelling that turned the battlefield into a quagmire. Nearly 16,000 Canadians were killed or wounded. The Battle of Passchendaele did nothing to help the Allied effort and became a symbol of the senseless slaughter of the First World War.

The Second Battle of Ypres was fought during the First World War from 22 April to 25 May 1915. It was the first major battle fought by Canadian troops in the Great War. The battle took place on the Ypres salient on the Western Front, in Belgium, outside the city of Ypres (now known by its Flemish name, Ieper). The untested Canadians distinguished themselves as a determined fighting force, resisting the horror of the first large-scale poison gas attack in modern history. Canadian troops held a strategically critical section of the frontline until reinforcements could be brought in. More than 6,500 Canadians were killed, wounded or captured in the Second Battle of Ypres.

Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Borden has always been primarily a training base for the Canadian Forces (CF). It is located 80 km northwest of Toronto, and was named after Sir Frederick Borden, Laurier's militia minister (1896-1911).

Canadian Forces Base Gagetown (or CFB Gagetown) functions primarily as the combat-training centre for the Canadian Army and comprises 111,000 hectares between Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick, west of the Saint John River.

Renamed Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in 1968, the base has a total population of 5,000. As one of Canada's busiest operational bases, it is economically important to the adjacent town of Petawawa and nearby Pembroke.

Shilo, Canadian Forces Base (CFB), is located on the western boundary of Manitoba's Spruce Woods Provincial Forest, 195 km west of Winnipeg and 25 km east of Brandon. A portion of the forest is leased to the federal government for the Shilo military reserve. The base is part of Land Force Western Area (LFWA), which was established in 1991, with its headquarters in Edmonton.

8 Wing/Canadian Forces Base Trenton is located 167 km east of Toronto on Lake Ontario's Bay of Quinte. Begun in 1929 on 384 ha of flat farmland adjacent to the town of Trenton.

During the Cold War, Canada stationed army and air force units abroad for the first time during peacetime. Soldiers and airmen began to arrive in the early 1950s, shortly after the Cold War began, and remained until 1993, after it ended. In total, more than 100,000 Canadian military personnel served in France and West Germany in that period.

During the Second World War, a large naval repair base was established at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where many Allied ships were refitted and repaired following their work maintaining convoy and antisubmarine surveillance in the Atlantic. During the Cold War, HMCS (later CFS) Shelburne played an important role in antisubmarine warfare, part of the SOSUS/IUSS network of passive sonar stations that identified and tracked Soviet submarines. CFS Shelburne was decommissioned in 1995.

The 1944 Battle of Normandy — from the D-Day landings on 6 June through to the encirclement of the German army at Falaise on 21 August — was one of the pivotal events of the Second World War and the scene of some of Canada's greatest feats of arms. Canadian sailors, soldiers and airmen played a critical role in the Allied invasion of Normandy, also called Operation Overlord, beginning the bloody campaign to liberate Western Europe from Nazi occupation. Nearly 150,000 Allied troops landed or parachuted into the invasion area on D-Day, including 14,000 Canadians at Juno Beach. The Royal Canadian Navy contributed 110 ships and 10,000 sailors and the RCAF contributed 15 fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons to the assault. Total Allied casualties on D-Day reached more than 10,000, including 1,074 Canadians, of whom 359 were killed. By the end of the Battle of Normandy, the Allies had suffered 209,000 casualties, including more than 18,700 Canadians. Over 5,000 Canadian soldiers died.

During the Second World War, on 19 August 1942, the Allies launched a major raid on the French coastal port of Dieppe. Operation Jubilee was the first Canadian Army engagement in the European theatre of the war, designed to test the Allies' ability to launch amphibious assaults against Adolf Hitler's "Fortress Europe." The raid was a disaster: More than 900 Canadian soldiers were killed, and thousands more were wounded and taken prisoner. Despite the bloodshed, the raid provided valuable lessons for subsequent Allied amphibious assaults on Africa, Italy and Normandy.

A key site for controlling the western theatre of the War of 1812, Fort Amherstburg (now Fort Malden) owed its existence to the shifting boundaries on Lake Superior in the wake of British and American diplomatic and military disputes.

For the next 40 years, the British at Fort Anne maintained a precarious position in the Acadian-dominated province and were frequently attacked by French and Indian raiding parties. The status of the fort declined with the founding of Halifax (1749) and the expulsion of the Acadians (1755).

When the settlement of Battleford, in what is now west-central Saskatchewan, was named the capital of the North-West Territories in 1876, the North-West Mounted Police established a post to deal with anticipated problems with Indigenous people.

Fort Beauséjour, on the west bank of the Missaguash River near present-day Sackville, New Brunswick was built 1751-55 by the French as a counter to nearby British Fort Lawrence (near Amherst, NS).

Fort Calgary, located at the junction of the Bow and Elbow rivers on the site of the present-day city of Calgary, was established in 1875 as a North-West Mounted Police post by Ephrem-A. Brisebois, one of the original officers of the force.

Fort Carillon was built in 1755 on the orders of the governor of New France, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil. Situated at the junction of Lake George and Lake Champlain, the fort was intended to reinforce France's military presence in an area contested by the British colonies. In 1759, Fort Carillon was abandoned by the French and renamed Fort Ticonderoga by the British. (See Seven Years’ War.)

Fort Carlton, situated on the south branch of the North Saskatchewan River near Duck Lake (Saskatchewan), was established in 1810 as a Hudson's Bay Company fur trade and provision post.