This is His Majesty's Canadian Ship Haida. She is the ceremonial flagship of the Royal Canadian Navy and the country is celebrating her 80th birthday this month as she was officially commissioned on 30 August 1943. According to CBC, Haida "earned a reputation for high-risk, high-seas combat during the darkest days of the Battle of the Atlantic and continued serving Canada for years afterward." She was taken out of service in the early 1960s and people have been able to visit and tour her since long before I was born. Much of her time hosting tourists was spent in Toronto, but she's been berthed in Christopher's hometown (Hamilton) since we were kids.
We're still not doing crowds or events, but we've toured HMCS Haida in the past and managed to find an empty spot down the pier to watch her fire her guns over the harbour (blanks, of course-- but that's smoke above her bow!) and listen to her siren wail again in honour of her 80 years of service.
The title of this photo is a lyric taken from Heart of Oak, which is the official anthem of the RCN. I was quite close to my older brothers growing up, and they were sea cadets-- both played in the corps' band and one eventually became the Drum Major-- so this song is ingrained into my memory from childhood. Hopefully the world will never actually fight like that again, but given Haida's monniker as "Canada's fightingest ship," I thought it was a fitting title for this image. Here's the song, as performed by the Naden Band of the RCN, done together remotely in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTl5jFnhPs
