Transit Toronto Main Channel
Published 6 Oct 2025Among the huge collection within Richard Glaze’s archive of 16mm film from the 60s and the 70s were a number of 400 foot reels from the 1950s. These were taken during trips Richard made to Toronto before he immigrated, and they show scenes that have not been witnessed in over sixty years. Now that we’ve moved to the new channel, we’ve taken the opportunity to spruce up this film and make some corrections and minor improvements. Enjoy!
Thanks to the dozens of individuals who raised the funds to digitize the first two-thirds of Richard Glaze’s collection.
Corrections:
12:17 – Caption refers to “Hillcrest Wye” when it should be “Hillside”
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May 18, 2026
“Three Days in Toronto” (1959, 1960 & 1962)
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May 7, 2026
Tu-144 Concordeski – Speed, Spies and Failure
HardThrasher
Published 4 May 2026In great secrecy, in 1963 the USSR set about making aviation history with the world’s first Supersonic Transport (SST). In 1968, five months before Concorde, the Tu-144 became the first passenger jet to break the sound barrier. But it was a white elephant that crashed on multiple occasions, killed hundreds and flew for just a matter of months after over a decade of development. It was, perhaps the first of a string of failures that brought down the Soviet Union.
00:00 – 11:06 – Introduction and Background
11:07 – 23:10 – The Decision is made to build
23:10 – 35:31 – And then it got worse — how everything fell apart
35:32 – 39:10 – The En Crashening — From First Flight to Constant Crashes
39:11 – 48:49 – Enter the KGB — What role did spies play
49:22 – End – Like, Subscribe, Join the Patreon
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May 6, 2026
PSS: Russia’s Silent Captive-Piston Handgun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Dec 2025The PSS is a semiautomatic pistol using captive piston ammunition to achieve a comparable level of sound suppression to a .22 pistol with a good normal suppressor. It was developed to replace a couple multi-barrel derringer style captive piston pistols in Soviet use, with the semiautomatic action and (6-round) detachable magazines making it suitable for a wider variety of missions than the previous guns.
It was given the GRU catalog designation 6P28 and entered service in 1983. It fires a cylindrical steel projectile weighing 155 grains at about 620 fps, with a noise of 122 dB (1m left of the muzzle) as measured by silencer legend Phil Dater. Mechanically, the design takes its fire control system from the Makarov but uses a floating chamber system to cycle reliably with the unique ammunition. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the pistols were available for commercial export by Russian state-run export companies, although that ended in 2018. In Russian service, the PSS was replaced with the much improved PSS-2 in 2011.
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May 1, 2026
“Second Dawn”, Childhood’s End, and the Nuclear Age
Feral Historian
Published 5 Dec 2025A quick look at two Arthur C. Clarke stories from the early 1950s that pair well as allegories for the still-new Cold War fears of the time.
00:00 Intro
03:03 Psychics and Nukes
03:37 “Second Dawn”
09:13 The Phileni
11:50 New World, New DangersAudio note: On the previous vid (Riddick) I used some new tools for post-processing the audio. It was much cleaner, removed almost all the noise … and the response has been entirely negative. It seems people don’t miss the wind and the birds until they’re gone. So I’m back to the old approach of using essentially raw sound.
EDIT: If you’re not seeing a link to the old Childhood’s End video on the pop-up card or the end screen, here’s the link. • Childhood’s End (Youtube Copyright Edit)
🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian
🔹 and Merch! | feral-shop.fourthwall.com
Still plugging Ninti’s Gate
🔹 amazon.com/dp/B0CYXH9BWD
April 29, 2026
T31: Garand’s Bizarre Bullpup
Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Dec 2025The T31 was John Garand’s last project during his employment at Springfield Armory. It was proposed in 1948 as a bullpup configuration rifle to minimize muzzle blast and flash. It was a select-fire rifle with a 20-round detachable box magazine and basically every aspect of the design was unorthodox. The original gas system was more pneumatic than anything else, with the whole handguard tube filling with gas when it cycled. The recoil spring is a clockwork type in the buttstock, and the bolt uses a tilting wedge to lock.
At initial testing it ran into reliability problems after 2300 rounds. Upon disassembly, the found nearly an entire pound of powder fouling in the gas tube. This led to the gun being rebuilt with a tappet type gas system, and that’s the gun we have today to look at. Only two examples were made before Garand retired in 1953, and nobody took over the project when he left.
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April 27, 2026
Abstract Expressionism “… wasn’t even real art … just a psyop”
When I first got married, we had several friends in the Toronto arts community, and while I enjoyed their company, for the most part I heartily disliked their art. Everything seemed to be consciously designed to be unpleasant to look at: jagged, rusty metallic edges, weird proportions, bilious colour choices, and so on. I was assured more than once that this was what “art” was meant to be: if it didn’t evince a strong reaction, it wasn’t doing its job. On Substack, Celina discusses the claim that modern art was actually a psyop sponsored by, inter alia the CIA:
Abstract Expressionism is arguably the most famous American art movement of the 20th century.
There’s a 95% chance you’ve seen a painting by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, or Mark Rothko, even if you didn’t know their names.
And if you’ve spent any time online, you’ve probably heard the rumours:
They were funded by the CIA.
It was all propaganda.
It wasn’t even real art … just a psyop.That sounds absurd.
Except … there is a large, large grain of truth behind it.
Jackson Pollock, Number 1A, 1948, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA.
Manufacturing Consent
After the First World War, the journalist Walter Lippmann helped pioneer the view that the control of information and, more importantly, the control of public response, had become essential to the stability of modern democracy. This was especially true in moments when the state required certain reactions from the public, as it did during wartime. Lippmann, who famously popularised the phrase “the manufacture of consent“, argued that representative government could no longer function without the deliberate use of mass communication in the supposed service of the public good:
That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements, no one, I think, denies. The creation of consent is a very old act, which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy, but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.1
Lippmann’s ideas about the “manufacture of consent” would not remain theoretical for long. After the Second World War, they were tested on an unprecedented scale by the American establishment.
Poets, philosophers, critics, and intellectuals became participants in it. They were recruited, funded, and mobilised to form the cultural front line of a struggle against the Soviet Union. But this was not a conventional war. There were no trenches, no battlefields, no declarations.
Instead, it was a war of ideas, fought in publishing houses, universities, art galleries, and across the airwaves. At the centre of this effort stood the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
And its story reveals just how far a democracy was willing to go in shaping what its citizens and the world would come to believe.
- Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. Harcourt, Brace and Company.
UOTCAF – EP 003 – PPCLI (Patricias)
Stormwalker Group
Published 5 Dec 2025Join Mario Gaudet, former Army Reservist and military brat, in Episode 3 of “Units of the CAF” as we delve into the legendary Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI).
Discover their early history, unique uniform quirks and cap badge story, plus their valor in WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and Afghanistan — featuring the most decorated soldiers from each era.
Sources:
•General PPCLI History: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-n…
•Sgt. George Harry Mullin VC (WW1): https://vcgca.org/our-people/profile/…
•Maj. John Keefer Mahony VC (WW2): https://veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance…
•Sgt. Tommy Prince MM (Cold War/Korea): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_P…
•WO Patrick Tower SMV (Afghanistan): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick…
•Additional Regimental Details: https://ppcliassn.ca/ppcli-the-regime…#PPCLI #CanadianArmy #MilitaryHistory #CAF #WW1 #WW2 #KoreanWar #Afghanistan #VictoriaCross #Veterans #CanadianForces
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April 23, 2026
QotD: The problems of a “no first use” nuclear weapons policy
Now, you might ask at this point: why not defuse some of this tension with a “no first use” policy – openly declare that you won’t be the first to use nuclear weapons even in a non-nuclear conflict?
For the United States during the Cold War, the problem with declaring a “no first use” policy was the worry that it would essentially serve as a “green light” for conventional Soviet military action in Europe. Recall, after all, that the Soviet military was stronger in conventional forces in Europe during the Cold War and that episodes like the Berlin Blockade (and resultant Berlin Airlift) seemed to confirm Soviet interest in expanding their control over central Europe. At the same time, the Soviet use of military force to crush the Hungarian Revolution (1956) and the Prague Spring (1968) continued to reaffirm that the USSR had no intention of letting Central or Eastern Europe choose their own fates – this was an empire that ruled by domination and intended to expand if it could.
The solution to blocking that expansion was NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Not because NATO collectively could defeat the USSR in a conventional war – the general assumption was that they probably couldn’t – but because NATO’s article 5 clause pledging mutual defense essentially meant that the nuclear powers of NATO (Britain, the United States, and France) pledged to defend the territory of all NATO members with nuclear weapons. But just like deterrence, mutual defense alliances are based on the perception that all members will defend each other. Declaring that the United States wouldn’t use nuclear weapons first would essentially be telling the Germans, “we’ll fight for you, but we won’t use our most powerful weapons for you” in the event of a conventional war; it would be creating a giant unacceptable asterisk next to that mutual defense clause.
So the United States had to be committed to at least the possibility that it would respond to a conventional military assault on West Germany with nuclear retaliation (often envisaged as a “tactical” use of nuclear weapons – that is, using smaller nuclear weapons against enemy military formations. That said, even in the 1950s, Bernard Brodie was already warning that restraining the escalation to general use of nuclear weapons once a tactical nuclear weapon was used would be practically impossible).
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Nuclear Deterrence 101”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-11.
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April 22, 2026
The Korean War Week 96: Korean Marines Leapfrog the Han – April 21, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 21 Apr 2026UN Command completes its screening of the 170,000 military and civilian POWs they hold to see how many of them would violently resist repatriation, and it turns out it’s most of them. The Communists are furious. This cannot be good for the armistice negotiations. We also take a look at the defense possibilities the Marines have in their new positions and which Chinese forces oppose them.
00:00 Intro
00:55 Recap
01:32 POW Screening
07:26 The Marines
08:56 The Chinese
13:37 Summary
13:53 Conclusion
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Walther’s Forgotten SMG: The MPK (and MPL)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Dec 2025Walther began developing a modern stamped sheet metal SMG in the late 1950s, and it entered production in 1963. It was an open-bolt, simple blowback gun available in a short (MPK; 6.75″ barrel) and long (MPL; 10.25″ barrel) version. It was cheap and simple, but well thought out with a number of quite good features.
The standard design was just safe/full, but a semiautomatic selector position was available if desired by the client. An excellent safety sear prevented the bolt from bouncing open and firing, and the charging handle was both non-reciprocating and capable of also serving as a forward assist if needed. The sights were a bit too clever for Walther’s own good, with a 75m notch and a 150m aperture, both of which were not really great.
Faced with competition from contemporaries like the Uzi and MP5, the Walther never really became massively popular. It did get enough small and medium sized contracts (German police, South African police, Mexican Navy, Portuguese Navy, US Delta Force, etc) to remain in production until 1985 though. Overall a solid and reliable gun even if it failed to really stand out from the other options on the market.
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April 19, 2026
HMCS Magnificent – Canada’s Forgotten Carrier
Skynea History
Published 13 Nov 2025The Royal Canadian Navy is probably not the first one you think about for naval aviation. You’re more likely to think of lighter ships, like Haida.
However, the Canadians would operate three aircraft carriers during the Cold War. The short-lived (well, short-lived in Canadian service) Warrior. The more famous Bonaventure, that I’ve covered before. And, the topic of this video, HMCS Magnificent.
The middle child and probably the least famous of the three. But the one that is, largely, responsible for building Canadian carrier doctrine. It was Magnificent that built up the Canadian naval air arm. Magnificent trained the pilots that would go on to serve with Bonaventure.
And Magnificent is often overlooked for being the middle child. Hence why I chose to cover her today.
Further Reading:
https://forposterityssake.ca/Navy/HMC…
https://naval-museum.mb.ca/rcnships/c…
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April 18, 2026
The First M60 Prototype: FG42 + MG42 = T44
Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Dec 2025The FG-42 caught the attention of a lot of countries at the end of World War Two. The British and Swiss both used it as the starting point for some developments. The US went one step simpler, and simply cut up a captured FG-42 to make into the T44, the first prototype of what would become the M60 machine gun.
This project was done in 1946 by the Bridge Tool & Die Company, who spent about six months reinforcing an FG42 and adding an MG42 feed system to it to create an unholy hybrid kludge of a gun. It was, however, successful enough to justify continuing the project. Only this one example was made before moving on to much more practical models built from the ground up instead of hacking up captured German guns.
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April 15, 2026
The Korean War Week 95: TWO THIRDS of POWs Refuse Repatriation – April 14, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 14 Apr 2026US Marines begin to make contact with their Communist Chinese adversaries in their new position in the west of Korea, but a more insidious issue is beginning to threaten the UN war effort: dwindling stockpiles of ammunition. In fact, two-thirds of the US army’s procurement budget is going exclusively to ammunition, but production lag — the time between paying for something and actually getting it — is putting Eighth Army operations at risk. Elsewhere, POW screening begins, with results that might throw a wrench into the painstakingly negotiated armistice terms back at Panmunjom.
00:00 Hook
00:59 Recap
01:51 POW Screening
05:49 Ammunition
10:46 Marine Operations
14:07 Summary
14:57 Conclusion
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Origins of the Legendary CZ-75: Short Rail and Pre-B Models
Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Nov 2025The CZ-75 began development in the late 1960s as a commercial project. It was not intended for Czechoslovak military use, but instead for export sales to bring foreign currency into Czechoslovakia. It was designed by František Koucký with some elements from other pistols (like frame rails and camming lug from the SIG P210 and a magazine based on the Browning High Power) and a healthy dose of original creativity (including the trigger mechanism). The design was finalized in 1973, approved for production in 1976, and the first production models were ready in June 1977.
The first model of the pistol is quite distinctive, with frame rails much shorter than what we see on examples today. This is called the Short Rail or Slab Side model, and it comprised just the first 16,000 guns produced, with the last ones made very early in 1980. This frame design proved prone to cracking, and in 1980 a longer frame replaced it. A half-cock notch was also added to the hammer in 1980. A few additional points in the production timeline include:
1984: Heavy black enamel paint replaces bluing as the standard finish
1986: Slightly enlarged trigger guard, grip panel design changes
1987: Magazines cease being marked with serial numbers
1988: Serial numbering changes to from 6 digits to 1 letter and 4 digits
1989: Ring hammer replaces spot
1993: CZ-75B introduced with a firing pin block in the slideIn 1992 the communist government in Czechoslovakia fell, and the country split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. CZ became a privately owned company, and a slew of new options on the CZ-75 were rapidly introduced — so we will leave those for a separate video.
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April 12, 2026
TKIV-85: Finland’s Ultimate Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Nov 2025Finland’s final iteration of Mosin Nagant sniper was adopted in the 1980s to replace a mix-and-match assortment of m/39-43, m/27-66, and m/28-76 rifles. The two options were a Mosin system using a new bedding block (developed by Border Guard officer E. Toro) or a purpose-made new rifle made by Valmet (the Model 86). The Valmet was clearly the better rifle, but the Mosin option was acceptably good and much cheaper — so that’s what was adopted. The parts for the conversions were made by Valmet and assembled at Asevarikko 1.
Two different models were made. One was a military specific type, and the other was a dual-use rifle for competition shooting as well as potential military use. The competition rifles had a lighter barrel profile to meet the international competition weight limit and were fitted with competition aperture sights in addition to mounts for scopes.
Thanks to Frozen Trigger in Finland for giving me access to these examples to film for you!
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