What is the highest honour available to Canadians for bravery in the face of the enemy?
- The Medal of Bravery
- The Order of Canada
- The Star of Courage
- The Victoria Cross
Answer: The Victoria Cross
The Victoria Cross (V.C.) is the highest honour available to Canadians. It is awarded for the most conspicuous bravery, valour, self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy. The Order of Canada, created in 1967, began Canada’s own honours system.
Learn more: Honours and the Victoria Cross
- Canada started its own honours system with the Order of Canada in 1967, the centennial of Confederation. Before that, Canadians received British honours.
- Any Canadian is welcome to nominate a fellow citizen for an honour.
- The Victoria Cross (V.C.) is the highest honour available to Canadians, for the most conspicuous bravery, a daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.
- The V.C. has been awarded to 96 Canadians since 1854.
- First Canadian V.C.: then lieutenant Alexander Roberts Dunn, born in present-day Toronto, who served in the British Army in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava (1854) in the Crimean War.
- First black man to receive the V.C.: Able Seaman William Hall of Horton, Nova Scotia, whose parents were American slaves, for the Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
- Corporal Filip Konowal, born in Ukraine, was the first member of the Canadian Corps born outside the British Empire to win the V.C., at Hill 70 in 1917.
- Captain Billy Bishop of Owen Sound, Ontario, a flying ace, earned the V.C. in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. He was later an honorary Air Marshal of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
- Captain Paul Triquet of Cabano, Quebec, earned the V.C. at Casa Berardi, Italy, in 1943. He later became a Brigadier.
- Lieutenant Robert Hampton Gray, a navy pilot born in Trail, B.C., was killed while bombing and sinking a Japanese warship in August 1945. He was the last Canadian to receive the V.C. to date.