Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
From 2006: 2Lt. Michelle Zinchuk, left, and Lt. Brian Zinchuk, right.
My 21-year-old daughter called me up the other day, concerned about what she’d been seeing on the news. ICE agents in the US with their faces hidden by masks are sweeping into communities and dragging people off.
She felt it was reminiscent of the German Gestapo.
And she’s not wrong.
“We’re living in 1938,” I said.
On Saturday, Jan. 17, I opened up CNN. Here’s the lead from the lead story:
President Donald Trump said Saturday the United States will impose new tariffs on several European countries unless a deal is reached for the purchase of Greenland, escalating his long-running push for US control of the Arctic territory.
Trump said Saturday he will impose a 10% tariff on “on any and all goods” from Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and other countries starting February 1, increasing to 25% on June 1, until an agreement is reached.
“We have subsidized Denmark, and all of the Countries of the European Union, and others, for many years by not charging them Tariffs, or any other forms of remuneration,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Now, after Centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back World Peace is at stake!”
Trump argued that Greenland is central to US and global security and said Denmark’s defenses were insufficient, warning that the nations deploying small numbers of military personnel to Greenland amounted to “a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet.”
Here’s Trump’s post on his own social network, Truth Social.
Does anyone not hear the echoes of 1938, where nations seized neighbours? The Anschluss Hitler imposed on Austria? And then the Sudetenland, when Hitler took over a good chunk of Czechoslovakia, because that’s where “German-speakers” lived? After that it was the rest of Czechoslovakia, and then Poland. And that’s when we, in Canada, went to war.
In 2022, we heard that echo, when Russia invaded the rest of Ukraine, after its 2014 invasion of the Donbas area were “Russian-speakers” lived. That was Putin’s justification.
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I’ve been following military affairs and geopolitics since I was 12, during the height of the Cold War. I served seven years as a commissioned officer in the Canadian Armed Forces as a reservist, from 2001-08, mustering out as a lieutenant. I may have been the lowliest form of an officer, as a cadet instructor, but I did indeed serve. And my enrollment paperwork showed up one day before the World Trade Centre fell down.
Brian Zinchuk, back row, third from left, during his military occupation code course at CFB Edmonton in 2004.
I’m now 50. In my entire life, I have never, ever heard of the Canadian military seeking to add 300,000 reservists, and yet now this is being seriously discussed. There’s already an order in the works for that many rifles.
Why? What for? Who are we going to fight? And most importantly, why?
If we didn’t need them during the Cold War, why do we need them now?
Are they going to take up arms against Russia in Europe? China in Taiwan? Or the United States in Greenland? Or on our own 49th parallel, to prevent us becoming the 51st state?
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Remember the first eight months or so of his current term, President Trump wouldn’t shut up about making us the 51st state. Every argument he is currently applying to Greenland you could easily substitute Canada.
Let’s try that, from the above story:
“Trump argued that Canada is central to US and global security and said Canada’s defenses were insufficient, warning that the nations deploying small numbers of military personnel to Canada amounted to “a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet.”
It’s like that sketch from the British comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look, which Knowyourmeme.com says, “two men play Nazis who realize they’re the “bad guys” of World War II. The line has been used as a reaction image to situations where a person who identifies with a cause or group realizes their aims may not be good.”
Democrat lawmakers, all having previously served in the US armed forces or intelligence services, made a video in November telling current members not to follow illegal orders. the current Secretary of War (no longer Secretary of Defence) Pete Hegseth had a conniption and moved to demote and possibly court martial Sen. Mark Kelly, retired US Navy captain and astronaut, even though he is long retired.
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The Hill notes, “The lawmakers who posted the video — Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), and Reps. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) — had each served in the CIA or the military and said nothing but exactly what’s already law.”
We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.
The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.
Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r
— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025
Let me make that clear – American lawmakers are telling their own soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and guardians, whom they served among, not to be the baddies, and the Secretary of War moved to punish them? And Trump said it was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOUR, PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!”
This is not Trump Derangement Syndrome. This actually happened in recent weeks.
The National Post noted last April 25, “Less than one per cent of students rank the Canadian Forces as their top career choice.” There is no way Canada will add 300,000 people to their reserves without a draft. And I have an 18 year old son and 21 year old daughter. Both military age, both former senior air cadets.
Let us remember in our progressive 21st century, if there’s going to be a draft, both men and women should expect to be called up. That means your daughters, too.
Think about that for a minute.
There’s no way to add that 300,000 without your daughters, too.
Even though I, and my wife, were both commissioned officers in the reserves, do I want our kids drafted for some foreign war? Over what?
That’s our daughter, Katrina, just days after she was born in 2004. She’s now military-age, as is her brother, and could be drafted should conscription return.
My late grandfather’s brother, Steve, was drafted into either Russian or Polish service over 100 years ago (most likely Russian). I don’t know which, but there was a little-known war between Poland and Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution which saw both Kyiv and Warsaw change hands. Steve Zinchuk spent a year in jail because he refused to serve. When he was threatened with five more years in jail, he went and served.
As I write this, I just today realized that the area he grew up in, western Ukraine, would have seen battle. It was where the family was evacuated from during the Great War, only to return by foot some 1,500 kilometres during which much of his family died from the Spanish flu and God knows what else. Born in 1917, Harry would have grown up in an area that still would have had the detritus of war all around – from trenches to graves, rusted rifles and artillery shrapnel. Running a plow through a field, you might have been as likely to pull up bones as you would rocks.
As soon as they were able, in 1930, the Zinchuks got the hell out of there and emigrated to Canada. They could do this because they were in Polish-occupied Ukraine. A few years later, on the Russian side of the border, Stalin soon decided Ukrainians didn’t need food, and something like six to 10 million Ukrainians died in the Holodomor.
This very much clouded my grandfather Harry’s view of the military. Harry was called up three times during the Second World War, but because he was the only son on the farm, with elderly parents, someone needed to keep the farm going, and he was left to remain.
Harry used to say to me, “Brian, why would you want to go and stop a bullet?” As a young man, full of patriotic bluster, I replied I would die for my country.
Now, with years of reflection and perhaps some wisdom, I see much more deeply the meaning behind his words. And I tell my own kids, “Why would you want to go and stop a bullet?”
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Canadians need to wake up. The drumbeats of war are beating louder by the day, and your kids could be swept up in it. Chinese President Xi, the same one Prime Minister Mark Carney just signed a trade deal with a few days ago, famously warned his army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Trump just grabbed the president of Venezuela and said the US now runs the place. In the same news conference he threatened Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Greenland. Now he’s amping up the Greenland rhetoric against an ally, no less.
In George Orwell’s prophetic book 1984, there’s continual ongoing war between three world powers – Oceania (Americas, British Isles, Australasia, Southern Africa), Eurasia (Europe & Northern Asia), and Eastasia (China, Japan, South Asia). Partway through the book, the enemy of Oceania switches, war continues, and no one seems to notice.
Our real world is now shaping up like this – U.S., Russia and China. We trade right now with China, but are preparing for possible war against them.
Open your eyes. Be aware of what’s happening. We are living in 1938 all over again. And we all know what happened in 1939.
If you disagree with me, I fully expect you to have the courage of your convictions and will take your 18 or 21 year-old son or daughter down to the Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre and sign them up to be one of the 300,000. It’s at 1783 Hamilton St, Regina. Their hours are 8-4, Monday to Friday.
But before you do, ask yourself this:
Do you want to send your kid to “go stop a bullet?”
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@pipelineonline.ca
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