HMCS Ottawa

History: On 1 March 1943, Griffin was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy, and commissioned on 20 March, four days before her conversion was finished. The ship was renamed Ottawa on 10 April to commemorate an earlier HMCS Ottawa which had been sunk. After working up at Tobermory, she sailed for Canada, and was gifted to the Canadians on 15 June. Ottawa became the senior ship of Escort Group C5 which worked between St. John's, Newfoundland, and Derry, Northern Ireland until May 1944 when she became the senior ship of the 11th Escort Group. The 11th consisted of the Canadian destroyers Kootenay, Chaudière, Gatineau, and St. Laurent and were tasked to protect the invasion forces for D-Day. On 6 July 1944, Ottawa, Kootenay, and the British frigate Statice sank U-678 off Beachy Head, Sussex. Ottawa and Chaudière sank U-621 on 16 August near La Rochelle and two days later they sank U-984 west of Brest.

Ottawa was refitted in St. John's between 12 October 1944 and 26 February 1945. On 11 March she collided with the Canadian minesweeper Stratford off Halifax and was under repair until 30 April. After the end of the war in May she ferried Canadian troops back to Canada until she was paid off on 31 October. Ottawa was sold to the International Iron and Metal Company in August 1946 and subsequently broken up.[

Class: The G- and H-class destroyers were a group of 18 destroyers built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s. Six additional ships being built for the Brazilian Navy when World War II began in 1939 were purchased by the British and named the Havant class. The design was a major export success with other ships built for the Argentine and Royal Hellenic Navies. They were assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet upon completion and enforced the Non-Intervention Agreement during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39.

Most ships were recalled home or were sent to the North Atlantic from October–November 1939, after it became clear that Fascist Italy was not going to intervene in World War II. Then they began to escort convoys and patrol for German submarines and commerce raiders. Two ships were lost to German mines in the first six months of the war. Three more were lost during the Norwegian Campaign, one in combat with a German cruiser and two during the First Battle of Narvik in April 1940. The Battle of France was the next test for the destroyers from May–June, with many of the Gs and Havants participating in the evacuation of Dunkirk and the subsequent evacuations of Allied troops from western France. Three ships were sunk, two by bombs and the other to torpedoes. Most of the H-class ships were sent to the Mediterranean in May in case Mussolini decided to attack France and the majority of the surviving Gs were sent to Force H at Gibraltar in July. Several of them participated in the Battle of Dakar, before being assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet with their sister ships. By the end of the year, the ships participated in several battles with the Royal Italian Navy, losing two to Italian mines and torpedoes, while sinking two Italian submarines. The Havants spent most of the war in the North Atlantic on convoy escort duties, losing half their number to German submarines, while helping to sink six in exchange by the end of the war.

Nationality: Canada is a North American country stretching from the U.S. in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north. Major cities include massive Toronto, west coast film centre Vancouver, French-speaking Montréal and Québec City, and capital city Ottawa. Canada's vast swaths of wilderness include lake-filled Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains. It's also home to Niagara Falls, a famous group of massive waterfalls.