In 1875 the Montreal City Police decided that they wanted to equip a riot squad in case of public disturbance. They initially requested funds for 50 revolvers, but this changed to 60 carbines instead, and these were purchased via broker in 1876 from the Whitneyville Armory. Whitneyville was a fac...

An comparison of the Mk III* SMLE and the weapon it replaced in Canadaian service, the Mk III Ross

An introduction to the Mk III Ross Rifle

Vic takes a brief look at the Diemaco/Colt Canada M203A1 40mm grenade launcher. Be sure to check out our full video & the accompanying article on the M203A1 here - https://armourersbench.com/2020/06/07/diemaco-colt-canada-m203a1/ If you enjoy our work please consider supporting us via Patreon, TA...

In April, the Canadian government announced another round of security assistance for Ukraine. The package includes ammunition, general purpose machine guns and 21,000 rifles. we spoke to the Canadian defence department about the types of rifles which are going to be provided. Be sure to check out...

We’ve seen a large number of different small arms being transferred to Ukraine, including a large number of different 5.56x45mm chambered rifles - in this video we take a look at the Colt Canada / Diemaco rifles and carbines which have been seen. Be sure to check out our accompanying article for ...

During World War One, Joseph Alphonse Huot, a Canadian machinist and blacksmith living in Quebec, designed a conversion of the Ross MkIII rifle to become an automatic rifle. The Ross was the standard issue Canadian rifle at the beginning of the war, and Huopt wanted to find a way to economically ...

This is a very rare Ross automatic pistol, patented in 1903 by Charles Ross, of the Ross Rifle Company in Quebec. It is a short recoil, toggle locked design, made for the .45 Ross proprietary cartridge (although efforts were made, unsuccessfully, to make a .45 ACP version for the US 1907 pistol t...

Canada was the first country to adopt the FAL rifle, purchasing trials rifles from FN within weeks of the formal standardization of the 7.62mm NATO cartridge. Canada acquired production rights to the rifle along with the technical package form FN, and spent 18 months converting the drawings into ...

Canada was the first country to formally adopt the FN FAL as its standard service rifle, and in 1958 it added the C2 light machine gun version of the FAL to its arsenal. The C2, later updated to C2A1, was a heavy-barreled version of the regular FAL rifle. It shared all the same basic action compo...

Cooey is a brand name that will be immediately recognized by Canadians, but pretty much unknown everywhere else. Founded in 1903 by Herbert Cooey, the company would produce a series of simple and practical firearms that became hugely popular and common in Canada. The basic models were the single-...

The many significant problems with the Model 1903 / MkI Ross rifle had quickly led to the development of the improved MkII design. This strengthened many parts, including the sights, nosecap, bolt latch, and more. The receiver was made thicker, and an extra set of cams added to make the bolt thro...

Sir Charles Ross was heir to a very wealthy Scottish family, and was a talented if temperamental engineer. He took an interest in firearms and their design, and worked with American and English connections to produce a line of his own straight--pull sporting rifles. Upon returning from the Boer W...

One of the very early clients of the Ross Rifle Company was the Royal North West Mounted Police (later merged with the Dominion Police to form the RCMP). The Mounties purchased 500 Ross MkI carbines, which were actually the only factory-made Ross carbines ever produced. The guns were made in 1904...

While the MkII (1905) iteration of the Ross rifle had resolved most of the major mechanical problems form the MkI, it retained a number of characteristics that the Canadian (and British) military was not fond of. In particular, it was not suited to the use of stripper clips. Starting with experim...

In addition to building three main patterns of straight-pull bolt action rifle for the Canadian military and the commercial market, Sir Charles Ross also experimented with self-loading rifles. Starting with a standard Ross Mk III, this experimental rifle has a gas piston and trigger to allow auto...

The Canadian infantry that went to Europe in the early years of World Wa rOne were equipped primarily with the Ross MkIII rifle. The Ross would become quite the scandal, and was replaced in service with the SMLE in 1916 - but as a sniper rifle the Ross excelled. Its problems in service were large...

See more photos and a full description at:

https://www.forgottenweapons.com/early-semiauto-rifles/anonymous-blishross/

There is a long-standing urban legend about the Canadian Ross rifle, a straight-pull bolt action that was used in lieu of the SMLE by Canadian troops early in World War One. The story is that the Ross would sometimes malfunction and blow the bolt back into its shooter's face, with pretty horrible...

In August 1913, the British War Office wrote to Sir Charles Ross requesting a sample automatic rifle for trials in the UK. Ross was able to submit a prototype on May 1914, which was tested at Enfield - but only fired 308 rounds before the test ended, suggesting that something important probably b...

Henri Lecorre was a French immigrant to Canada who enlisted in the 22nd Regiment of the Canadian Army in April, 1915. He had a knack for carving things in his rifles, which he started right in basic training, with a Ross rifle he named "Josephine". That got him sternly rebuked by his Colonel, but...

The first handguns issued by the North West Mounted Police (which would later become the modern RCMP) were 330 Adams revolvers, requisitioned by the new police service in March 1874, and shipped over from England. Upon their receipt in July of that year, the Mounties were dismayed to find thoroug...

The standard Canadian sniper's rifle of World War One was the MkIII Ross fitted with a Warner & Swasey "musket sight" purchased from the United States. However, armorers in the field did create sniping rifles using other scopes - in particular the Winchester A5. The A5 was a popular commercial ri...

There were many different versions of the Ross straight-pull bolt action rifle made and adopted by the Canadian military. However, the version that Sir Charles Ross thought would be best was only ever made as a small run of prototypes. this rifle was called the Military Match M10, in .280 Ross ca...