When Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee spoke Friday in Halifax at the keel-laying ceremony for Canada's first River-class destroyer, his words could have been interpreted as describing one of the vessels HMCS Fraser is named after.

"We have always been a destroyer navy, a navy that has small ships capable of doing big things anywhere that Canada needs them to go," he said.

And in 1940, just before the first HMCS Fraser became the first Royal Canadian Navy vessel to sink during the Second World War, it aided in evacuating British and Allied troops from France as the country was swiftly overrun by Germa…