Scott W. See. The History of Canada. Second Edition

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remained in power for a quarter-century. Over time it migrated

to British Columbia, where it evolved to become an extremely

conservative party.

The Depression also provided an environment for strong, and

often repressive, political behavior in other provinces. Historical

inequities in Quebec, with a tradition of anglophone control over

businesses and investments, reached a crescendo during the traumatic

Dirty Thirties. Weaving together aspects of French-Canadian

nationalism, conservative politics, Roman Catholicism, and anti-

communism, lawyer Maurice Duplessis became Quebec’s premier in

1936 as the leader of the Union Nationale party. A chorus of French-

Canadian nationalist voices, gathering force since the appearance in

the 1920s of L’Action française , a journal spearheaded by the cleric

and historian Lionel Groulx, advocated francophone cultural

survival in Duplessis’s Quebec. The social messages used in campaign

rhetoric swiftly disappeared, however, and under the strong arm of

Duplessis, le chef, the Union Nationale passed restrictive laws against

communists and repressed laborers and unions. Similarly, Ontario’s

Liberal premier, Mitchell Hepburn, used special police forces,

nicknamed “sons of Mitches,” to crush strikes. Ontario witnessed

over one hundred strikes in 1937 alone, the most comprehensive of

which involved General Motors in Oshawa. Combined, these feisty

political activities in several of Canada’s largest provinces mounted a

formidable assault on the federal government’s powers during the

1930s, especially after King’s return in 1935. Thus, the Depression

had yet another important impact on Canada: economic turmoil and

social dislocation severely tested the federal-provincial bonds of

nationhood.

In response to these problems, Mackenzie King charged a com-

mission with making recommendations for improving governmental

relations. Formally named the Royal Commission on Dominion-

Provincial Relations, but popularly known as the Rowell-Sirois

Commission after its key members, it reported in 1940 on the state

of political affairs in Canada. Casting the report in the harsh light of

the Depression and recent history, the commissioners concluded that

residual powers, so clearly given to the federal government in the

British North America Act in 1867, had shifted to the provinces largely

as a result of court decisions. Moreover, the commissioners identified

acute regional inequities and found the provinces shockingly ill

150 Political Storms: Left, Right, and Center

prepared to pay for social programs and education. The commission’s

recommendations to restore constitutional powers to the federal

government, largely by having Ottawa take on provincial debts

and distribute taxes to the provinces to run social services, were

emphatically rejected by several provinces. World War II was under-

way when leaders from the federal government and the provinces met

at a stormy conference in 1941. While much of the Rowell-Sirois

Report was shunted aside in the heat of an intensifying war, it cast the

tensions between the federal and provincial governments in sharp

relief. The design of having the federal government return taxes to the

provinces, usually in the form of grants, would be implemented in the

1940s. In addition, the report’s message that Ottawa should have a

role in maintaining a degree of social and economic equity for

Canadians, independent of the relative health of the individual

provinces, would come to fruition after the war.

Another Global Conflict

It is widely recognized that World War II cured the Depression.

Certainly the notion holds great merit in Canada’s case. Widespread

human suffering, ongoing class divisions, glaring regional inequities,

and political confrontations characterized a troubled decade for

Canada. Events rooted to the flawed solutions for global reconstruc-

tion after World War I led to the rise of fascist and militaristic regimes

in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Clashes in the Pacific and

Europe gathered force in the early 1930s and mushroomed to become

a global war by 1939. Once again Canadians found themselves swept

up in events over which they had little control. Unlike the Great War,

however, when Canada automatically found itself involved because

of a decision made in Britain, this time the country would make an

independent determination to join the conflict. Nonetheless, in

September 1939 Canada found itself again in a war for which it

was poorly prepared. The consequences of fighting World War II on

the side of the victorious allies would be far-reaching. For a country

crippled and humbled by the Depression, Canada remarkably became

a leading economic and global power in the 1940s. World War II

indeed dealt a lethal blow to the Depression; it also give birth to the

Another Global Conflict 151

Cold War and thereby altered Canada’s history in almost unimagin-

able ways.

Canadian Foreign Policy before the War

In the wake of World War I Canada demonstrated an ambivalence in

its role in international affairs. By joining the League of Nations,

establishing missions in the United States, France, and Japan in the

late 1920s, and obtaining Commonwealth status in the Statute of

Westminster, the country incrementally took a foreign policy path

that was distinct from Britain’s. Canada played a modest part in the

League of Nations, preferring instead to lean toward isolationism. As

Senator Raoul Dandurand remarked in a speech to the League in

1925, Canadians “live[d] in a fire-proof house, far from inflammable

material.” Mackenzie King, who consistently fixated on national

unity, expended little energy in cultivating Canada’s influence

abroad. Canada did, however, add its signature to the Kellogg-

Briand Pact of 1928. Signed by over sixty nations, it essentially

outlawed war as an instrument of foreign policy. Significantly, a

Canadian-born academic at Columbia University contributed to the

idea. James T. Shotwell also moderated the Carnegie Endowment for

International Peace, which published in the 1930s and 1940s a

celebrated series of scholarly studies on the Canadian-American

relationship. Thus, Canada into the Depression years championed

peaceful relationships with other countries and explicitly tried to

avoid conflict.

Events in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific forced Canada to adjust

this stance, but it sent mixed messages about its international role.

When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, an overt act of

aggression that eventually led to general warfare in the Pacific,

Canada supported the League’s refusal to provide aid to China. Four

years later, another international crisis involved Canada when Italy’s

fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, made plans to invade the African

nation of Ethiopia. When the League discussed sanctions against

Italy, Canada’s representative pushed for adding oil to the list.

Dubbed the “Canadian Resolution,” Dr. W. A. Riddell’s proposal

briefly put the country in the forefront of explosive events. However,

Mackenzie King, freshly reinstalled as prime minister, failed to

152 Another Global Conflict

support both Riddell and his measure. Among other issues, King

feared dividing public opinion on the issue because many Quebecers

supported Mussolini’s Italy.

Unfortunately, the 1930s did not paint a favorable portrait of

Canada’s official actions as developments in Europe soured. When

Jews fled the German fascists after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933,

Canada became one of the world’s most inhospitable countries

for receiving the diaspora. As one key policymaker summarized

Canada’s policy toward accepting Jewish immigrants, “None is too

many.” Jewish immigrants to Canada numbered only about 4,000.

Mexico, in contrast, took approximately five times that figure in the

same period. Anti-Semitism in both language and behavior was

evident throughout the country, but it was particularly poignant

in Quebec. It was noticeable in the French-Canadian nationalist

movement, and Duplessis’s government and the Roman Catholic

church made frequent references disparaging Jews. Small pockets

of fascists and pro-Nazi groups were active in Canada. These

organizations assiduously worked to counteract a modest number of

communists, many of whom were immigrants from Finland and the

Ukraine with vivid memories of mistreatment at the hands of the

Russians before the revolution and the Soviets thereafter.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, over one

thousand Canadians volunteered in the Mackenzie-Papineau batta-

lion to fight with the Republicans against General Francisco Franco’s

forces, which were supported by Hitler’s Nazis. As was the case with

many world leaders, King met with Hitler in the 1930s but failed to

grasp the magnitude of the Nazi agenda. On one occasion King

observed that the German leader was a “simple sort of peasant, not

very intelligent and no serious danger to anyone.” Apparently

Dandurand’s “fire-proof house” was still a compelling image for

many Canadians. In the late 1930s Canada’s impact on international

events was negligible. Deeply divided over the tragic events unfolding

abroad and led by a prime minister who was reluctant to take a clear

position in world affairs, Canadians remained mired in depression.

The only foreign connection that was strengthened in the years

preceding the war was with the country’s neighbor. A trade

agreement in 1935 improved relations with the United States, as

did the charismatic president. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s family had a

cherished summer home in Campobello, New Brunswick, and he was

Another Global Conflict 153

genuinely fond of Canadians. Similarly King worked well with

Americans, having spent time in the United States for educational and

professional reasons earlier in his career. In 1938 Roosevelt assured

an audience at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, that his

country would not stand “idly by” if Canada was attacked. The

speech prompted an immediate reply from King, who promised that

Canadian space would not be used by a foreign power to invade the

United States. Thus, Canadians and Americans reached an informal

understanding for a united defense of North America before the

outmatched Polish forces were surprised by Hitler’s mechanized army

on September 1, 1939. This symbolic agreement would be

transformed into a formalized defense relationship during the war.

Canada at War

Canada entered World War II in 1939 utterly unprepared for a major

conflict. Along with other people around the globe, Canadians had

hoped that the 1938 Munich Agreement that gave Germany control

over part of Czechoslovakia would pacify Hitler enough to avoid

war. Germany’s outrageous attack on Poland in September 1939,

after signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviets, brought Britain

into the war within days. Canada declared war on Germany on

September 10, 1939, one week after the British did. The delay was

largely symbolic because few Canadians thought the country

would or should remain detached from the conflict. Nonetheless, it

illustrated Canada’s essential sovereignty after the Statute of

Westminster. Only three parliamentarians opposed the country’s

participation, including the pacifist J. S. Woodsworth. The govern-

ment immediately invoked the War Measures Act, the crucial device

used to control the military and economy during the Great War. For

the second time in the century Canada found itself embroiled in a

global war not of its making, yet one that would irrevocably change

its destiny.

The country went through distinct phases of commitment

during the war. Although there was an initial outpouring of support

and recruiting agencies swelled with men, many of whom were

unemployed refugees of depression hard times, Canada did not go

154 Canada at War

into the war with the same unbridled patriotic vigor that had been

apparent in World War I. For the first fall and winter, after the rapid

defeat of Poland, the European theater settled into what observers

cynically called the “phony war.” This first phase was dominated by

King’s plans for Canada’s “limited liability” and an “unspectacular”

effort to supply the British. At the war’s outset the country had fewer

than a combined 10,000 personnel in the navy, air force, and army.

Symbolic of the limited liability idea was the creation of the British

Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Canada, physically removed from

events in Europe, constructed, staffed, and paid over half the cost of a

flight crew program. During the war, over 130,000 Allied airmen

received training in Canada, which proudly assumed the nickname

“aerodrome of democracy.” While the vanguard of the Canadian

army reached Britain in late 1939, the country originally planned to

play a supportive role.

The phony war concept evaporated rapidly in the spring of 1940,

giving way to images of blitzkrieg and the breathtaking collapse of

Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, and finally France. By

the fall of 1940, with Britain barely staving off German air attacks,

Canada had become the most significant partner in the Allied effort.

The notion of Canada’s limited commitment for a brief conflict was

unceremoniously abandoned. By the war’s end in 1945 over one

million Canadian men and women had put on uniforms to battle the

combined German and Italian forces in Europe and to defend

Canadian territory. To a much lesser extent, Canadians fought in the

Pacific after the country declared war on Japan following the surprise

attack at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Canadians would see service in such far-flung places as the West

Indies, Iceland, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Alaska. The Royal

Canadian Navy, active in several oceans, found its greatest task in

protecting Allied supply convoys from German submarines in the

dangerous waters of the Atlantic. But by far the greatest Canadian

military contribution came with the battle to liberate Europe and

defeat Italy and Germany. Under the command of General Andrew

McNaughton, Canadian troops gathered and trained in Britain. They

were used to test the German defenses of Western Europe at Dieppe in

August 1942, a disastrous event that left 3,000 Canadians killed,

wounded, or captured on the beaches of France. Dieppe spawned

angry claims that Canada’s infantry had been used as fodder for a

Canada at War 155

poorly conceived mission. German propagandists, in the meantime,

used dramatic pictures of the Canadian dead to show the impene-

trability of their “fortress Europe.”

Canada’s major infantry commitment came during the campaign

to liberate Western Europe. Canadians served as part of the British

forces in the protracted battle to defeat Italy beginning in 1943. They

were also critical participants in the greatest amphibious assault in

history during the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. Juno Beach,

one of five Allied landing sites, was a Canadian responsibility. Bloody

fighting shadowed Canadian troops in capturing Caen, moving up

the coast to Belgium, and taking the Scheldt estuary near Antwerp. As

the war reached its closing days in the spring of 1945, Canadian

soldiers liberated part of the Netherlands and crossed the Rhine River

into Germany. While the ground fighting took place, the Royal

Canadian Air Force suffered and inflicted extensive casualties in a

relentless bombing campaign of German factories and military

targets. Germany surrendered in May. The Japanese sued for peace

three months later following the destruction of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki by atomic bombs. After six years of unimaginable carnage,

World War II drew to a close (see “A Portrait of the Fighting Forces”

in the Documents section).

Although some historians quibble about Canada’s relative impact

on the war in a global comparative framework, few would dispute

the assertion that the country’s military contribution during the

hostilities was nothing short of extraordinary. For a country of nearly

eleven million, over one million men and women were in uniform at

some point between 1939 and 1945. Of those, roughly 750,000

served in the army, 250,000 in the Royal Canadian Air Force (the

fourth largest Allied air contingent by the war’s end), and 100,000 in

the Royal Canadian Navy. Of Canada’s nearly 100,000 casualties,

close to 42,000 lost their lives. As was the case in World War I,

Canada’s casualty figures pale when placed alongside those of most

of the other belligerents. The Soviet Union, for example, lost about

twenty million people, and the extermination of over six million Jews

by Germany’s Nazi regime set a ghastly record in world history for a

nation’s deliberate attempt to annihilate another group. Canada’s

unswerving dedication to the war effort is also widely recognized by

historians. The country was Britain’s strongest ally before Germany

attacked the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 and the Americans

156 Canada at War

entered the war later that year. However, the use and behavior

of Canadian forces during the war has been the subject of some

fairly recent controversy. The Valour and the Horror,atelevision

program shown on CBC in the 1990s, called into question the

almost mythical image of Canada’s noble fighting forces during the

war. This contentious series, which drew angry responses from

veterans and others, indicates that after a half-century, the nature of

Canada’s role in this most costly of human wars has not achieved a

final agreement.

The Home Front

Mackenzie King and his Liberal government faced enormous political

challenges at the war’s outset, especially from two of his political

enemies. Maurice Duplessis, Quebec’s premier, was vocal in his

skepticism of Canada’s obligation to support the war. Conversely,

Ontario premier Mitchell Hepburn claimed that the country was not

doing enough to support Britain. King swiftly worked to defuse these

critics. By enlisting the support of the influential cabinet member,

Ernest Lapointe, the federal government helped the Quebec Liberals

defeat Duplessis’s Union Nationale in the fall of 1939. Then King

called a federal election in 1940. During the campaign he promised

not to implement a forced conscription of soldiers. After soundly

defeating his opponents set to the task of assembling an especially

able wartime cabinet. Notable was the American-born minister of

munitions and supply, C. D. Howe, who was given the daunting

challenge of managing the country’s production efforts.

Insatiable Allied demands for the resources that made Canada

famous—wheat, ore, fish, timber, and a host of minerals crucial to the

war effort such as nickel, lead, aluminum, copper, and uranium—

helped to break the Depression’s grip almost overnight. Canada’s

industrial output surged. Factories produced airplanes, tanks,

weapons large and small, and personal equipment for soldiers.

Unemployment, which was such a shattering and emblematic char-

acteristic of the Depression, virtually disappeared; remarkably,

employers found themselves facing a shortage of workers in some

sectors of the economy. Inflation rose and the government instituted

The Home Front 157

wage and price controls. A multitude of wartime agencies monitored

virtually every facet of production and distribution. Rations on items

from sugar to gasoline became a wartime necessity and kindled a

black market. The National Selective Service, instituted in 1941,

controlled the movement of workers, women and men alike, and kept

people in certain jobs that were deemed critical to the war effort.

Canada used only about one-third of its production during the war.

Its Allies consumed the rest.

The country’s gross national product and industrial output nearly

doubled during the war years. Labor tensions, however, accompanied

the effort. Strikes plagued the wartime industries, shaped by concerns

over wages and working conditions. In 1944 a government order-in-

council, referred to as PC 1003, proclaimed that Canadian workers

would have the right to organize and bargain collectively. This helped

to bring down the frequency of strikes during the remainder of the war.

Agricultural output increased on an equally dramatic level, with

farm income doubling from 1939 to 1945. To pay for the war, the

government raised taxes. It also borrowed heavily, as Canadian

citizens turned out their pockets in a number of Victory Bond drives

that generated about $12 billion. Canada loaned Britain several billion

dollars during the war and essentially gave their former imperial

masters about $1 billion to purchase Canadian products. Thus, while

people made personal sacrifices on the home front, the war brought

about a dramatic improvement in the country’s economy.

Women and the War Effort

Canadian women were profoundly affected by the war. Single

women had long been part of the workforce, generally in low-paying

jobs such as teaching, secretarial work, service jobs, and retail

employment. The thousands of men drawn into military service,

coupled with a supercharged economy, created employment oppor-

tunities that had been practically nonexistent before the war. Single

and then married women poured into factories that produced

everything from tanks to canvas pouches for soldiers. The country’s

version of “Rosie the Riveter” was the “Bren gun girl,” named after a

light machine gun. Over one million women worked full time in

factories and businesses by 1944, and at least another million toiled

158 The Home Front

on farms and in part-time jobs. In addition, women served in the

military and in the nursing corps. Close to 50,000 women enlisted in

the armed forces: the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, the Royal

Canadian Air Force Women’s Division, and the Women’s Royal

Canadian Naval Service. Although they received unequal treatment

in the service, women nonetheless fulfilled critical duties. Female

pilots ferried planes, for example, thereby releasing male crews for

combat duty.

The dramatic influx of women into new sectors of Canada’s

economy forced changes that lasted beyond the war years. In 1944,

largely as a response to the considerable number of women in the

workforce, the government instituted the Family Allowance Act. The

“baby bonus” provided a modest monthly payment to Canadian

mothers with children under sixteen years of age to ensure a basic

standard of food, clothing, and shelter needs. It also survived the war.

The government’s propaganda machinery, after initially encouraging

womentodotheirbitforthewar,signaledthattheywouldhaveto

make their jobs available to returning men in peacetime. Thousands of

women lost their jobs as a result of deliberate policy and economic

restructuring after the war. The percentage of women in the Canadian

workforce did not return to wartime levels until the 1960s. Never-

theless, the wartime commitment of women helped to construct a

platform for the postwar feminist movement. From raising money in

bond drives to sacrificing their lives in military service, women were a

key component of Canada’s successful war effort.

Conscription Again

With a generation of Canadians having direct memories of the

conscription tensions during World War I, the onset of another

conflict brought immediate concerns about repeating the problem.

Mackenzie King, ever the conciliator, repeatedly pledged not to move

to conscription. Individuals and groups across Canada, particularly

large numbers of French Canadians, were opposed to the idea of an

enforced draft. Reasons for their lack of support for the war effort

included resentments of Borden’s actions during World War I,

France’s desertion of Canadiens at the Conquest, and sympathy in

Quebec for at least some of the programs of the fascist governments

The Home Front 159