Invading the Motherland

The Canadian civilian-soldiers of the two world wars went overseas by the hundreds of thousands to protect the British Empire and Canada from Germany and its allies. As men and women from the northern Dominion, they already had a reputation as rough-and-tumble colonials, which was cultivated through plays, poems and public perception. The Canadians saw themselves as unique compared to the British, even though they came from the same stock. The British, in turn, seemed largely accepting of these colonial wild men. One Second World War complaint to the authorities referred to how “a Canadian soldier on leave has visited my home. As a result, both my daughter and I are pregnant. Not that we hold it against your soldier, but the last time he was here he took my daughter’s bicycle which she needs to go to work. Can you get him to return it?” 

Canada was profoundly shaped by the two world wars. More than 1.6 million Canadians served in uniform and 110,000 were killed, with another 230,000 wounded. The country was forever changed. Through sacrifice and sorrow, Canada stepped out on to the world stage. But before Canadians fought on the Somme or in Normandy, over the skies of Europe or on the oceans, they often first “invaded” Britain.

This is the neglected story told by University of Western Ontario professor Jonathan Vance in his new history, Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain and Two World Wars. Vance is the award-winning author of several books, including the influential Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War, which examined how Canadians commemorated and remembered the Great War, and, more recently, A History of Canadian Culture, a sweeping narrative of Canadian culture, both high and low, over four centuries. Both are masterpieces. Maple Leaf Empire will not become a classic, but it is a good read, covers unexplored ground and provides a unique perspective into a forgotten component of the Canadian war experience.

Vance sets the context by exploring the impact of the British military on the development of Canada as a nation. For much of Canada’s history, the separate British colonies and then the Dominion relied on Britain for security, especially against the avaricious Americans to the south. Land grants to veterans settled the land with experienced soldiers, canals were constructed to provide safer lines of communication in times of war and fortresses were erected to stand silent sentry. With thousands of garrison soldiers and visiting sailors, Canada received an influx of spending and the creation of a unique culture. While some of this territory has been trodden by Vance before, he ably illustrates the enormous impact of the British soldiers in mounting plays, painting and sketching the landscape, composing and playing music, and holding dances in culture-starved Canada. There were few aspects of Canadian society, from the social to the political, that were not shaped by British military.

While relying on the imperials for matters of security, Canada was not entirely hapless or helpless. The militia remained the backbone of Canada’s defence after the British pulled out most of their forces in 1871, and it put down Riel’s Northwest Resistance in 1885. The martial spirit was strong in elements of Canadian society, especially among urban English Canadians. It also fed into an emerging Canadian nationalism that embraced Canada’s place within the British Empire, while encouraging a unique identity. Although there were critics of military spending and involvement in British military campaigns, such as during the South African War of 1899–1902, when intellectual George Grant observed, “Canada was directly concerned little more than if war had broken out on Saturn,” war was one of the means by which Canadians created new heroes.

In South Africa, for instance, the Canadians fought well on the veldt and acquired a reputation as something akin to wild-west cowboys. They swaggered back to the welcoming Dominion, believing they had outfought the Boers and the British. This chapter on the pre–world war impact of war on Canada is engaging and concise, but there is little that is new there, and it might have been shortened, as it seems disconnected from the theme of a book that centres on the world wars.

Canada went to war in August 1914 because Britain declared war. The Dominion had no say over the matter. However, Canadians had a choice over how they would participate, since it was, initially, a voluntary war effort. From across the country, Canadians from all classes and occupations rushed to their armouries to enlist. Most were moved by the need to defend Britain, and Vance has produced some striking, if maudlin, patriotic verse and song of the day that conveyed this accepted sentiment, such as “We are Coming, Mother Britain,” “The Love of the Sons” and “The Call of the Motherland.” But defending Britain could not have been the sole reason motivating tens of thousands of Canadians to go overseas, and letters of the day suggest that many young Canadians naively pictured war as an adventure, a lark with their buddies, with the whole thing over by Christmas. Others were moved by “Little Belgium,” which had been overrun by the Germans and whose population suffered under the occupation.

With Canada less than eight million strong at the time, about one in three eligible adult males served overseas, along with thousands of underage and overage soldiers who lied their way into the ranks. By war’s end, some 450,000 citizen-soldiers had gone overseas, and at any given time during the war years there were about 150,000 Canadians waiting in England to go to the Western Front as reinforcements.

What did this army in England do? Much of the time was spent training and learning the grim art of trench warfare, but these Canadians, spread throughout southeastern England in places like Seaford, Folkestone, Shorncliffe and a host of other camps, also interacted with the British population. They were not sequestered on base, and therefore when they had their leave (and sometimes when they did not—with Canadians sneaking out of camp, but often caught on their return as they drunkenly tried to navigate fences or talk their way around guards) they hit the local communities. Many found the strong beer to their liking, although not a few woke up in local jails after raucous evenings on the town.

But life did not revolve around the drink. Canadians ate in local pubs to augment their bland meals, they visited churches and they chatted with the locals. “The first thing an Englishman asks when he sees a Canadian soldier is, ‘Are you a REAL Canadian?’” wrote Kenneth Haig. Many Englanders were disappointed to find that not all the Canadians were cowboys or born with Indian blood. These stereotypes were not helped along by mischievous Canucks who claimed to hunt bears every day while paddling the river ways in search of beavers.

Canadians enjoyed playing up their supposed wild nature with civilians, but were chippy about their colonial status with British soldiers. Even as many of the Canadians were British born, they railed against the pompous British officers or hard-laced sergeants who insulted their military skills or sniffed them off as ill-trained brawlers. Coming from a less class-based society, the Canadians’ insolence to their supposed betters was often commented upon, as well as their failure to salute sharply and their disconcerting habit of calling officers by their first names. But much of the criticism against Canadians dimmed as the war progressed and especially after the titanic battle of Second Ypres, in April 1915. It was here where the Canadians withstood the first chlorine gas attack in the war and fought a tenacious, if costly, retreat. The Canadians made their name in Flanders’ fields, but the short battle had cost over 6,000 killed, wounded or taken prisoner.

As the Canadians hunkered down in the mud and swill of the trenches of the Western Front, thousands of reinforcements continued to cross the Atlantic. Those training in England received extended leave of several days every couple of months, and almost all went to see the bright lights of London. Soldiers of the Empire could be found in the streets, and the Canadians freely flashed their Maple Leaf, their smiles and their money. Paid more than their British counterparts, the Canadians could be found in the best restaurants, at the theatre or in pursuit of more bibulous activities. Young men wrote home of their disgust over the loose morals of women; others stayed silent and satisfied sexual urges. Venereal disease became a problem, and then an epidemic, and the hellfire speeches and lectures seemed to have little impact on men who knew that they might be dead in a few weeks.

But soldiers also wrote of the wonders of the museums and historic sites that they had only read about in books. They visited the gardens and historic buildings. They sent home letters by the millions, as well as tacky souvenirs and postcards. Snaps were nearly obligatory, with young men staring warlike into the camera, almost always with cigarette in hand. Loved ones at home could be proud of a son, father or uncle who was serving his country. Sadly, these mementos were often the last tangible links to family members who never returned.

When the war ended, some soldiers remained embittered toward the British, either the generals who commanded them or the martinets who ruled their lives in the camps. But even as Canadian soldiers brought back a new sense of identity that had been hammered out under the fall of shells and at victories at Vimy Ridge or during the Hundred Days campaign, most Canadians, veterans and those on the home front, found that the war forged closer ties with Britain. Canada had done its part for the British Empire, and it had paid in the blood of over 66,000 dead.

The Great War was labelled the War to End All Wars, but of course the sick irony was that its dying sparks would soon start new infernos in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. As war appeared unavoidable by the end of the 1930s, with the maniacal actions of Hitler, Mussolini and the military fascists in Japan spreading fear and unrest, Canada’s William Lyon Mackenzie King sought to position the country to do its duty for king and empire. Mackenzie King was a weasel and an equivocator who had an unbreakable power base in isolationist Quebec, but he would not abandon Britain. Neither would most Canadians.

Why would another generation go to war in defence of Britain? They did so for multiple reasons, with many believing that Canada was threatened by Nazi Germany. Others were driven into the service because of the Depression or in search of adventure. But the ties of blood and belonging resonated with English Canadians across the country, strengthened in schools and churches, in popular culture and politics, sombre memorials and the dazzling monarchy. It is a certainty that if Britain had not gone to war, Canada, too, would have remained neutral. From 1939 to 1945, of the roughly 11.5 million Canadians, an astonishing 1.1 million men (and now women) served in the armed forces. Almost everyone else at home was affected by the war.

For those going overseas, Britain was again the destination for most service personnel. Hundreds of thousands poured into the same camps as their fathers and made the same trips to London. The Canadian army defended the island kingdom during the dark days of 1940 and 1941, when Nazi threat of invasion was real after the collapse of France. When it seemed that Britain would survive, the Canadians trained for the return to occupied Europe. Canadian pilots and bomber crews defended the skies, and then took the war to German cities. On the oceans, the Royal Canadian Navy kept the essential life line open. At home, millions in patriotic funds were raised for British citizens undergoing the brutal aerial blitz of bombs and incendiaries that were killing thousands and destroying large portions of London and Coventry.

But in between battle or training, at the end of convoy and bomber runs, the Canadians found leisure time in the local towns and big cities. “Lock up your daughters and stay off the roads,” intoned Lord Haw-Haw, the German radio propagandist who amused and annoyed the allies. “Give these men a motorcycle and a bottle of whisky and they will kill themselves.” The Canadian reputation as wild colonials was cemented through all manner of alcohol-fuelled disturbances, as well as thousands of babies born out of wedlock and 22 cases of bigamy. This reckless behaviour was not curtailed much during the course of the war, but it was overshadowed when the Americans arrived. According to the saying, they were overpaid, oversexed and over here. All of a sudden the Canadians did not appear so crazy. In fact, the Canadians and British curled into each other, to avoid the American storm of brassiness and brawling. Even though 85 percent of Canadian military personnel had been born in Canada (up from about 50 percent during the Great War), they remained tightly linked to the British rather than the Americans. Canadians still complained about the mysteries of the system of coinage, drafty rooms and winding roads, but they shared a deep affinity for the British, and especially their stoic nature in the face of Hitler’s bombers. By the end of the war, thousands of Canadians died to protect Britain. The survivors returned to Canada throughout late 1945 and early 1946, with some 50,000 war brides and dependants, and set about building a new and prosperous post-war Canada.

When Vance focuses on the Canadians in Britain and the impact of the two groups negotiating space and relationships, the book is very strong, although his focus wanders at times to the fighting in Italy or Northwest Europe, or the Western Front battlefields, in accounts that are longer than mere introductions, but not long enough to say anything new on the topic. That said, Maple Leaf Empire is exceedingly well written and backed with strong anecdotes and engaging characters. It is a firm reminder that while the two world wars helped to push for an emerging sense of Canadian identity and nationalism, it was done within the context of Britishness. At the same time, for nine bloody years, Canadians established a home away from home in the beloved island-kingdom, a Maple Leaf Empire of which only a few traces remain to this day.˝ˇ