402 CHAPTER 25
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liii-i ~ording
"Fiiito H.B. Nearby, "it was the most radical and most con-
structive innovation of that depression decade." But the half-step towards inter-
ventionist fiscal policy was soon dwarfed by enormously greater borrowing for
infinitel more vast more startling emergenc -that of
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Mobilization for Total War
Canada's return to a war footing in September 1939 was somewhat anomalous from
a military-history standpoint. In the beginning, as a matter of policy, the country's
liability was said to be "limited}' The Prime Minister declared that no "great expe~
ditionary forces of infantry" would be sent to Europe as in the Great Wai. It was
hoped, and expected, that the allies would be content to make use of Canada's food
and industrial resources more than its fighting forces, which were almost non-exis-
tent, in any case. The regular army "permanent force" (distinct from the reserve
militia regiments) numbered 4268; the navy was an Ll-vessel coast guard as
envisioned by Laurier; and the air force was entirely in prospect (a
of modern fi hter a' on order from a British manufactut
RECOVERY BY WAR 403
Canada took steps towards fielding an army larger even
!es:, \\·orld War while simultaneously striving to make a significant contribution
t::l the air as well as upon the sea. .
In the mobilization for total war from June 1940 a remarkable rhetoric of
emder equalization accompanied the bold speeches about bending every back towards
me struggle against Hitler. However, Ruth Pierson has suggested that the reality
1ii'3S more complicated. With respect to women's emancipation, for example, more
than 40 000 women did join the armed forces and an even larger number, more
than 250 000, took up positions usually occupied by men in factory work. But the
TOmen in uniform performed non-military tasks, usually clerical roles, and the
women taking up the traditionally male-dominated industrial work such as weld-
mg and lathe operation were trained for one specific production function rather
than to acquire skills for full careers. Whether in the military or civilian work out of
the home, the tacit understanding was that women were out of their proper context,
just "to fill in" for the duration of the war. Moreover, the temporary departure still
placed women in subordinate, subsidiary roles. They put on khaki to do typing to
relieve men in uniform for "the number one job of combat." They did a certain
weld on one part of a weapon system, or performed one turn of a lathe, but without
acquiring the fuller set of skills to become welders or machinists. In 1939, women were
less than one-fifth of the paid labour force. Unemployed single women were largely
invisible: seen only as sisters or daughters, or porential domestic servants, By 1944,
the percentage of women working out of the home had doubled, but few imagined
that the gain would be permanent-any more than the one million men who left their
prewar lives to join the armed forces imagined that they would remain in the mili-
tary after the war. Indeed, by 1942, a significant portion of the men in the army
were beginning to wonder if they would see any combat at all.
Canada and Britain had approximately the same percentage of population in
uniform, but a significantly smaller percentage of Canada's forces was committed
to fighting. The bulk of the army spent most of the war, in the words of its com-
mander, Major-General A.G.L. McNaughton, as a "dagger pointed at the heart of
Berlin." But the army was a dagger drawn rather than a weapon bloodied. The men
trained and retrained while the fighting went on elsewhere without them.
In the first several years of the war, Canadian cQmbat ~ersonnel w._ereto be
seen most frequently in the air over Europe or escorting convoys across the Atlantic.
The air emphasis was major, having created 107 schools for training aircrews in
1940 and 1941. Before the war was over, the Canadian-based Britisn Commonwealth
Air Training Plan (BCATP) saw to the-elementary training of 131 000 Common-
wealth airmen,"3 000 from Canada alone. The finish of their flight educations
occurred in England where also the individual trainees merged into crews and became
part of the British Bomber Command. Only a small number of the aviators flew
individually-manned fighter aircraft such as the legendary Spitfire. Most personnel
served in British-built bombers such as the four-engined Lancaster with a crew of
404 CHAPTER 25
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FIGURE 25.1 Ratio of Men to Women in Selected, Traditionally Men-Only
Occupational Categories, 1944 Compared to 1939
Source: Historical Atlas of Canada, Volume 3 (Toronro: Universit'J at Toronro Press, 1987), plate 48.
seven, whose mission was "area bombing" of the urban-industrial heartland of
Germany. Typically, the men were briefed in their task in the afternoons of their
missions, departed England around dusk, formed their squadrons into a stream of
attack, and made their way at nighttime over the darkened countryside of Europe.
If they were lucky, they arrived over what they guessed was their target, dropped
their bomb tonnage, and arrived back home again before dawn. However, in the
first several years of the air war, the odds favoured the German night-fighters better
than the crews of British Bomber Command. fu many as 10 of any 100 crews were
not likely to return from many of the missions in 1942 and 1943. Add that to the re-
quirement that crew had to make 30 trips before being rotated out of combat, and the
probability of surviving all 30 was far less than 50 percent.
The survivability of the naval service in 1941 and 1942 ought to have been even
less because the mission of the Canadians in this branch of the forces was escorting
convoys of merchant ships through wolf-packsof marauding German submarines. The
vessels provided were the only type that could be quickly built in Canada, little
coastal defence vessels known as Corvettes, 122 of which w.erebuilt by 1945. They
could neither outrun nor outshoot a submarine on the surface. And since submarines
usually hunted their prey on the surface under the cover of darkness, any Corvette/
RECOVERY BY WAR 405
submarine contact was likely to occur as a surface encounter. The only chance the
Corvette had of killing the U-boat was ramming; some did-and succeeded. However,
the hunting and killing of submarines was the mission of other navies and of air-
craft. The defence of the convoy the little escorts provided was their mere pres-
ence, supposed to keep the subs underwater and away. In this role they no doubt
made some contribution. In the repeated crossings and recrossings of the North
Atlantic-at all times of the year, in the worst possible weather-their daily battle
was simply to stay afloat. Simply put, the Corvette was never designed for mid-
Atlantic service. In the first several years of the war, the Canadian .navy casualties
were mainly in the Corvettes rather than the few destroyers in the fleet, and these
losseshad more to do with the inadequacy of the ships than the skill of the Germans.
Meantime the much larger Canadian army kept training and training in
England whUe the British or other Commonwealth countries' infantry fought the
ground war. The only two exceptions to this several-year retention of the Canadian
army from combat were colossal disasters: one was a blundering dispatch of two in-
fantry battalions to indefensible Hong Kong in November 1941; the other was a
"reconnaissance in force" across the English Channel landing in the little French port
town of Dieppe on 19 August 1942. Of the 1973 who landed in Hong Kong on 16
November, everyone was either killed or captured by 26 December. The prisoners then
faced horrific slave labour and abuse by their captors, some transported to the home
islands of Japan itself. Similarly,of the 4963 who landed at Dieppe, only 2210 escaped
death or captivity there. The infantry of nearly an entire division was decimated
or went into captivity. But there was plenty of time to recover the loss because the
reality of the application of Canadian land forces was that their basic mission before
1943 was-and it bears repeating-simply to train and retrain while the fighting
went on elsewhere without them. The result of total mobilization for limited land war
was that just one-third of Canadian war production was utilized by Canadian forces.
Britain was the consumer of two-thirds of the tanks, artillery, and rifles made in
Canada. To imperialists such as Arthur Meighen, it was disgraceful that Canada
had not turned immediately to wholehearted commitment of the infantry to fight with
the "Tommies" in North Africa, for instance. In Meighen's view, keeping the
Canadian army in England demonstrated that the Prime Minister was driven by a
cowardly fear of the domestic consequences of imposing conscription for overseas
service.
1940, the Rowell-Sirois
recommendation was that Ottawa should as-
sume full responsibility for unemployment compensation in order to ensure a uniform
standard of relief in every province. Since the assumption of such a responsibility
would cost a great deal, it was recommended that the provinces surrender their
power of direct taxation to Ottawa, with the central government transferring back
406 CHAPTER 25
sutticient funds to maintain provincial administration and other social services.
.. .tton for the sake ot the war •
...... ~ ...... m 1940 proved no more forthcoming than in
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peacetime, King exploited the wartime emergency to circumvent the disappointing
rejection of the Rowell-Sirois Report by the provincial premiers at a conference in
that broke' - - . -. ....IlIL -- -_ ...
agreement
as tederat blackman with the provinces coerced into settling for what they
were given. The consolation to objecting premiers was the knowledge that the
central government's monopoly was temporary; it was.supposed to terminate one
year after the war's end.
The recommendation of the Rowell-Sirois Commission regarding unemploy-
ment compensation was implemented through the back door with similar dispatch.
King's acceptance of adverse court decisions in the previous decade meant that the
BNA Act had to be changed before any unemployment insurance scheme could be
implemented. But the change was desired in 1940 because employment was nearly
full and the recently re-employed were developing a renewed interest in labour
organization, exactly as had occurred during the previous war boom. The question
was whether they would become equally restive in the next postwar slump. In prepa-
ration for such a development, unemployment insurance was to be instituted then
to accumulate a large fund for the expected "hard times" ahead. The provincial
premiers were polled one by one to obtain their individual written agreement. Then,
having obtained each premier's consent to take on the new federal obligation, a
joint addressof the Senate and House of Commons went from Canada to Britain. and
the British added unemployment insurance to the list of responsibilities in section
91 of the BNA Act. With the constitution amended in 1940, the legislation re-
sembling Bennett's scheme went through the House of Commons in the same year,
this time without controversy, and, of course, with no subsequent court challenges.
Left Turn
RECOVERY BY WAR 407
The government that had spent $322 million on relief during the entire
decade of the Depression was spending the same amount in an month
1941 and 1943.
many if a country
UUJl>V • .., a war, and plan the economy effectively for the good of
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that cause, the same bureaucracy might also control production to ensure peacetime
prosperity and promote the general welfare by adding other social security programs
to unemployment insurance.
A postman distributes radon books to an acquiescent family. Rationed quantities of groceries such as
sugar and coffee-rlIough less than what shoppers would have preferred.-were stilllUgher than what
consumers in Britain, for emmp1e, received.
401 CHAPTER 25
There was a dramatic indication that such an opinion had grown to major
proportions by 1942 when Arthur Meighen stepped down from the Senate, assumed
the leadership of the Conservative party, and sought support from an Ontario riding
that had voted Tory in every election since 1904. Meighen staked his fortunes on a
supposition of widespread resentment that King had mobilized the country for total
war without fighting accordingly. He demanded conscription and coalition gov-
ernment. His opponent, a socialist.schoolteacher named Joseph Noseworthy, suggested
that Meighen wanted the same kind of war as in 1914 and would probably admin-
ister the same chaotic transition to peace that he had presided over in the 1919
postwar period. Noseworthy countered Meighen's manpower demand with a call
for "conscription of wealth," and won 159 of 212 polls in York South-the first
CCF victory east of the Prairies (and in Toronto of all places).
Meighen's initial reaction to his defeat was to denounce his opponent for hav-
ing unfairly smeared him as a defender of predatory capitalism. Meighen felt he had
been "pilloried as a cold and burnt-out reactionary." But once he recovered from
the sting of personal injury, he speculated that the York South contest was probably
a fair indicator of the future, especially as the new, non-electoral device for polling
public opinion developed by the Gallup organization began to chart the evidently
inexorable rise of the CCF nationally. Meighen predicted CCF dominance in in-
dustrial areas after the war. He reasoned that if the Liberals could be confined to
Quebec, the Conservatives might command a plurality of Parliament by sweeping the
West and the rural East. In order for such a strategy to succeed, however, Meighen
would have to resign from the leadership in deference to someone with proven pop-
ularity in the West; and that someone might be John Bracken, Premier of Manitoba
since 1922.
Other Conservatives feared that Meighen's strategy would turn their party
into little more than an echo of the 1920s Progressives.Early in September, 1942 they
met in an unofficial and unauthorized gathering at Port Hope, Ontario to discussmore
up-to-date strategies for enabling the Conservatives to lay claim to a middle position
between the CCF and the Liberals, They affirmed unwavering faith in capitalism, but
still mapped out a program of reforms that went well beyond King's unemployment
insurance. The "Port Hopefuls" anticipated a system for assuring every Canadian
"a gainful occupation and sufficient income to maintain himself and a family." More
specifically, they called for additional "social legislation" in areas such as low-cost
housing, collective bargaining rights for organized labour, and medical insurance.
Arthur Meighen subsequently denounced such thinking as the "main cause
of the progressive decrepitude of nations," but in a matter of weeks the new eastern
Conservatism was being endorsed by Bracken, the old-time agrarian. Since Meighen
continued to believe that John Bracken was the only leader who might fulfill his
Western strategy, Bracken's evident new-found romance with social legislation would
have to be tolerated. Unfortunately, the Manitoba premier laid down other condi-
tions that were equally disturbing to Arthur Meighen. H~ insisted that the party
change its name and that his nomination flow from harmonious consensus rather than
a bloody convention battle. Meighen dreaded adopting a platform "merelyfor the sake
RECOVERY BY WAR 409
_~" and he also disliked a change of name that suggested the Tories were join-
.. ~ rather than vice versa. Meighen's dilemma was that Bracken remained
me anh- potential leader who seemed likely to sweep the West. For this reason, the
on' leader promoted the package to the point of fulfillment, and a newly labelled
Progressive Conservative Party was born in December 1942.
Comprehensive Strategy for Social Reconstruction
~kighen's defeat in Toronto in February, the emergence of Progressive Conservatism
m '),linnipeg in December, and two other influences in 1942 prompted Mackenae
to move his Liberals with the evident leftward swing of public "."n.t1.n
one program now is being sug-
gested for postwar purposes." It was personally satisfying for King to believe that he
was finding a rendezvous
the end of 1942, a social scientist from McGill Univ~rsity was
assignment of for
proposals "socialistic." Indeed, the League
for Social Reconstruction (sometimes called the "brains trust" of the CCF) had is-
sued a similar report in 1935 under the title of Social Planning far Canada. Even so,
there were vast differences between the two approaches. The assumption that ran
through the Marsh Report was that there was enough wealth in Canada to ensure that
