Canada in 1939: On the Edge of War In 1939 Canada was unprepared for war and totally unprepared fortotal war. That was obvious in many ways but most of all in the stateof its army, navy, and air force. There were only 4,169 officers and menin Canada''s regular army at the start of the Second World War.1 Theuniforms the soldiers wore looked just like those from 1918 because, infact, they were those from 1918. The army was not able to buy new uniformsor much new equipment until the months before the war brokeout. There were about twenty-five thousand men in the army reservesand most were untrained. In pre-war years some summer artillery exerciseshad to be cancelled because artillery shells were too valuable toactually be fired. The biggest training exercise of the decade was heldin 1938 and it was a shambles.
Most senior army officers were too oldor too sick to be effective, and drinking was a serious problem. Asmemorably described by John English in The Canadian Army and theNormandy Campaign, the army shamefully neglected the study of warin those years.2 Top officers instead spent most of their time runningrelief camps or on ceremonies and parades. The Royal Canadian Navy had six serviceable destroyers and fourminesweepers, but those ships had to cover two long coasts. Beforethe war the Canadian destroyers trained alongside the big ships of theRoyal Navy. The British believed the principal threat they faced would be from German surface ships while submarines were a menace that could be managed. On the outbreak of war there were 1,189 officers andmen in the regular RCN. There were three reserve formations: the RoyalCanadian Navy Reserve (RCNR), made up mostly of officers and sailorsin the merchant marine; the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve(RCNVR), mostly weekend sailors and yachtsmen; and the very smallFishermen''s Reserve.
Together the three made up another 1,900 officersand ratings. So when the war broke out the navy had a grand total ofabout three thousand men. There were 275 aircraft in the Royal Canadian Air Force. With theexception of a few new Hurricane fighters, most of the planes appeared tohave been stolen from a museum. One squadron operated the ArmstrongWhitworth Atlas, an army co-operation biplane that first flew in 1925.On the outbreak of war the air force was supposed to have fifteen squadrons,but it had to scrape together everything that flew just to mustertwelve. There were about 4,100 officers and men in the regular air forceand air force reserve combined. In 1939 there were eleven million people in Canada.
In many ways thecountry was British. No maple-leaf flag flew on any flagpole, but insteadthe Canadian Ensign, or more commonly, the Union Jack. There werepictures of the young king, George VI, in every school, including, presumably,King George School in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, King GeorgeSchool in Saskatoon, and King George VI School in Kenora, Ontario.3And all those British products -- Lipton tea, Royal Doulton china, and,from the tiny village of Port Sunlight, near Liverpool, Sunlight soap --lined Canadian store shelves. Canadians in most parts of the country were proud to be part of oneof the great empires of history, the British Empire. For the true Empireboosters the biggest moment of their lives was the Royal Tour of May andJune 1939. King George and Queen Elizabeth had been invited to Canadaafter their coronation in 1936, but no one could have imagined the tripwould take place on the very edge of war. The Royal Tour was a sensationand helped rally the nation to the Empire in a time of dire need.
Evenin Quebec most people welcomed the King and Queen with uncommonwarmth. In most other respects, however, the three and a half million people who made up French Canada, were the "great exception" in the nation.The differences were fundamental and historic. Most important in 1939was the French-Canadian view of possible war in Europe. FrancophoneCanada was determined that it would not be part of any new "Imperial"war. Through most of the Second World War this French-English dividewould command the political agenda again and again. In the pre-war years multiculturalism was unheard of. There werepeople from Germany in Kitchener, Ontario, people from Iceland inGimli, Manitoba, and minorities from other countries scattered acrossCanada, but they were often shut out of the mainstream.
Some minoritiesremained at the bottom of the social ladder. When conscriptionbecame an issue later in the war, recent immigrants simply wanted to beleft to their farms and workbenches. Most were barely scratching out aliving, anyway, only trying to survive. At the beginning of the war Canada was an economic weakling. Itwas a wounded country, still in the grip of the Great Depression. Factorieshad produced steel, durable goods, and clothing in earlier years, but hundredsof those plants had shut their doors. In the 1920s Canada had beenthe second largest auto producer in the world, but by 1939 only a handfulof plants remained open. Between 1929 and 1939 the Gross DomesticProduct (GDP), the total of goods and services the country produced,dropped 40 percent.
4 World wheat prices were dramatically lower thanthey had been a few years before. Parts of the prairies were dust bowls,having suffered years of drought. In tiny Minton, Saskatchewan, most ofthe population of 890 depended on government relief or charity; eventhe chickens in the town depended on relief feed. Because of the economic problems, because some Canadians did notwant to be part another war under any circumstance, and because of theFrench-Canadian aversion to any new "Imperial" conflicts, Canadianschose to ignore the events in Europe year after year. As journalist BruceHutchison memorably commented, in the face of a growing crisis,"Canadians turned out the lights and hid under the bed. "5.