“Canada proved a reliable partner to the U.S., but the Americans in turn understood it was in their own strategic interest to fully support and amplify the dominion’s ability to wage war.”
By Tim Cook
“THE SECRET aim of every American leader, including Franklin Roosevelt, [is] to dominate Canada and ultimately to possess the country.” So believed a concerned Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who confessed this worry to his diary despite his friendship with the American president.
The claim was riven with King’s fear for Canada’s very survival, and it had a basis in truth given U.S. invasions northward in 1775 and 1812, coupled with lesser acts of aggression in the 1830s and 1840s. After the Civil War, Irish-American veterans, known as the Fenians, invaded Canada several times in a bizarre plan to capture Canada to ransom it back to Britain to free Ireland.
Since the country’s confederation in 1867, every prime minister had been aware of the precarious place of the Dominion within North America with the more populous and wealthy republic to the south. While Prime Minister King admired the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his comment nonetheless revealed an anxiety that ran through him and many of his generation about the growing power south of the border.
And yet Roosevelt was little interested in gobbling up the northern country that ran along the 49th parallel for some 9,000 kilometres. This largely undefended border was, however, a significant worry for the White House, especially from the late 1930s and the coming crisis with the Nazis, the fascists, and the militarists in Japan. Roosevelt’s administration had not paid much attention to the country of some 11.5 million British subjects, more focused on the instability in Latin America. The worsening situation in Western Europe, with Hitler rearming Germany and concern in the Pacific, where Japan was threatening its neighbors and at war with China, also drew attention away from the northern border.
When war in Europe came in September 1939, the U.S. remained neutral, but Canada’s parliament voted to stand by Britain. This left North America with one country at war and the other at peace. How to jointly secure the Northern hemisphere became an immediate concern for the Roosevelt administration and for King’s cabinet in Ottawa.
Joining Forces
World War II would become a turning point in world history, fostering multiple legacies, not the least being thrusting the U.S. into superpower status.
In North America, it saw Canada and the U.S. come together, with wartime trade and industrialization entwining the two economies. Political and military authorities in Ottawa also struggled to deal with the neutral U.S. and then, after December 1941, how to secure North America and fight together abroad. All the while, King grappled with questions of sovereignty, both with Britain and the U.S., while ordering the country’s military to find ways to carry out operations as a dependable ally.
War is infused with irony, and Canada came to understand that to fully support Britain on the front lines of the war against the Nazis, it needed to lean into the U.S. And to send its expeditionary forces abroad – including many of the 1.1 million Canadians who served in uniform – it first had to secure North America. Without the agreements and plans forged with the U.S., Canada’s half-million strong army, the growing navy, and a multi-purpose air force, with the striking arm of 14 squadrons of bombers, would have been kept far from defending Britain or fighting in multiple land, sea, and air campaigns.
North America’s greatest shield was its geography. But that geography also demanded that Canada and the U.S. share a common border. While there were no enemies abroad that could initially reach the North Americans, both Canada and the United States were deeply unprepared for the coming war, with the withering depression years having sucked the marrow from the military’s bones. How did the North Americans defend the northern continent on the east and west coast, as well as the north? How did they learn to work together in the realm of diplomacy and security? What manoeuvres and compromises were made by the less wealthy and much less populous Canada with the emerging superpower of the republic to the south? These were some of the questions I set out to answer in my book, The Good Allies, on Canada and the United States during World War II.
Reliable Partners
Canada proved a reliable partner to the U.S., but the Americans in turn understood it was in their own strategic interest to fully support and amplify the dominion’s ability to wage war. On the east coast, the Royal Canadian Navy’s sailors were thrust into many roles, but primarily the defence of the sea-lanes in the Battle of the Atlantic. While the RCN struggled to build new warships, train sailors, and hone tactics against the German U-boats, they found themselves helping to protect the vulnerable Americans when Hitler declared war on the U.S. after Japan’s surprise blow in December 1941.
In early 1942, as the U-boats savaged unprotected American shipping, eventually leading to 198 ships destroyed over four terrible months, the RCN stepped in to offer assistance. The use of airpower and warships in convoys lessened the destruction, and from March 1942 the RCN offered inshore convoy support to protect grouped vessels from Halifax to St. John’s, Newfoundland (then a separate British dominion), and then guiding other merchant ships to Boston, before picking up other convoys back to Halifax. Known as the Triangle Run, a few months later the Canadian convoys were extended to New York. Lives were saved and critical war supplies made it to their destination.
The Canadian navy also worked with the Royal Navy to protect merchant ships in convoys across the Atlantic. Many of these merchant ships were carrying the food grown in Canada for beleaguered Britain, facing the Nazis without France after it capitulated in June 1940. The North American ship’s hulls were also filled with critical minerals used by the British to manufacture their weapons. One of Canada’s greatest contributions to the Allied war effort was over five billion tons of nickel and aluminum that were used in the weapons made to defeat the Axis powers, and more than a third of this raw material was also sent southward across the border. Aluminum was a critical mineral in American aircraft production.
These strategic minerals also stayed in Canada to be used by the expanding domestic wartime industry. Assisted by American expertise, machinery, and purchases, Canada’s factories produced massive arrays of weapons. This included 16,400 aircraft, 315,000 machine guns, and hundreds of millions of artillery shells. Canada also manufactured 850,000 vehicles, most of them critically needed military-grade trucks for Allied armies, which were used around the world, from the desert war in North Africa to the Russian steppes.
Balancing Act
On the West coast, Canada stood by the U.S. after the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor. Canada also declared war on Japan. Its two battalions of troops — almost 2,000 soldiers —were annihilated after three weeks of battle in the British colony of Hong Kong. To support the Americans, Canada rushed thousands of soldiers to the coast, as well as crucial anti-aircraft batteries to defend against an expected Japanese invasion.
RCN warships also supported U.S. convoys running supplies to isolated Alaska, and four Royal Canadian Air Force squadrons defended that most northern American “organized territory.” American journalist Richard Harkness in assessing the Canadian and American defence of North America and the fight against the Axis powers at the end of 1942 wrote, “We’re in this thing together.”
While Canada and the U.S. were indeed fighting together, there remained fear over many issues, including American soldiers stationed on Canadian soil. Ottawa denied several requests to garrison American forces on the coast, but some 30,000 troops and civilians were involved in building the Alaska Highway. Nerves were not calmed in King’s cabinet when some of the Americans impishly began to answer the telephone with the casual greeting: “Hello, army of occupation.”
Diplomatic jousting continued in Washington throughout the war, where Canada struggled to stand by the Americans while retaining its sovereignty, while not being elbowed out of the way by the British. Future prime minister Lester B. Pearson, who was Canada’s late wartime ambassador, played a critical role as envoy. As Pearson wisely counselled early in 1944, “When we are dealing with such a powerful neighbour, we have to avoid the twin dangers of subservience and truculent touchiness.”
Important to balancing this relationship was the friendship of Prime Minister King and President Roosevelt. While the president was more charismatic of the two, he also seemed to like the Canadian leader who often made trips to see him in Washington or his home in Hyde Park. The two men found ways to make complex defence committees work, money and goods to flow unabated, and to never let minor disagreements deepen into worsening situations that might detract from the war effort against the fascists.
Ties of service and blood created other relationships. Canada’s astonishing air training plan was created from scratch and, by war’s end, some 131,000 airmen were instructed for battle. Thousands of American flyers came North to be airmen in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), most before December 1941. In fact, about 30,000 Americans served in the Canadian armed forces, and over 900 were killed in combat while wearing the Canadian uniform.
One of the Americans trained in Canada was Donald Gibbons, who hailed from McDonald, Kansas. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, a Winnipeg paper asked him if he would return to the U.S., now that his country was at war. He thought it over and responded: “I think I’ll stay. . . it’s the same fight after all and we’re in it together. Canada and the United States.”
In this all-out fight against the Nazis and fascists, Canada was pulling its weight and playing its part in defending North America. The hemisphere had to be secured before the massive armies, air forces, and navies could be sent abroad to fight. Canadian forces landed with British and American comrades in Sicily in July 1943, in mainland Italy two months later, and on D-Day, 6 June 1944. Canada was an important if junior ally that stood in the vanguard with British and American comrades.
Victory
Emerging from the victories over the Axis Powers, Canada and the U.S. had deeply entangled economies. Trade was prosperous, especially with much of the world in ruins. From late 1945, the two militaries continued to work together to secure the northern hemisphere, especially with an eye on the anticipated threat of the Soviet use of long-range bombers to fly over the Arctic. Over the decades, there have been multiple defence agreements, with both Canada and the U.S. founding members of NATO. In the continued security of North America, from 1958 the successful bilateral system of command and control of NORAD has guarded northern air space. Lower-level agreements from joint training operations to the purchase of weapon systems are infused throughout the North American military relationship.
In the 80 years since the Second World War, it is not surprising that there have been periods of friendship and animosity, of feast and famine. President Donald Trump has recently been acting as a disruptor, questioning America’s role in the world and its relationship to allies, along with more inflammatory promises of economic warfare through tariffs and overt invitations of welcoming Canada as the 51st state. The provocations fly in the face of shared history, mutual goodwill, vigorous trade, and successful defence agreements.
Canada and the U.S. have many shared bonds, including respect for rule of law, support of western democracies, and a desire to control strategic resources and minerals. Cross-border connections of families, culture, and sports have forged other entwinements. Both nations need to protect energy security, with Canadian oil and natural gas going to the U.S., which buys it in large quantities and at low prices because of Canada’s lack of infrastructure and pipelines. Would Americans prefer to purchase more expensive energy from states like Venezuela or energy powers in the Middle East? Can it do without strategic minerals like tellurium, aluminum, and potash? The U.S. produces a lot of this, but not all that is required. There are other countries that have such material, with China being one of the leaders. Most importantly, just as during World War II and the Cold War, North America cannot be defended without Canada.
There are lessons from the victory over the fascists during World War II. Canada must step up, reassure its allies that it can do its bit, and be a dependable partner in security. At the same time, the U.S. should realize that victory in the war came through its ability to create, manage, and maintain alliances, which thrust it forward into postwar supremacy.
Canada and the U.S. forged a profitable alliance during the war, and they found countless ways to work together as a force for good over the last 80 years. The past can inform the present and provide a glimpse into the history not yet written, and it seems likely that the North Americans will continue to be good allies in matters of trade, diplomacy, and security.
Tim Cook is the author of The Good Allies: How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism during the Second World War. The chief historian and director of research at the Canadian War Museum, his other works include: Vimy: The Battle and the Legend; Lifesavers and Body Snatchers: Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War; and the bestseller, The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering, and Remaking Canada’s Second World War. Cook is a frequent commentator in the media, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the Order of Canada.
