Historian Dan Snow talks about the 1775 U.S. invasion of Canada on a late 2025 episode of his History Hit series. [Courtesy Dan Snow’s History Hit]
“I’m not even the best historian in the family,” said Dan Snow, an acclaimed figure in the field. The British-born TV broadcaster, whose documentaries, podcasts, and numerous other projects have brought the past to global audiences, was referring to his Canadian aunt Margaret MacMillan.
But Snow’s roots from across the pond extend far beyond his famous relative, indeed spanning several generations and including the military service of his great-grandfather and grandfather during two world wars. It’s little wonder then that the History Hit network founder feels a strong affinity for Canada.
In a Legion Magazine exclusive, Snow reflected on his deep personal ties to the country, its place in history and his hopes for the country’s future.
On his Canadian family connections
My mum is Canadian. She is a MacMillan from a long line of Canadian Scots of Ontario. They would have jumped the Atlantic in the 1890s, meaning that my great-grandfather Robert was the first to be born in our family in Canada.
He enlisted in the First World War as a doctor. He served not in the Canadian Corps, unfortunately—the legends of the Western Front—but he was in the British Army, having gone over quite early in the war.
We’ve identified that he was in all sorts of interesting and no doubt brutal, traumatic places. He was in Third Ypres, better known as Passchendaele. He went to Cambrai as well and was there during the German counterattack in November 1917, at which point he might have come across my British great-grandfather, who was a general commanding a corps at the time.
Robert’s son, who shared his name, also became a doctor and was aboard HMCS Prince Robert—a converted cruise liner—mostly doing convoy protection through the Second World War. I grew up with those stories from my grandpa.
There’s also a very weird story of how my grandpa and grandma met. She was on a school trip with a group of girls doing a cricket tour to deepen the bonds that existed between the Empire. It was all very progressive, my grandma playing cricket in 1939 in Canada—and then the war broke out. Her father got in touch and said, “Why don’t you stay there? It won’t be very long, and you can enrol in the first year of medical school.”
She boarded with a family in Toronto and met my grandpa while doing pre-med, I think. He was a medical student at the time. They married and had their first child during the war, just before he was sent away for a long deployment. They had my mum in 1946 as soon as he got back.
On his passion for the early history of Canada
The history of Canada has played a huge part in my life and my outlook. I’m very interested in the 18th-century history of Canada and the British conquest of Quebec in the Seven Years’ War.
I’m also very struck by how Canada could have been many different things. It could have been French. It could have been American. And, of course, it could have remained Indigenous. So, it feels like an extraordinary piece of territory, which could have had very radically different political and national outcomes over the last 200 to 250 years.
People, to me, don’t think enough about Canada. People don’t think enough about how that enormous expansion across Western Canada is just as interesting and powerful as the U.S. story is to itself.
On Canada and the Great War
Canada puts together a body of men who are arguably the finest troops on the Western Front in 1918. The Canadian Corps are just elite, and one of the best commanders to emerge from the First World War is General Arthur Currie.
For me, the Canadian action that should receive greater recognition is the Battle of Amiens in August 1918, where the Canadians essentially break the record for advancing on the Western Front. They not only just completely smash into the German defences, but almost out the other side of them. The Canadians are at the tip of the spear, the whole plan largely revolved around the Canadians, and that is just one of the great stories for me.
On the “Britain alone” myth of WW II
When I’m in Britain and people talk about Britain standing alone from the summer of 1940 until the latter half of 1941, I think a lot about how the largest country in North America already had Britain’s back at that point. The United States might not have joined at that time, but Canada was very much in the war.
I’m interested in the British plans to continue the Second World War from Canada if required—just as the Portuguese had continued the Napoleonic Wars from Brazil. That would have been a very interesting moment of a dominion becoming the centre of imperial power, hopefully temporarily before some kind of reconquest.
The Royal Canadian Navy became one of the biggest in the world by the end of the war. Pilots and soldiers had trained in Canada. Prisoners of war had been sent to Canada. Britain’s—quote, unquote—“victory” in the Second World War would have been unimaginable without Canada and, indeed, without the other imperial and Commonwealth countries.
I think Canada doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
On understanding Canada’s place on the world’s stage
I think Canada is always going to suffer, whether it’s in discussions of its wartime role or from a cultural or political standpoint. It’s a vast, wealthy and important country and—in my opinion—an enormous force for good.
But it’s in a tough neighbourhood.
It’s pressed up against the U.S., which is the loudest and probably the most dynamic state actor of the last 200 years, certainly very dynamic culturally and in many other ways. Meanwhile, it’s got Russia and China a long way to its west and Britain—the erstwhile imperial master—to its east.
Even so, my hot take is that the U.S. may soon experience the kind of regional nationalism that Canada and Britain have experienced—that Canada has only just overcome in the case of one referendum. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were political changes to the south that meant everything changes in the world. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Canada was in a position where, in a world of political fragmentation or upheaval, it becomes an incredibly important world player. Canada is an important world player, but it could become one of the foremost powers.
If little old England can go from the 1600s being an absolute basket case of revolutions and regicide to being globally hegemonic in the space of 100 years, well, anything is possible, isn’t it? Canada has the geography, the resources, the political and legal systems to absolutely support a greater international role. If people think Canadian history is boring, I think they should watch this space and see how the story keeps developing.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the 21st century became Canada’s century. You have a sense that its best days may yet lie ahead.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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