Navy ships under construction at the Dufferin Shipbuilding Company in Toronto, May 1941.

PHOTO: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA183523

By the summer of 1940 the Atlantic littoral of Europe was in the hands of the dominant land power of the age, and its army was poised to invade the British Isles. With access to the range and bases on the North Atlantic, Germany had dramatically improved its strategic position over what it had during World War I. And all of this was coupled with significant improvements in technology.

In contrast to the coal-fired propulsion that shaped events between 1914-18, Germany’s oil-fired warships of 1940 possessed tremendous range. Moreover, Germany had developed a fleet of auxiliary tankers to provide underway replenishment for its warships. As a result, the whole Atlantic was now one vast battleground, and Canada–for the first time in her short history–was under very serious threat.

This ominous environment produced two remarkable developments in Canadian history. The first was an alliance with the United States to defend North America. The second flowed naturally from the first: Canada needed significantly larger armed forces to not only keep the forces of fascism at bay, but to secure our sovereignty against American intrusion. The result in the fall of 1940 was not only increased warship building, but the adoption of ambitious plans for the postwar service. What was most surprising about these developments was not that they happened, but that they were pushed by the Liberal government.

As the crisis in Europe deepened and as the first hulls began to slip into the water from Canadian yards, the government pressured the Royal Canadian Navy to order more vessels. Continued ship construction, even beyond the RCN’s stated needs, fit the government’s policy to use the war to develop and expand Canadian industry. Moreover, given the crisis of the moment, there seemed every likelihood that ships of all shapes and sizes would be in high demand, and so Canadian shipbuilding yards–many of them newly established to meet the RCN’s initial requirements–were not to be idle.

As a result, on Aug. 15, 1940, six more corvettes and 10 more Bangor-class minesweepers were authorized by the government. Then, in September as the fate of Britain was being decided in the skies over her southeastern counties, 10 more of each type were ordered. That brought the number of corvettes on order from Canadian yards to 70, with 48 Bangors under contract as well. This was substantially more than the RCN had ever planned for, and if that was not enough, the building programs already authorized were expected to be completed in just 22 months–two full years ahead of projections.

In August, the Director of the Operations Division at Naval Service Headquarters, Commander Roger S. Bidwell, recommended that one in every three of these new war-built auxiliary ships be assigned to the war zone in Britain. The remainder–two-thirds–would help defend Canada’s ports. What’s more, both the navy and the government were soon trying to secure plans for more advanced, war-emergency-type vessels from Britain to keep the yards going.

For Canadians in the summer of 1940, the problem of defence was not limited to the survival of Britain. The modern German fleet possessed the power, the range and the bases to strike major blows throughout the North Atlantic. Its high-speed warships could cruise for extended periods. Indeed, in the fall of 1939 the German pocket battleship Graf Spee, with a range of 21,500 miles, had operated off South Africa supported by tankers like the Altmark which not only provisioned the ship but took off her prisoners.

It was, therefore, not outside the realm of possibility that squadrons of pocket battleships, new battlecruisers–and very soon massive battleships like the Bismarck–could cross the Atlantic and bombard the Canadian coast.

The best way to mitigate that threat, and the larger peril of Nazi aggression, was to defend Britain. Canadians understood that. As Mackenzie King informed American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Aug. 12, “we of course continue to regard the English Channel as the first line of defence for ourselves and other democratic peoples.” However, the perilous state of the war by August 1940 drove Canada into its first ever foreign alliance, with the U.S. This in turn raised the issue of Canadian sovereignty, and that–as much as the threat from the German navy–provided an opening for naval planners.

The process began in mid-July when members of the Canadian liberal establishment met in Ottawa to discuss the options available for Canada. “All prominent members of the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, some of them strong isolationists or even neutralists in the 1930s, they were reacting to the fall of France,” historian W.A.B. Douglas wrote in 1990.

Furthermore, a pro-fascist government had been established in France, and very quickly Britain and France were falling into a state of apprehended war. And when, on July 16, the new French regime withdrew the citizenship of all French Jews, few were left with any doubt about what a Nazi victory really meant.

And so when the elite of Canada’s small “l” liberals–the isolationists, appeasers, anti-militarists and others of good intent–met in Ottawa on July 17-18, they concluded that Nazism presented a serious threat to Canada itself. It was a milestone in Canadian history, and the result was a draft pamphlet titled A Program for Immediate Canadian Action. It argued that it was time to start talking to the Americans about the common defence of North America, and that–according to Alec Douglas–“no longer was it possible to rely on Britain and the United States to insulate Canada from a direct military threat, because Canada could conceivably become the scene of action itself.”

In many ways A Program for Immediate Canadian Action was a manifesto for social action and change. “It is not enough,” the pamphlet read, “to fight for the preservation of the partial and incomplete democracy with which we entered this war. The development of wartime controls and the wide acceptance of the principles of social and economic planning offer a great opportunity to create a social order more efficient than any fascist state because it is infused with the democratic spirit and purpose.” But the pamphlet was also a clarion call to action in defence of democracy.

This required a co-ordinated defence with the Americans, including greater economic integration, and expanded Canadian military preparedness. In particular, Canada’s navy would have to grow to protect its coasts and to secure Newfoundland. It was also clear that in the process Canadian sovereignty could not be squandered: Canada would have to do its part.

Although the pamphlet was intended for private circulation, copies ended up in Washington where concerns over North American security were shared. By the time Canada’s minister in Washington, Loring Christie, met with Roosevelt about the destroyers-for-bases deal on Aug. 15, the pamphlet had circulated widely. While meeting with Christie, the American president raised his concerns about the defenceless state of Canada’s east coast, and recommended a renewal of military staff talks, which had begun a month earlier. He also recommended that he and Mackenzie King meet to discuss the common defence of North America at Ogdensburg, N.Y., the next day. The meeting actually took place Aug. 17-18.

At the meeting, the two leaders hammered out the terms for a new Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD), a joint Canadian-American body tasked with co-ordinating common plans for all aspects of North American defence and forwarding these plans to the two governments for approval. The requirement to obtain full support of each government prior to action was an essential safeguard of Canadian sovereignty. But if Canada was to be an equal partner in North American defence, it had to have the military assets to make a meaningful contribution.

The establishment of the PJBD and the commencement of serious joint planning for the defence of North America occasioned much angst in Britain, where the enemy was at the gates. As the RCN official history No Higher Purpose observed, Mackenzie King’s “cheerful report to Churchill about the progress of negotiations for the destroyers (-for-bases deal) and of the new Canada-United States defence pact…yielded a bitter blast….”

Churchill and other senior British officials saw the North American defence arrangements as a withdrawal of Canada into hemisphere defence at a time when Britain’s needs were grave.

These thoughts were on the minds of senior Canadian planners and the cabinet when, on Sept. 26, the RCN received an urgent appeal from the British Admiralty to send the final two of Canada’s recently acquired six Town-class destroyers to British waters. By that stage, Bidwell, mindful of the growing German threat in the Atlantic and the developing plans of the PJBD and Canada’s plans to pull Newfoundland into its strategic orbit, recommended against sending any of the new auxiliary vessels overseas: all 118 vessels were now needed at home.

When the Naval Staff met on that day, a decision on fleet deployment was tabled pending further discussion and the development of a proper planning document for the coming year.

Instead, Naval Minister Angus L. Macdonald took charge of the meeting on Sept. 26, seizing the moment to push for a powerful postwar navy: a key component of the new defence relationship with the U.S. He recommended the RCN should start building Tribal-class destroyers in Canada, thereby using the pressure of the war emergency to develop the required expertise in proper warship construction. He also lobbied successfully with his Naval Staff for the establishment of a Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve training school on the west coast, eventually commissioned as HMCS Royal Roads, which would then become the Royal Canadian Naval College when the war was over. The Admiralty’s request for immediate help was not lost sight of, and the RCN agreed with the policy of maximum effort overseas in direct support of the defence of Britain.

Macdonald’s plans moved rapidly in October. On the 1st he went before cabinet, where the plans to send the maximum possible help to Britain were approved, including all available destroyers and the first 12 of the new minesweepers. The RCN’s specific plans for fleet deployment were finally available on Oct. 6, when a position paper prepared by the Naval Staff, titled Canada’s War Effort During 1941, recommended the corvette and Bangor fleets be split between Canadian and European waters. Under this scheme, 38 corvettes and 24 Bangors were to go to the eastern Atlantic, while 32 corvettes and 24 Bangors stayed home. Although it was assumed that German submarines might, in time pose a threat to Canadian waters, the position paper observed that the enemy would likely stay in “European waters so long as his submarines are able to find sufficient targets for their torpedoes.” There is no evidence that the naval position paper of Oct. 6 was ever formally discussed in cabinet, but the policy of splitting the auxiliary fleet between home and European waters was adopted and it formed the basis of RCN plans by early 1941.

With the existing fleet committed largely to fighting in British waters–itself a significant departure from the RCN’s experience in WW I–the RCN and its ambitious naval minister set out to push RCN development even further. Having settled the immediate deployment policy, the RCN was now busily working on its first wartime postwar-planning document. This may seem a rather curious exercise given the terrible uncertainty of the moment, but the sea-change in mood occasioned by Canada’s commitment to an alliance for North American defence required some plan for forces as part of hemispheric defence. And while it was assumed the U.S. would provide strategic guidance and cover, it was crucial that Canada have the means of providing local, operational-level control in its own sphere.

The new plan appeared on Nov. 11, 1940. The authors of No Higher Purpose concluded that it “amounted to the consolidation of the blue-water doctrine for the RCN.” The document took exception to the assumption of previous naval planners that Canada was sheltered comfortably under care of the great Imperial fleet, and needed only small naval forces to fill in around Canada’s coasts. Instead, for the first time at least since the Jellicoe Report of 1920, naval planners–urged on by Macdonald–recommended the establishment of Canadian task groups built around powerful modern cruisers. These would be supported by elements already outlined in the government’s January 1939 naval scheme: nine Tribal-class destroyers and flotillas of minesweepers and auxiliary vessels.

Macdonald brought his plans to Parliament on Nov. 19, announcing that he planned to build “a navy worthy of our importance in the world of nations, adequate to the needs of a great trading nation which Canada is now….” By this time the Naval Council–later renamed the Naval Board–already thought of Macdonald’s scheme as a minimum and was hatching plans for even more. Macdonald was supportive, and in time these dreams would mature into task forces built around aircraft carriers. But for the moment it was the two-cruiser, nine-Tribal proposal that Macdonald brought before cabinet on Nov. 22. It would cost Canada $16 million per year and require an active personnel strength of 11,000 officers and men. Cabinet accepted without much discussion. It now seemed to be accepted that the requirement for task forces capable of exercising a significant measure of operational independence in Canadian waters stemmed less from the danger of enemy attack than it did from the threat to Canadian sovereignty posed by the new alliance with the U.S.

When, on Jan. 2, 1941, Macdonald brought to cabinet specific personnel plans for the “new” postwar navy, his assumptions were challenged by the minister of Finance and the minister of Defence for Air. Both were reminded by the cabinet secretary that the RCN’s postwar plans had been approved. When the minister of Finance protested again on Jan. 22, when Macdonald presented plans for the redevelopment of defence infrastructure in Halifax to accommodate an expanded regular naval force, the prime minister had to intervene. “The (cabinet) committee had already agreed on the type of postwar navy Canada should maintain,” King commented. “The provision of adequate naval defences continued to be essential. Development along this line was natural to Canada.”

These were remarkable words from a prime minister who is generally considered to have been staunchly against defence spending. But they are entirely in keeping with King’s prewar naval policy, and in uttering them in January 1941, he confirmed the wartime development of the RCN and the establishment of a major postwar fleet. The professional RCN could not be more elated: the war became a vehicle for the achievement of its long-cherished goals. The problem was that even as these were being approved, the RCN was on the cusp of its truly formative experience as a service and that had little to do with cruisers and fleet-class destroyers.

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