Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

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industrial growth inevitably transformed many farmers into wage earn-

ers, a trend that was worrisome to the traditional French-Canadian

leadership. The Catholic Church, in particular, was concerned that its

hold on the people would diminish when they moved from rural par-

ishes to urban centers where they would be exposed to such social and

moral inﬂ uences as trade unions, socialist ideas, and materialistic oppor-

tunities and expectations that might seriously threaten their faith.

Duplessis championed clericalism and the traditional rural-agrarian ide-

alism that still appealed in the small towns and countryside of Quebec.

Duplessis’s brand of nationalism also took advantage of the height-

ened resentment during the depression toward the exploitation of the

French-Canadian laborer by the “alien” English-owned corporations

that increasingly dominated the Quebec economy. Skillfully portraying

himself as a defender of provincial rights, Duplessis led Union Nationale

to victory over the long-reigning and scandal-ridden Liberal administra-

tion of Louis-Alexandre Taschereau in the Quebec election of 1936.

Duplessis welcomed American investors to develop the province’s

resource frontier and endeavored to serve their interests by suppressing

the collective bargaining rights of trade unions. His notorious Padlock

Law in 1937, allowing for the seizure and closure of any place used for

“subversive” activity, was ostensibly directed at communists but was

broadly interpreted to apply to any group disapproved by the church or

the government. For nearly two decades (1936–39 and 1944–59),

Duplessis would rule over Quebec like a benevolent dictator.

In Ontario, Mitchell Hepburn led the Liberals to victory in the elec-

tion of 1934 on the strength of radical rhetoric to ﬁ ght for “the dispos-

sessed and oppressed” against the “big shots.” Nonetheless, Hepburn

appealed to dissatisﬁ ed taxpayers, particularly among the rural and

mining interests, by cutting relief expenditures and ﬁ ghting against

organized labor (Neatby 1972). When the American-based Committee

for Industrial Organization (CIO) organized a strike at the General

Motors plant in Oshawa in 1937, Hepburn attempted to break the

union by forming his own police force, known irreverently as “Hep-

burn’s Hussars” and “Sons-of-Mitches.” Prime Minister King’s refusal

to send in RCMP reinforcements at Hepburn’s request soured relations

between the two Liberal leaders, as did Hepburn’s propensity to cham-

pion provincial rights in matters relating to social policies and intergov-

ernmental ﬁ nances.

In British Columbia, another Liberal premier, T. Dufferin Pattullo,

also became embroiled in a conﬂ ict with the federal wing of his party.

After his election in 1933, Pattullo instituted a reform program, includ-

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ing extensive public works and social services, which eventually became

known as the Little New Deal. His frustration with the limitations of

provincial power regularly clashed with King’s determination to control

the “spendthrift” provinces regardless of their political allegiance.

Confrontation between the federal and provincial governments,

which had been building since Confederation, was accentuated during

the Great Depression by discrepancies between resources and respon-

sibilities. The provinces had the constitutional power to deal with pre-

vailing social problems, but they lacked the ﬁ nancial resources to do so

because of their limited taxation power under the British North Amer-

ica Act. On the other hand, the federal government had the ﬁ scal

resources but not the constitutional authority to take decisive action in

the realm of social welfare. Indeed, the Judicial Committee of the Privy

Council ruled the minimum wage, maximum hours, social and unem-

ployment insurance, and fair trade practices provisions of the Bennett

New Deal to be unconstitutional because they fell within provincial

rather than federal jurisdiction. In response to this situation, the federal

government in 1937 appointed the Royal Commission on Dominion-

Provincial Relations to reexamine “the economic and ﬁ nancial basis of

Confederation and the distribution of legislative powers in the light of

the economic and social developments of the last seventy years.”

Although the Rowell-Sirois Commission reported too late to affect the

outcome of the Great Depression, its ﬁ ndings and recommendations

would help to lay the foundation for the Canadian welfare state (Guest

1997).

The recovery of the Canadian economy by the late 1930s was only

peripherally inﬂ uenced by government policy. The King government

increased the amount of federal relief assistance to the provinces and,

in response to a recommendation of the National Employment Com-

mission in 1938, deliberately incorporated deﬁ cit ﬁ nancing into its

recovery strategy. In so doing, the federal government was following

the theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who argued

that if private enterprise failed to produce full employment, then the

state had to take the initiative to create jobs even if it meant incurring

substantial budgetary deﬁ cits. For the next half-century, the Keynesian

notion of an active public sector would supersede the laissez-faire pri-

ority of balancing the budget. The King administration also attempted

to stimulate the economy by negotiating reciprocal trade agreements

with the United States in 1935 and 1938, with the result that both

countries lowered the duties on some of each other’s imports. In 1937

the federal government extended the scope of national transportation

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and communication by launching Trans-Canada Airlines (the forerun-

ner of Air Canada), which could ﬂ y from Montreal to Vancouver in 18

hours.

One of the legacies of the Great Depression was the unproven belief

that if the government had intervened sooner and more decisively the

economic crisis would have been moderated or terminated. Ultimately,

the depression merely faded away amid the rising armament boom as

another war loomed overseas. The sad irony was that only history’s

bloodiest and most destructive war was capable of subduing history’s

greatest economic crisis.

From Isolationism to International Calamity

The economic crisis of the 1930s instilled in Canada a reluctance to

exercise the right conﬁ rmed by the Statute of Westminster in 1931 to

participate fully in international affairs. The prevailing spirit of eco-

nomic nationalism throughout the world prompted Canada to be more

concerned with protecting its own interests and avoiding costly entan-

glements overseas. The masses of unemployed workers and drought-

ridden farmers at home were a more pressing priority than the

misfortunes of people in foreign lands. Foreign relations inevitably

affected national unity, as Quebec tended to reject the view that Canada

was part of an integrated world community whose interests extended

beyond national borders. Finally, Canada could not help but be inﬂ u-

enced by the strong isolationist stance of its powerful neighbor and

major trading partner, the United States. While the Bennett administra-

tion was hopeful of strengthening bonds with Britain and the

Commonwealth, King was more realistic in his perspective that Canada

was a North American nation geographically, economically, and mili-

tarily (Thompson 1985).

Canada’s determination to limit its overseas commitments was evi-

dent in its response to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Con-

cerned about the potential loss of trade at a time of worsening depression,

Canada refused to condemn this Japanese aggression against China and

avoided taking sides in the subsequent conﬂ icts between the two Asian

countries, which would escalate into a major theater of international

warfare in the following decade. When Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito

Mussolini, tried to revive the imperial glory of ancient Rome by invad-

ing the weak African nation of Ethiopia in 1935, Walter Riddell, Cana-

da’s delegate to the League of Nations, proposed oil sanctions against

Italy as a punitive measure. Fearing a backlash in Quebec where sym-

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pathy for Catholic Italy was strong and wishing to avoid participation

in armed struggles not directly related to Canadian interests, Prime

Minister King declared that Riddell’s proposal was not the policy of the

Canadian government. The subsequent decision to drop the proposed

oil sanction demonstrated the league’s indecisiveness in the face of a

determined adversary (Eayrs 1965; Stacey 1981). Canada heartily sup-

ported the British and French policy of appeasement in the face of the

imperialist ambitions of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler because it appeared

to be a way of avoiding overseas commitments. King even visited Hitler

in 1937 and came away convinced that the German leader was more

concerned about the spread of communism than in waging war with

Britain and France.

King’s faith in Hitler, like the policy of appeasement, proved to be

misguided. On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on

Germany following its invasion of Poland. Unlike in 1914 when the

British declaration of war automatically included its colonies and

Dominions, Canada, as an autonomous member of the British Com-

monwealth of Nations, was determined to choose its own course of

action. “Let Parliament decide,” proclaimed King, as he clearly indi-

cated that his government would vote to support Britain and would not

resort to conscription, thereby appealing to both the English- and

French-speaking communities. With Woodsworth as the only dissent-

ing vote on paciﬁ st grounds, Parliament approved the Canadian decla-

ration of war, which came one week after that of Britain.

Asserting that Canada’s declaration of war did not reﬂ ect the wishes

of Quebec, Premier Duplessis called a provincial election. Four French-

Canadian federal ministers led by Minister of Justice Ernest Lapointe

threatened to resign, thereby leaving Quebec without representation in

the federal Cabinet, if Union Nationale was returned to power. Quebec

voters declared their unqualiﬁ ed support for the war effort by electing

the Liberals under Adelard Godbout. Always looking for an opportu-

nity to challenge the federal government, Premier Hepburn of Ontario

abusively condemned King’s conduct of the war to the point of prompt-

ing the prime minister to call a national election in March 1940. The

Liberal victory by an increased majority convinced King to reject Con-

servative demands for a coalition government to formulate and imple-

ment war policy.

At the outset of World War II, Canada expected that its primary

contribution would be the production of war supplies rather than the

mobilization of armed forces, which were hitherto small in number. In

late 1939, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) agreed to administer

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the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which eventually pro-

duced 130,000 aviators, more than half of whom were Canadian. Not

only did this scheme have the advantage of being acceptable to French

Canadians because it was based at home rather than abroad, but the

nearly $1.3 billion that the Canadian government invested in it was a

stimulus to the national economy. The hope that Britain and France

could subdue Germany with Canadian material support was dashed by

June 1940 when France fell and Italy entered the war on the German

side. With the neutrality of the United States and the Soviet Union con-

tinuing until 1941, Canada stood as the next strongest nation to Britain

in the ﬁ ght against the German-Italian-Japanese Axis.

As they had during World War I, Canada’s armed forces met the

challenges of military service and all-out warfare with their customary

courage, bravery, and ﬁ ghting efﬁ ciency. The Canadian army, which

expanded from 4,000 troops to almost 700,000 men and women under

the command of General A. G. McNaughton, distinguished itself on

several critical battlefronts: the defense of Hong Kong in 1941, the bold

raid on the French coast at Dieppe in 1942, the conquest of Sicily in

1943, the D day landing at Normandy as well as the capture of Rome

and the Belgian port of Antwerp in 1944, and the liberation of the Neth-

erlands before the ﬁ nal offensive against Germany in 1945. The Royal

Canadian Navy, which expanded from 17 to 900 vessels and from

3,000 troops to a force of 100,000 men and 6,500 women, played a vital

role in patrolling the sea lanes of the North Atlantic and guarding the

approaches to the harbors of North America, in addition to contribut-

ing 110 battleships to the Allied landings in Normandy. The Canadian

air force, which expanded from 4,000 to more than 200,000 men in

both RCAF squadrons and RAF crews, fought in the Battle of Britain;

participated in the nightly bombings of Germany; and ﬂ ew over Malta

(in North Africa), Italy, India, Burma, Alaska, and the Arctic. Alto-

gether, about 1 million Canadians or more than one-twelfth of the

national population saw military service at home or overseas during

World War II. More than 40,000 Canadians were killed in the blood-

bath that claimed as many as 60 million lives worldwide from 1939 to

1945 (Stacey 1970; Granatstein 1975).

The magnitude and duration of the war effort again brought the

thorny question of conscription to the forefront of Canadian politics.

From his experience during World War I, Prime Minister King was well

aware of how divisive the issue of compulsory military service for over-

seas operations could be for the country and for his political party. For

more than two years King was determined to keep his “no conscrip-

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tion” pledge, which had secured French-Canadian support for the war

effort, despite the persistent demands of those English-speaking Cana-

dians who had family members ﬁ ghting overseas or who pointed to the

British and American commitment to total war on the basis of national

conscription. As pressure from public opinion and within his govern-

ment mounted in 1942, King decided to consult the Canadian people

by holding a national plebiscite that asked them if they would release

the government from its anticonscription pledge. Predictably, Quebec

voted 72 percent against while the rest of Canada voted 80 percent in

favor. The result of the plebiscite freed King from his pledge and

increased the demand for conscription in English Canada. But French

Canada felt betrayed to the extent that a new political party, the Bloc

Populaire, was formed with both Quebec and federal wings. While

some Quebec nationalists viewed conscription in terms of English

Canada’s continued attempts to assimilate French-Canadian culture or

of the federal government’s violation of provincial rights, most French

Canadians lacked enthusiasm for compulsory overseas service because

they did not feel immediately concerned with the European conﬂ ict.

They had been estranged from France for nearly two centuries and had

no strong loyalty to Britain. Thus, the majority of French Canadians

would have preferred Canada to remain neutral as the United States did

until late 1941, but they did not oppose Canada’s participation in the

war on the basis of voluntary enlistment.

While King introduced legislation to make conscription possible, his

position remained “not necessarily conscription but conscription if

necessary.” He further speciﬁ ed that conscription, if implemented,

would be for home service only and that overseas service would be on

a voluntary basis. The furor over conscription died down until late

1944 when Minister of Defense J. L. Ralston returned from a tour of

Canadian forces in Europe to report that more reinforcements were

needed to replace the higher than expected casualties in the Normandy

ﬁ ghting. When attempts to raise more volunteers failed, King had little

choice but to agree to conscription for overseas service. Only 13,000

conscripts were sent overseas before the war in Europe ended in May

1945.

King and the Liberal Party escaped the second conscription crisis

with far less political fallout than Robert Borden, Arthur Meighen, and

the Conservatives had incurred in the aftermath of World War I. In

contrast to the way in which Borden and Meighen had pushed the con-

scription agenda in the face of French-Canadian opposition in 1917,

King had proceeded more cautiously and with greater sensitivity to the

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implications of the issue for national unity. So whereas the ﬁ rst con-

scription crisis effectively crippled the Conservatives in Quebec for

much of the remainder of the 20th century, the Liberals were able to

retain their French-Canadian support in winning the national election

of 1945, albeit by a substantially reduced majority (Granatstein and

Hitsman 1985). Quebec preferred to take its frustration out on the pro-

vincial Liberals by returning Duplessis and the Union Nationale to

power in 1944. The anticonscription Bloc Populaire was not a factor in

either the provincial or the federal election and soon disappeared.

The cultural sensitivity to French Canadians that King and the Liber-

als demonstrated during the conscription controversy was not extended

to other ethnic communities, however. In particular, members of eth-

nic groups whose homelands were at war with Canada faced harsh

treatment from the government and a general public inﬂ uenced by

patriotic propaganda. Although no evidence of subversive activity was

found, hundreds of Germans and Italians were interned in camps or

detained in jails. The worst injustice was perpetrated against more than

20,000 Japanese living in British Columbia, many of whom were Cana-

dian citizens. They were herded into camps in the interior of the prov-

ince, and many of them had their property conﬁ scated. More than four

decades would pass before the federal government would acknowledge

the mistreatment of Japanese

Canadians and would offer an

ofﬁ cial apology and ﬁ nancial

compensation. The prevailing

climate of racial intolerance dur-

ing World War II also blinded

Canadians, and the rest of the

world, to the Jewish Holocaust

perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

The perils of war fostered a

unity of the English-speaking

world to an extent that Goldwin

Smith would have appreciated a

half-century earlier (Creighton

1976). The military, economic,

political, and diplomatic collabo-

ration of Canada, Britain, and

the United States in a common

effort against a common enemy

reinforced the evolving concept

Mackenzie King (1874–1950), addressing the

Canadian people on VE Day (May 8, 1945),

served as prime minister for more than 22

years, the longest tenure in the British Empire.

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of the “North Atlantic Triangle.” In contrast to the situation during

World War I, Canada did not have to struggle for recognition of

national autonomy in its relationship with Britain. The progress of air

transportation (Trans Canada Airlines began regular overseas ﬂ ights in

1941) and radio communication encouraged continuous consultation

between Canada and Britain, thereby negating the need for such insti-

tutions as the Imperial War Cabinet or Imperial Conferences. Some

diehard imperialists still tried to revive the movement for imperial cen-

tralization or imperial unity, but these notions appeared anachronistic

in view of Canada’s increasingly close relations with the United States.

Growing economic ties were reinforced by common continental

defense concerns. In 1940 Canada and the United States signed the

Ogdensburg Agreement, which created the Permanent Joint Board on

Defense to “consider in the broad sense the defense of the north half of

the western hemisphere.” The board planned joint Arctic defenses

against a northern attack by air, and chains of Canadian-American air

bases and radio posts were stretched across the Arctic wilderness. The

Alaska Highway, extending 1,500 miles through the British Columbia

and Yukon wilderness, was rendered urgent by Japanese presence off

the coast of Alaska in 1942. At the same time, the Canol project, involv-

ing the building of a pipeline from the Norman oil wells in the Arctic

reaches of the Mackenzie valley to a reﬁ nery at Whitehorse, was under-

taken to assure fuel supplies to Alaska. Canada and the United States

also established extensive air bases in Newfoundland and Labrador to

prevent the gateway to North America from falling into enemy hands.

Besides these defensive arrangements, the Hyde Park Agreement of

1941 tied the Canadian and American economies even more closely

together by encouraging joint planning of war production on a conti-

nental basis. These developments emphasized the extent to which the

strategic interests and productive capacities of Canada and the United

States were becoming integrated.

Federal Power and State Control

Coming on the heels of the Great Depression, which called for an

extraordinary measure of state intervention in the economy, World War

II further challenged Canadian government to make the most efﬁ cient

use of national resources through even more systematic central planning

and state control. In the process, the role of the Canadian government

in economic and social life was permanently transformed, and the wel-

fare state was inexorably launched (Stacey 1970; Granatstein 1975).

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As France succumbed to the German blitzkrieg (lightning war) in

June 1940, the Canadian Parliament passed the National Resources

Mobilization Act to organize the nation’s productive capacity and

human resources for an all-out war effort. Much of the regulatory

power of the state was exercised by the newly created Department of

Munitions and Supply (originally the War Supply Board) headed by

Clarence D. Howe, who applied his extensive engineering knowledge

and experience to run Canada’s war production program with ruthless

efﬁ ciency bordering on authoritarianism.

Howe oversaw the creation of new industries and the expansion of

existing ones to produce vital war materials such as airplanes, tanks,

battleships, minesweepers, radar equipment, artillery and ammunition,

synthetic rubber and plastics, and aviation fuel. By the end of the war,

Canadian manufacturing production had more than doubled, and the

national industrial structure had become more comprehensive and

diversiﬁ ed. Industrial expansion meant increased demand for natural

resources, the allocation of which Howe’s department also controlled.

Consequently, hydroelectric power production expanded by half; forest

production rose by two-thirds (including the doubling of pulpwood);

and mineral production was up by one-ﬁ fth, with nickel, asbestos, and

aluminum being in highest demand. Agricultural production, notably

mixed and dairy farming as well as the raising of hogs, cattle, and

sheep, increased by nearly half, although surplus wheat continued to be

a problem with the loss of European markets.

To assure a steady supply of war materials, the production of nones-

sential consumer goods was curtailed. Sugar, tea, coffee, butter, meat,

and gasoline, for example, were rationed through a system of govern-

ment-issued coupons. The Department of Munitions and Supply was

also responsible for mobilizing Canada’s labor force for war produc-

tion. The 400,000 unemployed at the outbreak of war were largely

absorbed into war-related industries. Not only did Howe’s department

ensure that Canadian factories operated to full capacity, it also directly

or indirectly employed more than 1 million workers. As during World

War I, women were encouraged to enter the workforce in response to

the general labor shortage created by the war. The shortage of workers

was a boost to the union movement as its membership doubled to more

than 700,000 during the war. Nevertheless, employers ﬁ ercely resisted

union attempts to impose collective bargaining, and the federal govern-

ment constantly intervened to prevent strikes that could adversely

affect war production. In 1941 the War Time Prices and Trade Board

was established to give the federal government authority to impose

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price and wage controls in order to prevent the spiraling inﬂ ation that

had prevailed during World War I. But the freezing of wages proved to

be a major cause of labor unrest and industrial disputes. Labor dissat-

isfaction and union efforts to ensure recognition contributed to a wave

of strikes that resulted in 1 million working days lost in 1943.

Although the war eliminated unemployment and restored a degree

of prosperity not experienced since the late 1920s, Canadians remained

concerned, even fearful, about postwar economic and social security

(Creighton 1976). The Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial

Relations proved to be instrumental in redeﬁ ning the future role of

Canadian government. Chaired by Newton Rowell, who was succeeded

by Joseph Sirois after ill health forced him to retire, the commission

produced a report in 1940 that proposed a revision of Confederation to

stabilize provincial ﬁ nances and to ensure that all Canadians received

equal services. The federal government would assume the whole burden

of unemployment relief and unemployment insurance as well as existing

provincial debts. The provinces would “rent” to the federal government

their right to collect income and corporation taxes as well as succession

duties in return for “adjustment grants” that would replace the system

of federal subsidies to the provinces agreed upon at the time of Confed-

eration. Through this new system of adjustment grants based on ﬁ nan-

cial need, the federal government would assist the provinces to

administer a uniform standard of social and educational services.

Following the recommendation of the Rowell-Sirois Commission,

the federal government, with provincial consent and after making the

requisite amendment to the British North America Act, established the

Unemployment Insurance Commission (UIC) Fund in 1940 (Guest

1997). Supported by compulsory contributions from both employees

and employers, the UIC Fund would provide for those who might

become temporarily unemployed. About half the work force was ini-

tially covered by this scheme. Prime Minister King became even more

interested in social welfare measures when a public opinion poll in

September 1943 indicated that the CCF had edged past the Liberals and

Conservatives in popularity. The following year T. C. Douglas led the

CCF to victory in the Saskatchewan provincial election. Clearly, the

threat from the left could not be ignored. In response to a recommenda-

tion of the federal government’s Committee on Reconstruction under

the direction of Leonard Marsh, the King administration introduced the

Family Allowance Act in 1944. The program to provide monthly pay-

ments of $5 to $8 to help parents support their children became popu-

larly known as the “baby bonus.” King’s strategy to draw support away

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