|
That
untroubled era ended with the Victorian Age, followed by half
a century of turbulence — the most remarkable period in our
past. Between the autumn of 1899 and the summer of 1953, young
Canadians marched away, not once but four times to do battle in
far-off fields, in wars that were not of our making. Only in this
one period have we devoted nearly 30 percent of our time to war.
Turbulent
years, indeed! And not only because of the battles we fought on
the African veldt, the ravaged meadows of Flanders, the forbidding
spine of Italy, and the conical hills of Korea: turbulent because
these were Canada’s formative years, when she resembled an
adolescent groping with the problems of puberty, often at odds
with her parents, craving to be treated as an adult, hungry for
the acclaim of her peers, and wary of the dominating presence
of a more sophisticated neighbour.
The
change was spectacular. In half a century we were transformed
from an agricultural nation, where the Masseys became quasi-aristocrats
simply by getting rich selling farm machinery, to an industrial
economy with a bedrock of natural resources. Canada, one of the
least military nations in the West, was forced to cope —
always at the last moment — with unexpected conflicts for
which she was never properly prepared. In doing so, the nation
grew up.
In
the long tug of war between the forces of history and geography
that marks those years, geography, in the end, won out. When the
Boer War broke out on the eve of the new century, we were a vassal
state within the British realm, cheerfully rushing to the colours
when the imperial trumpets sounded. Over the years the emphasis
shifted. When the Korean War began in 1951, we found ourselves
giving token support to American troops in what was essentially
an American conflict.
In
addition to war, two other tremors rattled the foundations of
the emerging society. The first was the sudden, almost explosive
creation of a new Western empire, stretching from the Shield to
the Rockies, that would upset the political balance of power.
The second was French Canada’s burgeoning nationalism, which
emerged at the outset of the South African conflict and reached
its apogee in the conscription crises of the two world wars that
followed.
As
early as 1890, when the new province of Manitoba launched its
plan to keep the French language out of its schools, the West
had signalled its reluctance to accept the bilingual accord stitched
together at Confederation. Thus the country found itself split
down the middle — East versus West, French versus English,
prairie farmers at odds with central Canadian capitalists. In
war, it has been said, we found our maturity. It is equally true
that in war we came close to tearing ourselves apart, creating
a series of political crises that are still at the root of our
national dilemma.
Our
love-hate relationship with our neighbour mirrored our own international
uncertainty in those early years. What, we asked, is a Canadian,
anyway? British? American? French? Free trader? Protectionist?
We couldn’t be sure. The Great War victories symbolized by
a single magical word, Vimy, made us cocky. But the wave of cultural
nationalism that followed was diluted by a nineteenth-century
literary mindset inherited from Mother England. Realism? We scorned
the hard-boiled Yankee style. Four years of wartime propaganda
had conditioned us to swallow the most preposterous lies and the
most audacious masquerades. The Great War had helped transform
the Age of Faith into the Age of Gullibility.
A
giddy optimism pervaded those roller-coaster years of boom and
bust, war and peace, dogma and doubt. In the days of the Last
Best West, Wilfrid Laurier claimed that the new century belonged
to Canada and predicted five transcontinental railways and a population
of 100 million people by the millennium. The Great War shattered
the dreams of the railway builders. A generation later the Great
Depression burst the bubble of the dizzy twenties. Ironically,
it took a new war to get us out of the slump.
Peace
at any price? That was the cautious view of the Depression politicians,
alarmed at the appalling bloodletting of 1914—18 and also
at the cost of a military buildup, not just in dollars but also
in “national unity,” the all-Canadian buzzword. To its
shame, the Canadian government opted for appeasement at the very
moment when its own man at the League of Nations was calling for
tougher sanctions on the international bullies. Thus a new war
— a sequel to the old one — became inevitable.
There
is a paradox here. Canada has entered each of its four wars with
hesitation and reluctance. We have produced only one first-rate
general — Arthur Currie — and treated him shabbily.
Yet at the outset of each conflict, Canadians have enlisted in
astonishing numbers, drawn as much by the enthusiasm of youth
as by a sense of duty. On each occasion our military leaders and
politicians have misjudged the dimensions of the conflict. Home
by Christmas! Young men eager to see action before the war’s
end have believed that flawed forecast. And Canadians, with their
allies, have trusted the judgment of certain charismatic generals
— Haig, McNaughton, Mountbatten, Montgomery, MacArthur —
who let their own hubris cloud their vision with disastrous results.
Save for a few months at the ends of the two major wars, Canada’s
effort has been voluntary, making this country something of an
international oddball. We have always started from scratch, unprepared,
unoutfitted, and largely untrained. The miracle is that we have
managed to turn a tiny peacetime army into a massive fighting
force, far larger than could have been imagined when the first
shots were fired. We sent green soldiers into battle and learned
that, trained or not, Canadians will always fight fiercely and
with courage.
Excerpted from Marching As To War by Pierre Berton Copyright
2001 by Pierre Berton. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday Canada,
a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part
of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission
in writing from the publisher.
|