Go North, Young Man: The Great Canada
- Thread starter TheMann
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Part 3 - Northern Industry, Newfoundland, Welfare Capitalism and the Canadian Identity
Part 3 - Northern Industry, Newfoundland, Welfare Capitalism and the Canadian Identity
By the time of the completion of the CPR and GTPR in 1885-86, Canada's boundaries were more or less settled, even as some provincial premiers pushed for greater autonomy for provinces - Ontario's legendary premier Oliver Mowat, the "implacable enemy" of Prime Minister MacDonald, being the most prominent of these - and disputes over borders at times flared. Despite these tensions, Canada's provinces rather quickly both figured out relationships with each other as well as with Ottawa, with Ontario and Alberta fighting over the borders of Ontario and Alberta and Saskatchewan fighting over the status of the city of Lloydminster which straddled the initial border. (Ultimately Alberta ceded the city in its entirety to Saskatchewan, but later suburbs and satellite communities would spread over the border into Alberta.) Helping things along was the National Policy, which was actively and aggressively pushing for immigration, and economic growth and opportunity, both proving to be important as the Prairies were settled. The immense mineral wealth of Northern Ontario and Northern Quebec led to initial exports of iron (primarily to Britain and the United States), but after the development of coal reserves in Alberta and Saskatchewan and some of the world's best nickel resources near Sudbury, Ontario, Canadian industrial firms rapidly switched to the home-grown production of steel, with the first Dofasco Steel mill in Hamilton, Ontario, beginning operations in 1891, Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie in 1893 and Steel Company of Canada in North Bay in 1895. Exploration by geologists quickly discovered what had been guessed for quite a long time - the Canadian Shield was a mineral treasure house, and the steel companies were quick to begin exploiting it. The development of iron ore mines in Ontario and Quebec in the early 20th Century resulted in Canada being able to be far more than self-sufficient in the material, to the point of the government specifically developing industries that could use this new steel. What also went with this in Ontario was the development of the Trillium Natural Resources Fund in 1906, established by Premier James Whitney to take the province's proceeds from natural resource development and invest it in ways that would generate income for the province. The Trillium Fund would prove a precursor of the future of Canada's management of its natural resources.
Canada's population grew extraordinarily rapidly during the time period, swelling from 5,542,300 in 1881 to 8,326,600 in 1901 to 11,228,900 in 1911, namely fueled by immigration from Europe, some from America and North American Natives, who also during this period were known for an extraordinarily high birth rate. (This was also hugely pronounced among the Metis.) The lines drawn by French-speaking Quebec and English-speaking Ontario got blurred rapidly during this time period, as French speakers in Ontario began to challenge the troubles raised by the Orange Order (helped along by Toronto Irish, who liked the Orangemen even less than the Quebecers did) and English-speaking Quebecers fought to establish more influence within Quebec's Church-dominated wider society. The provincial Native Brotherhoods, united into the single Native Brotherhood of Canada in 1907, and through the years to come became increasingly-active in policy decisions towards Canada in general - by 1910, the debates about trying to deal with Canada by nation-to-nation negotiations and deals as opposed to trying to carve out a place within Canada had been largely settled in favor of the latter, particularly when looking at the results that the Metis and French Canadians had achieved in getting their own way when dealing with Ottawa.
The Manitoba Schools question of the 1890s was one of the watershed moments in Canadian history, namely because of Laurier's dogged pushing of the idea that Canada had to accept all of its people as partners and the constitutionality of decisions surrounding the schools. The Manitoba Schools Question, like the circumstances surrounding Louis Riel a decade before, became a hammer for the Liberals to beat the Conservatives with, though it did result in a sizable rise of French-Canadian nationalism, something that neither Laurier did little to discourage while Conservative rivals Charles Tupper and John David Thompson were both forced by influences within the Conservative Party to try to seek out ways of expanding Protestant influence. (Thompson did less of this than Tupper for a variety of reasons.) Laurier's insistence that Canada's place within a British Empire shouldn't prevent the country from seeking out a Canadian identity didn't go over well with the Orange Order and harder-line elements of society, but such was the power of the French Canadian vote and Catholic Canadians that the fury of the harder-line Conservatives did little to hurt Laurier, though it caused havoc for his political rivals.
One of Laurier's first massive victories was the entry into Confederation of Newfoundland as the country's tenth province. This came in 1895 after four years or negotiations, and with the increasing realization that Newfoundland's small population simply couldn't prosper on its own to nearly the same degree as it could within Canada. Nevertheless, Newfoundland's government, ably led by Sir Robert Bond, was able to wring out concessions out of the Canadian government, the most important ones being the creation of a naval patrol force to protect Canada's coasts and Canada footing the bill for the Newfoundland Railway. The latter proved a formality (though an expensive one as Canada would soon find out), but the former caused a major issue among Conservatives, who still looked to the Royal Navy for maritime protection - but with Royal Navy increasingly aware of the growth of naval threats aorund the world (and would become far more aware with the ascension of the High Seas Fleet early in the 20th Century), they had little objection to a Canadian naval force provided it would be placed under command of the Admiralty in the event of war. The issue became a defining one of the 1896 election, with John David Thompson arguing for the Royal Navy to handle the job while Laurier fought for an all-Canadian Navy. Laurier won the election and got his way, with the 1897 Naval Act being passed into law on April 15, 1897, with Canada buying three protected cruisers from the Royal Navy, with the cruisers first entering service as Canadian vessels in 1899.
The growth of Canadian industries in the late 19th Century and into the 20th Century was largely the results of the ambition of their creators. The railroad barons had been first, but the creation of several industries - from steel to lumber to mining to grain to textiles - allowed a number of Canadian businessmen to become extraordinarily rich, and many of these turned around and sought to expand their empires. While Ottawa was lukewarm at best towards such men and their efforts - neither Laurier nor Thompson particularly trusted the barons - they found able allies in many provinces, which would prove to something of a headache to Laurier later on. Despite this, the multiple rounds of financial panics in the 1890s in the United States and the better investments of the CPR and GTR barons were such that they came out of the maneuvers way ahead, and in the process introduced legendary American investor J.P. Morgan into Canada. Morgan was known for aggressive business consolidations, but he rapidly found out that Canada's best businessmen could battle with the best of them, and the Panic of 1901 (which was started in large part by Union Pacific Railroad boss Edward Henry Harriman trying to corner Chicago rail markets) ended with hundreds of investors investing in Canadian businesses and with the CPR outright owning the Northern Pacific, Great Northern and Burlington Route railways. (This didn't effect CPR much at the time, but would in the future.) The Canadian businessmen took their lessons as experience, but would find out that their efforts didn't always work for them, and the 'Welfare Capitalism' theories would soon prove it.
'Welfare Capitalism' was an idea that began in Vancouver in the 1890s, a result of the city's rapid population growth, anger over the dominance of big buisness and tensions between whites and the cfity's Chinese and Native populations all leading to a rather difficult environment. Anger over living and economic conditions led to multiple rounds of strikes in the late 1890s, but both the Native Brotherhood, Chinese residents' groups and many local businessmen keen on breaking the CPR's hold on much of the city created and developed the 'Welfare Capitalism' idea as a way of expanding local business as a way of counteracting big business influence and providing the people working for the businesses with a chance to own portions of the business they owned. Vancouver's Chinese residents, faced with abominable racism early on in this process, ran with the idea in fine fashion, starting with small business but not staying there for long, despite opposition to their efforts from local whites - but the city of Vancouver's setting of a minimum wage law in 1897 that applied to all residents (the first in Canada) actually helped with the process, as it made the use of Chinese or Native laborer to undercut whites was made explicitly illegal, and Vancouver's unions and police were more than willing to fight for this. By the early 1900s, Vancouver was Canada's most prosperous cities as a result of this action, and the idea spread across the nation rapidly, starting in the West (where the CPR and GTR held massive influence) but not taking very long to get across the country. For their part, Vancouver's Asian-Canadian population adopted many elements of Canadian identities, fought back against those who attacked them and proudly supported those who supported them, particularly Native communities - the Native Brotherhood felt that if the Whites could suppress the power of Asian Canadians that they would be the next ones the bigots went after.
Welfare Capitalism would end up being both a source of enormous economic growth (Canada's GDP per capita grew an average of 4.4% a year between 1895 and 1914, despite the massive population growth) and a powerful check on the influence of the wealthiest of interests, and Laurier adeptly was more than willing to support it in attempts to reduce the power of the great barons, particularly as many local politicians faced charges of influence peddling and unfair dealings. It would also be the final force that would push Canada's Native Communities into complete working with Ottawa and the provinces, as the Six Nations Council was one of the first tribal organizations to gather their resources into a Welfare Capitalism company, incorporating the Haudenosaunee Advancement Corporation in 1898 with the express goal of expanding the prosperity of its members, with more than a little success. (The HAC in 2016 controls over $27 Billion in assets and provides income and employment to more than 25,000 people, the majority of them Native Canadians.) The Barons would at first not be threatened by them, but that would change by the early portions of the 20th Century, particularly as civil servants like Sir Adam Beck would begin pushing for greater public ownership of essential services, even as the political fights between the Barons and their supporters and those among the public and in politics who opposed them reached a fewer pitch in the years after the First World War.
The Boer War in 1899 showed what Laurier's problems were with regards to Canada's greater desire for a national identity when it clashed with the Empire. London had immediately assumed that Canada would join the war effort with the Canadian Army, but rapidly found out that Laurier and the French and Native communities were not keen on sending the Canadian Army to fight England's battles, even if there was immense support for the idea in English Canada. Henri Bourassa was a particularly loud voice against Canadian involvement in South Africa and was equally vocal about the Royal Canadian Navy, even as Laurier saw it as an effective compromise between simply relying on the Royal Navy (which English Canada, especially the hard-line Orange Order, sought) and a completely independent Canadian Navy (which the French Canadian and Native Canadian communities desired). Ultimately Canada did allow for the sending of a volunteer force, again a compromise but which which didn't cause too many ruffles in English Canada, as it still allowed them to fight for the Empire.
The Canadian volunteers in South Africa proved more than a little effective, however, and even the hard-shelled Orange Order began to call for an all-Canadian Army, loyal to the Empire but created to serve Canada. The Canadian Volunteer Force, however, ran into a massive amount of domestic trouble when Emily Hobhouse's research came to light and Lord Kitchener (commander of British forces in South Africa, including the Canadian volunteers) was forced to admit that the concentration camps in South Africa had claimed far more lives when the fighting had. This was very grudgingly accepted by English Canada, but to French and Native Canadians it was an abomination, and while it made for tons of political trouble in Britain (contributing to the landslide loss for the Conservatives in London in 1906) it was a large and ugly mark against the British Empire's reputation in Canada and left a sizable dent in the trust in London's armies by the Canadian public. (This was shared in Britain, too.) Despite this, Canadian public opinion was that the volunteers had done exceptionally well under the circumstances (the actions of Canadian soldiers at Paardeberg and Leilefontein proved how true this was) and Canada, while proud of its soldiers, was more than willing to accept the failures in South Africa and demand better, and Canada's opinions were shown when Emily Hobhouse visited Canada in 1904, where she received and extraordinarily warm welcome and was invited to audiences with Laurier, Thompson and Ontario Premier George William Ross. (Toronto and Quebec City named streets after her - both still have their names to this day.)
By 1910, immense population growth and increasing relationships among the various peoples of Canada was having an effect. Montreal was seeing ever more dealings and relationships between its powerful English business community. Toronto, the hometown in Canada of the Orange Order, was seeing vast growth in the political power of both Native Canadians and Catholics (Irish most of all) break the stranglehold on the city's (and province's) politics by the militant Protestants, the former using unity and influence of their own and the latter through extensive social support systems. (Intermarriage was also becoming common between all three groups as well.) The Japanese and Chinese communities of the West Coast had carved out their own place in Vancouver and weren't gonna let anybody push them around, even as their own hard work was improving their lot both in terms of economics and social status. Native Canadians, who made up an outright majority in many parts of Eastern and Northern Ontario and several places in the West, were increasingly seeing their future as members of their tribe within Canada. Growing wealth, improving living conditions and stable, effective order (By 1910, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were already well-known and increasingly respected both for their effectiveness and ability to be even handed) was helping everyone in Canada. The creation of the Canadian Identity just needed a catalyst to unify all of the various groups in Canada.
And World War One gave it to them.
By the time of the completion of the CPR and GTPR in 1885-86, Canada's boundaries were more or less settled, even as some provincial premiers pushed for greater autonomy for provinces - Ontario's legendary premier Oliver Mowat, the "implacable enemy" of Prime Minister MacDonald, being the most prominent of these - and disputes over borders at times flared. Despite these tensions, Canada's provinces rather quickly both figured out relationships with each other as well as with Ottawa, with Ontario and Alberta fighting over the borders of Ontario and Alberta and Saskatchewan fighting over the status of the city of Lloydminster which straddled the initial border. (Ultimately Alberta ceded the city in its entirety to Saskatchewan, but later suburbs and satellite communities would spread over the border into Alberta.) Helping things along was the National Policy, which was actively and aggressively pushing for immigration, and economic growth and opportunity, both proving to be important as the Prairies were settled. The immense mineral wealth of Northern Ontario and Northern Quebec led to initial exports of iron (primarily to Britain and the United States), but after the development of coal reserves in Alberta and Saskatchewan and some of the world's best nickel resources near Sudbury, Ontario, Canadian industrial firms rapidly switched to the home-grown production of steel, with the first Dofasco Steel mill in Hamilton, Ontario, beginning operations in 1891, Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie in 1893 and Steel Company of Canada in North Bay in 1895. Exploration by geologists quickly discovered what had been guessed for quite a long time - the Canadian Shield was a mineral treasure house, and the steel companies were quick to begin exploiting it. The development of iron ore mines in Ontario and Quebec in the early 20th Century resulted in Canada being able to be far more than self-sufficient in the material, to the point of the government specifically developing industries that could use this new steel. What also went with this in Ontario was the development of the Trillium Natural Resources Fund in 1906, established by Premier James Whitney to take the province's proceeds from natural resource development and invest it in ways that would generate income for the province. The Trillium Fund would prove a precursor of the future of Canada's management of its natural resources.
Canada's population grew extraordinarily rapidly during the time period, swelling from 5,542,300 in 1881 to 8,326,600 in 1901 to 11,228,900 in 1911, namely fueled by immigration from Europe, some from America and North American Natives, who also during this period were known for an extraordinarily high birth rate. (This was also hugely pronounced among the Metis.) The lines drawn by French-speaking Quebec and English-speaking Ontario got blurred rapidly during this time period, as French speakers in Ontario began to challenge the troubles raised by the Orange Order (helped along by Toronto Irish, who liked the Orangemen even less than the Quebecers did) and English-speaking Quebecers fought to establish more influence within Quebec's Church-dominated wider society. The provincial Native Brotherhoods, united into the single Native Brotherhood of Canada in 1907, and through the years to come became increasingly-active in policy decisions towards Canada in general - by 1910, the debates about trying to deal with Canada by nation-to-nation negotiations and deals as opposed to trying to carve out a place within Canada had been largely settled in favor of the latter, particularly when looking at the results that the Metis and French Canadians had achieved in getting their own way when dealing with Ottawa.
The Manitoba Schools question of the 1890s was one of the watershed moments in Canadian history, namely because of Laurier's dogged pushing of the idea that Canada had to accept all of its people as partners and the constitutionality of decisions surrounding the schools. The Manitoba Schools Question, like the circumstances surrounding Louis Riel a decade before, became a hammer for the Liberals to beat the Conservatives with, though it did result in a sizable rise of French-Canadian nationalism, something that neither Laurier did little to discourage while Conservative rivals Charles Tupper and John David Thompson were both forced by influences within the Conservative Party to try to seek out ways of expanding Protestant influence. (Thompson did less of this than Tupper for a variety of reasons.) Laurier's insistence that Canada's place within a British Empire shouldn't prevent the country from seeking out a Canadian identity didn't go over well with the Orange Order and harder-line elements of society, but such was the power of the French Canadian vote and Catholic Canadians that the fury of the harder-line Conservatives did little to hurt Laurier, though it caused havoc for his political rivals.
One of Laurier's first massive victories was the entry into Confederation of Newfoundland as the country's tenth province. This came in 1895 after four years or negotiations, and with the increasing realization that Newfoundland's small population simply couldn't prosper on its own to nearly the same degree as it could within Canada. Nevertheless, Newfoundland's government, ably led by Sir Robert Bond, was able to wring out concessions out of the Canadian government, the most important ones being the creation of a naval patrol force to protect Canada's coasts and Canada footing the bill for the Newfoundland Railway. The latter proved a formality (though an expensive one as Canada would soon find out), but the former caused a major issue among Conservatives, who still looked to the Royal Navy for maritime protection - but with Royal Navy increasingly aware of the growth of naval threats aorund the world (and would become far more aware with the ascension of the High Seas Fleet early in the 20th Century), they had little objection to a Canadian naval force provided it would be placed under command of the Admiralty in the event of war. The issue became a defining one of the 1896 election, with John David Thompson arguing for the Royal Navy to handle the job while Laurier fought for an all-Canadian Navy. Laurier won the election and got his way, with the 1897 Naval Act being passed into law on April 15, 1897, with Canada buying three protected cruisers from the Royal Navy, with the cruisers first entering service as Canadian vessels in 1899.
The growth of Canadian industries in the late 19th Century and into the 20th Century was largely the results of the ambition of their creators. The railroad barons had been first, but the creation of several industries - from steel to lumber to mining to grain to textiles - allowed a number of Canadian businessmen to become extraordinarily rich, and many of these turned around and sought to expand their empires. While Ottawa was lukewarm at best towards such men and their efforts - neither Laurier nor Thompson particularly trusted the barons - they found able allies in many provinces, which would prove to something of a headache to Laurier later on. Despite this, the multiple rounds of financial panics in the 1890s in the United States and the better investments of the CPR and GTR barons were such that they came out of the maneuvers way ahead, and in the process introduced legendary American investor J.P. Morgan into Canada. Morgan was known for aggressive business consolidations, but he rapidly found out that Canada's best businessmen could battle with the best of them, and the Panic of 1901 (which was started in large part by Union Pacific Railroad boss Edward Henry Harriman trying to corner Chicago rail markets) ended with hundreds of investors investing in Canadian businesses and with the CPR outright owning the Northern Pacific, Great Northern and Burlington Route railways. (This didn't effect CPR much at the time, but would in the future.) The Canadian businessmen took their lessons as experience, but would find out that their efforts didn't always work for them, and the 'Welfare Capitalism' theories would soon prove it.
'Welfare Capitalism' was an idea that began in Vancouver in the 1890s, a result of the city's rapid population growth, anger over the dominance of big buisness and tensions between whites and the cfity's Chinese and Native populations all leading to a rather difficult environment. Anger over living and economic conditions led to multiple rounds of strikes in the late 1890s, but both the Native Brotherhood, Chinese residents' groups and many local businessmen keen on breaking the CPR's hold on much of the city created and developed the 'Welfare Capitalism' idea as a way of expanding local business as a way of counteracting big business influence and providing the people working for the businesses with a chance to own portions of the business they owned. Vancouver's Chinese residents, faced with abominable racism early on in this process, ran with the idea in fine fashion, starting with small business but not staying there for long, despite opposition to their efforts from local whites - but the city of Vancouver's setting of a minimum wage law in 1897 that applied to all residents (the first in Canada) actually helped with the process, as it made the use of Chinese or Native laborer to undercut whites was made explicitly illegal, and Vancouver's unions and police were more than willing to fight for this. By the early 1900s, Vancouver was Canada's most prosperous cities as a result of this action, and the idea spread across the nation rapidly, starting in the West (where the CPR and GTR held massive influence) but not taking very long to get across the country. For their part, Vancouver's Asian-Canadian population adopted many elements of Canadian identities, fought back against those who attacked them and proudly supported those who supported them, particularly Native communities - the Native Brotherhood felt that if the Whites could suppress the power of Asian Canadians that they would be the next ones the bigots went after.
Welfare Capitalism would end up being both a source of enormous economic growth (Canada's GDP per capita grew an average of 4.4% a year between 1895 and 1914, despite the massive population growth) and a powerful check on the influence of the wealthiest of interests, and Laurier adeptly was more than willing to support it in attempts to reduce the power of the great barons, particularly as many local politicians faced charges of influence peddling and unfair dealings. It would also be the final force that would push Canada's Native Communities into complete working with Ottawa and the provinces, as the Six Nations Council was one of the first tribal organizations to gather their resources into a Welfare Capitalism company, incorporating the Haudenosaunee Advancement Corporation in 1898 with the express goal of expanding the prosperity of its members, with more than a little success. (The HAC in 2016 controls over $27 Billion in assets and provides income and employment to more than 25,000 people, the majority of them Native Canadians.) The Barons would at first not be threatened by them, but that would change by the early portions of the 20th Century, particularly as civil servants like Sir Adam Beck would begin pushing for greater public ownership of essential services, even as the political fights between the Barons and their supporters and those among the public and in politics who opposed them reached a fewer pitch in the years after the First World War.
The Boer War in 1899 showed what Laurier's problems were with regards to Canada's greater desire for a national identity when it clashed with the Empire. London had immediately assumed that Canada would join the war effort with the Canadian Army, but rapidly found out that Laurier and the French and Native communities were not keen on sending the Canadian Army to fight England's battles, even if there was immense support for the idea in English Canada. Henri Bourassa was a particularly loud voice against Canadian involvement in South Africa and was equally vocal about the Royal Canadian Navy, even as Laurier saw it as an effective compromise between simply relying on the Royal Navy (which English Canada, especially the hard-line Orange Order, sought) and a completely independent Canadian Navy (which the French Canadian and Native Canadian communities desired). Ultimately Canada did allow for the sending of a volunteer force, again a compromise but which which didn't cause too many ruffles in English Canada, as it still allowed them to fight for the Empire.
The Canadian volunteers in South Africa proved more than a little effective, however, and even the hard-shelled Orange Order began to call for an all-Canadian Army, loyal to the Empire but created to serve Canada. The Canadian Volunteer Force, however, ran into a massive amount of domestic trouble when Emily Hobhouse's research came to light and Lord Kitchener (commander of British forces in South Africa, including the Canadian volunteers) was forced to admit that the concentration camps in South Africa had claimed far more lives when the fighting had. This was very grudgingly accepted by English Canada, but to French and Native Canadians it was an abomination, and while it made for tons of political trouble in Britain (contributing to the landslide loss for the Conservatives in London in 1906) it was a large and ugly mark against the British Empire's reputation in Canada and left a sizable dent in the trust in London's armies by the Canadian public. (This was shared in Britain, too.) Despite this, Canadian public opinion was that the volunteers had done exceptionally well under the circumstances (the actions of Canadian soldiers at Paardeberg and Leilefontein proved how true this was) and Canada, while proud of its soldiers, was more than willing to accept the failures in South Africa and demand better, and Canada's opinions were shown when Emily Hobhouse visited Canada in 1904, where she received and extraordinarily warm welcome and was invited to audiences with Laurier, Thompson and Ontario Premier George William Ross. (Toronto and Quebec City named streets after her - both still have their names to this day.)
By 1910, immense population growth and increasing relationships among the various peoples of Canada was having an effect. Montreal was seeing ever more dealings and relationships between its powerful English business community. Toronto, the hometown in Canada of the Orange Order, was seeing vast growth in the political power of both Native Canadians and Catholics (Irish most of all) break the stranglehold on the city's (and province's) politics by the militant Protestants, the former using unity and influence of their own and the latter through extensive social support systems. (Intermarriage was also becoming common between all three groups as well.) The Japanese and Chinese communities of the West Coast had carved out their own place in Vancouver and weren't gonna let anybody push them around, even as their own hard work was improving their lot both in terms of economics and social status. Native Canadians, who made up an outright majority in many parts of Eastern and Northern Ontario and several places in the West, were increasingly seeing their future as members of their tribe within Canada. Growing wealth, improving living conditions and stable, effective order (By 1910, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were already well-known and increasingly respected both for their effectiveness and ability to be even handed) was helping everyone in Canada. The creation of the Canadian Identity just needed a catalyst to unify all of the various groups in Canada.
And World War One gave it to them.
Another great update. Are you going to be using a butterfly net for this TL? I noticed in the first update you did that you mentioned operation yellow ribbon so I assume 9/11 still happens in this TL. It doesn't matter to me either way I'm just curious.
With a more cohesive and distinct national identity developing earlier, I can see greater demands for autonomy earlier,
maybe an earlier analogue to the Statute of Westminster.
maybe an earlier analogue to the Statute of Westminster.
I sorta am. I wanna still have 9/11 and the events around it happen as a catalyst for the eradication of hard-line Islamism. One can't eliminate that insanity without removing what supports it, and that's gonna be a long job that starts long before 9/11.
I do ultimately want to merge my recent TLs into one coherent universe, but I'm gonna be making a big, strong powerful Canada in this world and then figuring out how to merge with The Land of Milk and Honey and the smaller ones that predated it. Still, everything mentioned in the thread's OP is gonna happen.
A certainty, but both Britain and Canada are gonna have more pressing things to do first. I'm already working on WWI and what comes before and after, including the Komagata Maru (which has a different fate here) and what goes on after the war.
Two quick questions for people:
- Is the idea of a 40-ton tank with a rotating torrent and a four-inch gun possible in 1917?
- I'm planning on the RCN ordering a capital ship after the war, and my first thought was a Nelson class battleship, which since it uses 16" guns would allow it to make use of American shells during WWII. Would this be even close to possible, and what would be the best way to improve one?
I can't help you with the battleship but I know that the char 2c was a super heavy tank (only one to ever see service) that was supposed to be used in 1919 for the offensive. That thing was 70 tons and carried a 75 mm as it's main armament. Obviously the war was over by then and only 10 were built.
The liberty tank was 40 tons but didn't have a rotating turret. It was originally supposed to have one but they changed the design. There was over 100 of them built but they also weren't ready before the end of the war. The Americans used them throughout the 1920s and they were given to Canada as trainers during ww2.
These were both designed in 1917 because the entente didn't have industrial ability to build them before the Americans joined the war. If Canada's industry is better you might be able to get a small role out for early 1917 but it would be in smaller numbers until the Americans join.
The liberty tank was 40 tons but didn't have a rotating turret. It was originally supposed to have one but they changed the design. There was over 100 of them built but they also weren't ready before the end of the war. The Americans used them throughout the 1920s and they were given to Canada as trainers during ww2.
These were both designed in 1917 because the entente didn't have industrial ability to build them before the Americans joined the war. If Canada's industry is better you might be able to get a small role out for early 1917 but it would be in smaller numbers until the Americans join.
What I had in mind was that Canada develops and builds a handful (10-12 tops) of a big tank known as the Selkirk in time for them to be mobile fire support for Canadian infantry at Vimy Ridge while producing a rather bigger number (60-80) of a smaller tank for infantry support during the war. Knowing the British Mark V was about 30 tons, I may just increase the weight some.
I think that would work fine. They definitely had the technical know-how to do it at the time, it was just a matter of industrial capacity. When I picture the heavy tank I see that tank they used in the last crusade. I'm pretty sure that was a liberty tank that they just put a fake turret on.
It's not actually gonna be built in Canada, it's gonna come from Britain or the United States. But there is by now two shipyards capable of dry-docking it. And yes, there are plans and places built already in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and British Columbia capable of building big vessels.
Part 4 - World War I
Part 4 - World War I
World War I was to become a major undertaking for Canada, far greater than its settlement efforts before in terms of finances and absolutely monstrous in terms of financial commitment, but it would also become one of the great struggles Canada would undertake that would forge it as a nation. It would create new problems for Canadian unity, but it would also massively develop the nation's industrial base, advance its technology, change its politics forever and turn its society into one that would shape not only itself but also much of the world, and set up a way of working through differences that would become known worldwide.
The Royal Newfoundland Artillery was the first new unit of Canada in the war. Developed by the Newfoundlanders along with a smaller Royal Newfoundland Regiment infantry unit, Newfoundlanders were justifiably proud of their work early in the war even if the painful losses of it proved problematic later on. Newfoundlander artilleryman Colonel Bill Russell and Royal Canadian Artillery officer Major Kenneth Benson are credited with the development of the first time-on-target system for aiming artillery, and their units in Newfoundland conducted intensive training to teach plotters and aimers the ability to more accurately use their guns. In addition to that, Canadian artillery units developed ways of more rapidly reloading large-caliber guns and fought for - and got - approval for their artillery units to have more teeth than those of other allied armies. On top of that, the Canadian Expeditionary Force was very well armed - the initial desire to use the Ross Rifle by Canada's minister of militia and defense was rejected owing to many problems in training and testing with the rifles, and Canadian soldiers went overseas with Lee-Enfield rifles aside from sniper units, which used their own large-caliber bolt-action rifles. After the first battle of Ypres, the Canadian Army also sent gas masks to the front to all soldiers, and went to considerable lengths to develop better supply and logistics trains for their troops, needed for the heavy artillery. The Canadians were also armed with large numbers of Lewis and Vickers machine guns, and used the latter on aircraft, as well as thousands of Ross rifles being rebuilt as Huot-Ross automatic rifles. But where Canada first got a big note was tanks.
By the outbreak of war Canada was easily the second-largest industrial power in the Empire, and so when British Army officers couldn't get tanks underway, they brought the idea to Canada. The Canadian Army, raised as it was heavily from farm and industrial interests (where caterpillar tracks had been in use for some time) were able to develop tank plans. While the Royal Navy and French Army both also developed tanks, the Canadian "Kicking Horse" and "Selkirk" tank designs, developed and built in time to be sent to Europe for the assault on Vimy Ridge, were indeed among the first tanks, and the big Selkirk, a 58-ton design with twin diesel engines mounted at the back and a crew cabin (and rotating turret) up front and armed with a 4-inch gun, proved to be one of the scariest vehicles for the Germans to face in the war. The Kicking Horse was similar in many ways to the Renault FT (though rather larger in size) and armed with a 2-pounder in a rotating turret. Slow and unwieldy as they were, the Canadian tanks proved invaluable at the Somme (where the Kicking Horse first showed itself) and at Vimy Ridge. The Canadians also used the tanks as breakthrough weapons, leading infantry movements ahead of them in an attempt to draw fire instead of the infantry.
Even better still, one of the greatest arrivals of the war was the Native Canadians. The Iroquois in particular were willing to sign up (in some cases even eager to do so) and there were sufficient numbers of them that they were soon being organized into their own companies, then eventually whole battalions. Western Native Canadians proved even better still, as many of them had grown up hunting and were crack shots, and the best of these were sent to Canada's 'Advanced Marksmanship Academy' at the Royal Military College in Kingston and at the Valcartier army base. The Iroquois in particular insisted on bringing along their Tomahawks, and both British and Canadian officers, remembering the fear these weapons had struck into the Americans during the War of 1812, had few problems with the Natives bringing them along - they even began using the knowledge of them in propaganda broadcasts to the Germans, hoping to strike fear into them. (Many Native soldiers didn't mind this, as the image of a warrior tended to get them a little more respect from white colleagues on the same side as well.) By early 1916, the first nearly all-Native unit, the Royal Six Nations Regiment, was ready to go and was sent to Europe in time for the Battle of the Somme.
While the Somme was to prove to be one of the bloodiest battles in human history - a million men were killed or injured in an area of just over sixty square miles - the Canadian Corps achieved objectives that the British hadn't been able to, and the Six Nations Regiment was perhaps the most feared of all, and while the Royal Newfoundland Regiment did well the Newfie artillery did better, able in more than one case to engage in counter-battery fire against German field guns. The tanks involved - Canadian Kicking Horses, French Renault FTs and British Vickers Mark Vs - all performed well, and while the Canadians took a large number of casualties, the image of them as terrifying shock troops was very much born, giving the reputation to the Germans that any time the Canadian Corps was in the area you'd better be ready for all hell to come down on you and if you knew Native Canadians were in the area to keep your head down in case of them was aiming at you. The result was such that the British High Command tasked all of the Canadian units - under Canadian command, too - to go take Vimy Ridge.
Vimy Ridge was to be the battle that established Canada. Canadian troops under Canadian command, armed with Canadian weapons, using Canadian-developed tactics and with heavy involvement by Native Canadian units as snipers and observers, with Canada's monstrous Selkirk tanks riding with their forces, went to get Vimy Ridge from the Germans. Canadian units of the Royal Flying Corps also were involved, in the form of Sopwith Pup and Nieuport 17 fighters armed with multiple Vickers machine guns in a ground-attack role. The battle began with huge explosions under the ridge set by Canadian sappers ably assisted by the Royal Engineers, and monumental quantities of artillery fire. The fire was astoundingly accurate - Canadian artillery fire usually was - and between that and the arrival of tanks on the Ridge forced the Germans off of the ridge. After the Canadians got to the top of the ridge snipers came into play, and the mighty Selkirks were deployed to assist the 4th Canadian Division which ran into addition difficulties in achieving its objectives - and that division, which included the Six Nations regiment, got its first big surprise when the battle got close enough that melee weapons played a role - at least a few Germans including at least two officers are known to have been killed by Tomahawks - and the big tanks were all but invulnerable to German small arms. The Canadians achieved all of their objectives by mid-day on April 11, having inflicted massive casualties on the Germans and being firmly in control of the ridge.
Vimy Ridge showed that a Canadian fighting force could, and in this case had, taken on the best of European power and stomped on them. The Canadian Corps wasn't done there, of course, but Vimy Ridge, being it was the first time a complete Canadian Army had fought, was seen as critically important to the nation and its future. Canadian newspapers were only too happy to point out how well they'd done, and the performance of the Six Nations Division was noted by many newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette and the Mail and Empire, as a sign that these Natives were indeed Canadians. The Canadians would also see more than a little action at Passchendaele and in the last hundred days of the war (most famously routing the Germans and punching through the Hindenberg line at Cambrai), continuing their reputation as dangerous shock troops.
While the war had been a success at home, the casualty count was such that Borden had little option but to seek to use consciption - which caused a spectacular meltdown in Quebec, including full-blown riots in Quebec City in March 1918. The Conscription Crisis of 1917 would end up being a key reason why the Conservatives would have a hard time becoming a government in the future, and it caused legitimate thoughts in Canada about whether Quebec should remain as part of predominantly English-speaking Canada. It was a constitutional problem that ultimately was settled by the end of the war, and as a result fewer than 100,000 men were conscripted and of those less than 20,000 went overseas. Regardless, the damage was done, and after War's end, Borden found himself with little choice but to get something out of it for Canada and to try and find a way of unifying peoples within in Canada, knowing of the French-Canadian alienation and the massive growth in influence of Native Canadians.
Facing that, at the end of the War Borden fought for (and got) a seat for Canada at the Paris Peace Conference - indeed, at the insistence of Borden and Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, the British Dominions were given seats of their own at the conference, despite both British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and American President Woodrow Wilson being opposed to the idea, the objection of Wilson being angrily responded by Borden with a statement that Canada had seen more of their people killed in the war than America had, and what right did Wilson have to stop Canada from being at the Conference. Such was the level of anger by Canada and Australia on this one that Lloyd George and Wilson relented - it turned out to be for their benefit, ass both Borden and Hughes were more inclined towards favorable terms to Germany at the Conference. Indeed, Borden's only real point of division was on Japan's racial equality proposal - Borden, aware of the actions of Native Canadians in the war, the Komagata Maru incident at home and French-Canadian anger towards his government, backed the proposal, to the surprise of the British and Americans. Ultimately Wilson's desire to be easy on Germany was for nought as Georges Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, got his way at the conference and got the terms on Germany made more than a little harsh. Though no one knew it yet, this was to prove a major problem for the world in the future.
World War I was to become a major undertaking for Canada, far greater than its settlement efforts before in terms of finances and absolutely monstrous in terms of financial commitment, but it would also become one of the great struggles Canada would undertake that would forge it as a nation. It would create new problems for Canadian unity, but it would also massively develop the nation's industrial base, advance its technology, change its politics forever and turn its society into one that would shape not only itself but also much of the world, and set up a way of working through differences that would become known worldwide.
The Royal Newfoundland Artillery was the first new unit of Canada in the war. Developed by the Newfoundlanders along with a smaller Royal Newfoundland Regiment infantry unit, Newfoundlanders were justifiably proud of their work early in the war even if the painful losses of it proved problematic later on. Newfoundlander artilleryman Colonel Bill Russell and Royal Canadian Artillery officer Major Kenneth Benson are credited with the development of the first time-on-target system for aiming artillery, and their units in Newfoundland conducted intensive training to teach plotters and aimers the ability to more accurately use their guns. In addition to that, Canadian artillery units developed ways of more rapidly reloading large-caliber guns and fought for - and got - approval for their artillery units to have more teeth than those of other allied armies. On top of that, the Canadian Expeditionary Force was very well armed - the initial desire to use the Ross Rifle by Canada's minister of militia and defense was rejected owing to many problems in training and testing with the rifles, and Canadian soldiers went overseas with Lee-Enfield rifles aside from sniper units, which used their own large-caliber bolt-action rifles. After the first battle of Ypres, the Canadian Army also sent gas masks to the front to all soldiers, and went to considerable lengths to develop better supply and logistics trains for their troops, needed for the heavy artillery. The Canadians were also armed with large numbers of Lewis and Vickers machine guns, and used the latter on aircraft, as well as thousands of Ross rifles being rebuilt as Huot-Ross automatic rifles. But where Canada first got a big note was tanks.
By the outbreak of war Canada was easily the second-largest industrial power in the Empire, and so when British Army officers couldn't get tanks underway, they brought the idea to Canada. The Canadian Army, raised as it was heavily from farm and industrial interests (where caterpillar tracks had been in use for some time) were able to develop tank plans. While the Royal Navy and French Army both also developed tanks, the Canadian "Kicking Horse" and "Selkirk" tank designs, developed and built in time to be sent to Europe for the assault on Vimy Ridge, were indeed among the first tanks, and the big Selkirk, a 58-ton design with twin diesel engines mounted at the back and a crew cabin (and rotating turret) up front and armed with a 4-inch gun, proved to be one of the scariest vehicles for the Germans to face in the war. The Kicking Horse was similar in many ways to the Renault FT (though rather larger in size) and armed with a 2-pounder in a rotating turret. Slow and unwieldy as they were, the Canadian tanks proved invaluable at the Somme (where the Kicking Horse first showed itself) and at Vimy Ridge. The Canadians also used the tanks as breakthrough weapons, leading infantry movements ahead of them in an attempt to draw fire instead of the infantry.
Even better still, one of the greatest arrivals of the war was the Native Canadians. The Iroquois in particular were willing to sign up (in some cases even eager to do so) and there were sufficient numbers of them that they were soon being organized into their own companies, then eventually whole battalions. Western Native Canadians proved even better still, as many of them had grown up hunting and were crack shots, and the best of these were sent to Canada's 'Advanced Marksmanship Academy' at the Royal Military College in Kingston and at the Valcartier army base. The Iroquois in particular insisted on bringing along their Tomahawks, and both British and Canadian officers, remembering the fear these weapons had struck into the Americans during the War of 1812, had few problems with the Natives bringing them along - they even began using the knowledge of them in propaganda broadcasts to the Germans, hoping to strike fear into them. (Many Native soldiers didn't mind this, as the image of a warrior tended to get them a little more respect from white colleagues on the same side as well.) By early 1916, the first nearly all-Native unit, the Royal Six Nations Regiment, was ready to go and was sent to Europe in time for the Battle of the Somme.
While the Somme was to prove to be one of the bloodiest battles in human history - a million men were killed or injured in an area of just over sixty square miles - the Canadian Corps achieved objectives that the British hadn't been able to, and the Six Nations Regiment was perhaps the most feared of all, and while the Royal Newfoundland Regiment did well the Newfie artillery did better, able in more than one case to engage in counter-battery fire against German field guns. The tanks involved - Canadian Kicking Horses, French Renault FTs and British Vickers Mark Vs - all performed well, and while the Canadians took a large number of casualties, the image of them as terrifying shock troops was very much born, giving the reputation to the Germans that any time the Canadian Corps was in the area you'd better be ready for all hell to come down on you and if you knew Native Canadians were in the area to keep your head down in case of them was aiming at you. The result was such that the British High Command tasked all of the Canadian units - under Canadian command, too - to go take Vimy Ridge.
Vimy Ridge was to be the battle that established Canada. Canadian troops under Canadian command, armed with Canadian weapons, using Canadian-developed tactics and with heavy involvement by Native Canadian units as snipers and observers, with Canada's monstrous Selkirk tanks riding with their forces, went to get Vimy Ridge from the Germans. Canadian units of the Royal Flying Corps also were involved, in the form of Sopwith Pup and Nieuport 17 fighters armed with multiple Vickers machine guns in a ground-attack role. The battle began with huge explosions under the ridge set by Canadian sappers ably assisted by the Royal Engineers, and monumental quantities of artillery fire. The fire was astoundingly accurate - Canadian artillery fire usually was - and between that and the arrival of tanks on the Ridge forced the Germans off of the ridge. After the Canadians got to the top of the ridge snipers came into play, and the mighty Selkirks were deployed to assist the 4th Canadian Division which ran into addition difficulties in achieving its objectives - and that division, which included the Six Nations regiment, got its first big surprise when the battle got close enough that melee weapons played a role - at least a few Germans including at least two officers are known to have been killed by Tomahawks - and the big tanks were all but invulnerable to German small arms. The Canadians achieved all of their objectives by mid-day on April 11, having inflicted massive casualties on the Germans and being firmly in control of the ridge.
Vimy Ridge showed that a Canadian fighting force could, and in this case had, taken on the best of European power and stomped on them. The Canadian Corps wasn't done there, of course, but Vimy Ridge, being it was the first time a complete Canadian Army had fought, was seen as critically important to the nation and its future. Canadian newspapers were only too happy to point out how well they'd done, and the performance of the Six Nations Division was noted by many newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette and the Mail and Empire, as a sign that these Natives were indeed Canadians. The Canadians would also see more than a little action at Passchendaele and in the last hundred days of the war (most famously routing the Germans and punching through the Hindenberg line at Cambrai), continuing their reputation as dangerous shock troops.
While the war had been a success at home, the casualty count was such that Borden had little option but to seek to use consciption - which caused a spectacular meltdown in Quebec, including full-blown riots in Quebec City in March 1918. The Conscription Crisis of 1917 would end up being a key reason why the Conservatives would have a hard time becoming a government in the future, and it caused legitimate thoughts in Canada about whether Quebec should remain as part of predominantly English-speaking Canada. It was a constitutional problem that ultimately was settled by the end of the war, and as a result fewer than 100,000 men were conscripted and of those less than 20,000 went overseas. Regardless, the damage was done, and after War's end, Borden found himself with little choice but to get something out of it for Canada and to try and find a way of unifying peoples within in Canada, knowing of the French-Canadian alienation and the massive growth in influence of Native Canadians.
Facing that, at the end of the War Borden fought for (and got) a seat for Canada at the Paris Peace Conference - indeed, at the insistence of Borden and Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, the British Dominions were given seats of their own at the conference, despite both British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and American President Woodrow Wilson being opposed to the idea, the objection of Wilson being angrily responded by Borden with a statement that Canada had seen more of their people killed in the war than America had, and what right did Wilson have to stop Canada from being at the Conference. Such was the level of anger by Canada and Australia on this one that Lloyd George and Wilson relented - it turned out to be for their benefit, ass both Borden and Hughes were more inclined towards favorable terms to Germany at the Conference. Indeed, Borden's only real point of division was on Japan's racial equality proposal - Borden, aware of the actions of Native Canadians in the war, the Komagata Maru incident at home and French-Canadian anger towards his government, backed the proposal, to the surprise of the British and Americans. Ultimately Wilson's desire to be easy on Germany was for nought as Georges Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, got his way at the conference and got the terms on Germany made more than a little harsh. Though no one knew it yet, this was to prove a major problem for the world in the future.
They did just that, but they also used accurate long-range fire to suppress German reinforcements and hammer their strongpoints.
So the Ross is realised to be a write off and the Huot developed earlier. Also developing tanks if their own. There already considerable industrial and R&D capacity here.
What role did the RCN play, you mentioned a few armoured cruisers, might they gave been tasked with dealing with raiders?
Do they acquire a WWII style reputation as ASW experts?
What role did the RCN play, you mentioned a few armoured cruisers, might they gave been tasked with dealing with raiders?
Do they acquire a WWII style reputation as ASW experts?
I'm enjoying this, and I'm quite impressed by the frequency of the updates. Keep it up!
I like this detail a lot, because it highlights the changed attitudes of TTL's Canada while also feeling entirely plausible to come from Borden.
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