More to the point, Newfoundland's "settlement" was always a very sporadic thing. As late as 1800 the population of the island would halve come winter when the seasonal fishermen would pack up and go home. So, unlike Virginia, where people settled and stayed, Newfoundland had people show up as early as possibly pre-1492, even, but it took a couple of hundred years for them to go beyond summer fish-drying buildings and establish winter settlements - but Europeans were living on Newfoundland at least part of the year way back in the 16th C. So even the date of "permanent settlement" in Newfoundland is fuzzy in a way that's not really true of the rest of North America.
Professor Zyzzyva's Canadian History 101
- Thread starter Zyzzyva
- Start date
pacifichistorian
Banned
Hurtig's Canadian Encyclopedia (v3, p.1917) says "by 1583...settlement had developed on the central and eastern sections of the N side of the harbour."
It's just like NWT, but with oil & Americans?Most people I talk to tend to consider it with the same mindset as the Yukon or Northwest Territories...far away, don't hear about it, and it's cold.
Was up there about 15 years ago..didnt' expect to see the forests I did or how warm Anchorage was in comparision to the Artic plains found in the north part of the provinces/NWT. Great people, lots of the original pioneer feeling around (I hacked this home out the raw woods feeling), and tons of characters with stories you have to hear to belive. Reminded me of where I grew up with lots of the original homesteaders around and their tales except they had mountains.
A writer could make a living just doing autobiographies of the folks up there.
Iiiiiit's baaaack!
Vimy Ridge was the high moment of Canada’s war; but it was meaningless. Nievelle’s grand offensive died in mud and blood in Champagne; a month of hell and 190,000 casualties netted the French seven kilometers of penetration and an army-wide mutiny as entire divisions simply refused to go forward any longer. The British offensive achieved nothing more – 160,000 men dead, injured, or lost for similarly insignificant gains. As May moved into June, the war was much the same as it had been in March but for the tens of thousands extra graves.
The Allies needed more men. They needed men to replace the hundreds of thousands they had lost in the spring and the tens of thousands being lost every month to the ceaseless artillery and night-raids and tiny, unremembered pushes that made up the Western Front. And they just weren’t getting them anymore. Not that recruiting was down – posters stopped emphasizing adventure and started pushing duty, and men kept coming forward – but it was just no longer sufficient. Borden estimated that the CEF would need something on the order of 100,000 men per year in order to keep its four divisions at strength; and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was pushing for more divisions from Canada in order to keep its strategic situation level. Borden’s options were pretty sharply limited: maintain the status quo, with the consequent loss of manpower, divisions, strategic responsibility, and prestige (and possibly the war), or institute conscription and begin drafting soldiers directly. For Borden, really, there was no choice.
But the political reality was awkward. In English Canada, conscription was, if not overwhelmingly popular, at least generally understood to be necessary; in Quebec, it was all but unanimously opposed. Quebecers had been brought into the war with posters emphasizing Canada’s need to support both its founding nations; that worked for a while but soon enough Quebecers realized that France had been through a half-dozen revolutions and a dozen systems of government since the last time it had owned Quebec, and had long since forgotten its first colony. That left Britain, and Quebec wasn’t particularly happy about supporting Britain, either. Henri Bourassa, the closest thing Quebec had to a provincial voice, was in favour of a bilingual Canadian identity, something he saw threatened by the school crises of previous decades (ending in utter defeat for the French in 1912 with Ontario’s Regulation 17 and Manitoba’s 1916 repeal of its 1896 compromise), the resultant slow withering of French-Canadian culture outside Quebec, and now, this bloody war that Canada had walked into with no thought for its national interest. Almost all of Quebec stood behind him.
Nevertheless Borden went ahead - he had to - and turned to Laurier to help him pass a conscription bill. Laurier, worried about the bill’s splitting Quebec from the rest of the country, refused. Borden put the bill forward anyways: called the Military Service Act, it automatically enrolled in military service all men aged 20-45, with the exception of those engaged in vital war industries and conscientious objectors - although it stripped the right to vote from the latter. When Laurier stood up to speak against the bill, to his horror he found it had produced exactly the effect he most feared: the English section of his party, almost to a man, supported the bill while every one of the French Tories opposed it. The bill passed.
Borden was now six years into his five-year term (in light of the ongoing war, the sitting of Parliament had been extended) and he felt that this would be a perfect time for the election. Half of the Liberals had just switched sides to his new “Unionist” government, and Laurier (and Quebec) were looking unpatriotic. Still, that wasn’t a guaranteed victory, not quite, so Borden’s Solicitor-General, Arthur Meighen, decided to make one himself. The Wartime Elections Act, passed that fall, handed the vote to any and all Canadian soldiers, who - quite apart form being understandably in favour of being relieved on the line - were given ballots simply listing “Government” and “Opposition”, no local candidates specified. In addition, it provided the vote to women for the first time - but only those women who had sons, husbands, or brothers serving overseas; they, too, were understandably pro-Conscription. Finally, it stripped the vote from all Canadians who had immigrated from an enemy country since 1902 (excepting, of course, those serving overseas) - this largely to take a chunk out of the Liberal, immigrant-filled West. When the election was held on December 17, 1917, to nobody’s great surprise Borden and the Unionists won. But the scale of the victory - 300,000 votes and 71 seats - was still shocking, and so was its shape: of the Unionists’ 153 seats, 55 were in the West, 74 in Ontario, 21 in the Maritimes - and three in Quebec. Laurier had gotten 62 of Quebec’s 65 seats and 20 seats in the rest of Canada put together. It was not Canadian unity’s finest hour.
On balance it wasn’t Borden’s finest, either. Conscription went forward, but where in Quebec 98% of all those eligible applied for an exemption, in Ontario a patriotic 94% applied for one. It seemed conscription was more popular in the abstract than the particular. By the start of 1918, only 22,000 conscripts were available for training; only 25,000 would make it to Europe before the fall, while in the interim attempts to prevent draft dodging in Quebec were met with rioting, peaking on Easter Monday, 1918, when troops fired into a crowd and killed four.
Nevertheless, with Canada’s manpower shortage at least in principle easing up, Borden had good news to report to Lloyd George and the Imperial War Cabinet in London. Canada had a seat there now, thanks to a convenient alignment between the British government’s desire for more effort from the colonies and the colonies’ desire for more say in where that effort went. But meetings with Arthur Currie in England were more disturbing. Currie was angry with the British High Command, feeling his men were not being utilized effectively, and that in fact the British had no idea how to fight the war. His big example that winter was Passchendaele: heavy rainfall and perpetual shelling had turned one corner of Flanders into a bottomless mire, where men and horses drowned standing up and the British had lost nearly 70,000 men trying to get to the relative heights of Passchendaele “ridge”, a meters-high rise held by the Germans. In October, the High Command turned to the Canadian Corps. Currie said with preparation he could do it, at the cost of 16,000 men. His men built floating light rail and artillery platforms, and on October 26th went on the attack; two weeks and 15,654 Canadians later, the Allies held the ridge. But that wasn’t the point, insisted Currie to Borden; nothing had been gained from the entire battle and all those lives had been wasted. Borden took that back to Lloyd George. “Mr Prime Minister, I want to tell you that if there is ever a repetition of the Battle of Passchendaele, not a single Canadian soldier will ever leave the shores of Canada [again]...”
The war was changing Canada fast - Imperialist Tories were becoming Canadian nationalists, the closest thing Canada had had to nationalists were becoming aggressively pro-Quebecois. German-Canadian society was basically eliminated, between the Wartime Measures Act, extra-legal oppression, and the simple desire to fit in in their new home; Ukranian-Canadians, less favoured in the best of times, went to labour camps in the interior (until their self-evident lack of threat and the manpower shortage sprung them out again). The Imperial Munitions Board regulated war-critical industries (which in practice, meant everything) and established factories to provide direct war supplies; the Wheat Board bought the entire annual crop and sold it to keep the food supply steady. Health care, vocational retraining, and pensions for veterans were all established, along with support for their widows and orphans. In 1916 the Parliament Buildings burned down and and in 1917 a munitions ship exploded in Halifax Harbour, killing 2000 people in the largest manmade explosion before Hiroshima. Both accidents were blamed on hypothetical German saboteurs.
But for all that Canada was changing under the strain of the war, other countries were changing faster. Russia collapsed into chaos and revolution in 1917, and the Central Powers, hollowing out under the Allied blockade and manpower shortages that dwarfed anything Canada was seeing, were close behind. When the United States, prompted by German submarine warfare and almost unbelievable German diplomatic blunders, entered the war in 1917, time was running out for the German Army. The spring of 1918 saw Germany throw essentially everything they could pull together into one last, sweeping series of offensives; despite huge initial gains that saw (amongst other things, and to Currie’s great disgust) Passchendaele given up without a fight, their momentum petered out and by the end of July the line was steady again. The Canadians had not been on it since being thrown into containing the first German push in mid-March; through most of the spring and summer, they had been resting, rebuilding, and training as shock troops for the massive Allied counterpush planned for August. On August 8th, the Canadians hit the German line at Amiens and pushed 13 kilometers in one day, capturing 5000 men in the process. By the end of August the Allies were at the formidable Hindenburg Line, which the Canadians broke at the northern end on September 2nd; the remainder of the month saw them outflank the German line at the Canal du Nord and then they were on to open country, untouched by war since the German offensive of 1914. On November 11th, with Canadian troops in Mons, Belgium, a previously-unimagined 70 km past the line in July, the Allies agreed to an armistice which, it rapidly became clear, amounted to a German surrender. The war was over.
IX
The War to End Wars
The War to End Wars
Vimy Ridge was the high moment of Canada’s war; but it was meaningless. Nievelle’s grand offensive died in mud and blood in Champagne; a month of hell and 190,000 casualties netted the French seven kilometers of penetration and an army-wide mutiny as entire divisions simply refused to go forward any longer. The British offensive achieved nothing more – 160,000 men dead, injured, or lost for similarly insignificant gains. As May moved into June, the war was much the same as it had been in March but for the tens of thousands extra graves.
The Allies needed more men. They needed men to replace the hundreds of thousands they had lost in the spring and the tens of thousands being lost every month to the ceaseless artillery and night-raids and tiny, unremembered pushes that made up the Western Front. And they just weren’t getting them anymore. Not that recruiting was down – posters stopped emphasizing adventure and started pushing duty, and men kept coming forward – but it was just no longer sufficient. Borden estimated that the CEF would need something on the order of 100,000 men per year in order to keep its four divisions at strength; and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was pushing for more divisions from Canada in order to keep its strategic situation level. Borden’s options were pretty sharply limited: maintain the status quo, with the consequent loss of manpower, divisions, strategic responsibility, and prestige (and possibly the war), or institute conscription and begin drafting soldiers directly. For Borden, really, there was no choice.
But the political reality was awkward. In English Canada, conscription was, if not overwhelmingly popular, at least generally understood to be necessary; in Quebec, it was all but unanimously opposed. Quebecers had been brought into the war with posters emphasizing Canada’s need to support both its founding nations; that worked for a while but soon enough Quebecers realized that France had been through a half-dozen revolutions and a dozen systems of government since the last time it had owned Quebec, and had long since forgotten its first colony. That left Britain, and Quebec wasn’t particularly happy about supporting Britain, either. Henri Bourassa, the closest thing Quebec had to a provincial voice, was in favour of a bilingual Canadian identity, something he saw threatened by the school crises of previous decades (ending in utter defeat for the French in 1912 with Ontario’s Regulation 17 and Manitoba’s 1916 repeal of its 1896 compromise), the resultant slow withering of French-Canadian culture outside Quebec, and now, this bloody war that Canada had walked into with no thought for its national interest. Almost all of Quebec stood behind him.
Nevertheless Borden went ahead - he had to - and turned to Laurier to help him pass a conscription bill. Laurier, worried about the bill’s splitting Quebec from the rest of the country, refused. Borden put the bill forward anyways: called the Military Service Act, it automatically enrolled in military service all men aged 20-45, with the exception of those engaged in vital war industries and conscientious objectors - although it stripped the right to vote from the latter. When Laurier stood up to speak against the bill, to his horror he found it had produced exactly the effect he most feared: the English section of his party, almost to a man, supported the bill while every one of the French Tories opposed it. The bill passed.
Borden was now six years into his five-year term (in light of the ongoing war, the sitting of Parliament had been extended) and he felt that this would be a perfect time for the election. Half of the Liberals had just switched sides to his new “Unionist” government, and Laurier (and Quebec) were looking unpatriotic. Still, that wasn’t a guaranteed victory, not quite, so Borden’s Solicitor-General, Arthur Meighen, decided to make one himself. The Wartime Elections Act, passed that fall, handed the vote to any and all Canadian soldiers, who - quite apart form being understandably in favour of being relieved on the line - were given ballots simply listing “Government” and “Opposition”, no local candidates specified. In addition, it provided the vote to women for the first time - but only those women who had sons, husbands, or brothers serving overseas; they, too, were understandably pro-Conscription. Finally, it stripped the vote from all Canadians who had immigrated from an enemy country since 1902 (excepting, of course, those serving overseas) - this largely to take a chunk out of the Liberal, immigrant-filled West. When the election was held on December 17, 1917, to nobody’s great surprise Borden and the Unionists won. But the scale of the victory - 300,000 votes and 71 seats - was still shocking, and so was its shape: of the Unionists’ 153 seats, 55 were in the West, 74 in Ontario, 21 in the Maritimes - and three in Quebec. Laurier had gotten 62 of Quebec’s 65 seats and 20 seats in the rest of Canada put together. It was not Canadian unity’s finest hour.
On balance it wasn’t Borden’s finest, either. Conscription went forward, but where in Quebec 98% of all those eligible applied for an exemption, in Ontario a patriotic 94% applied for one. It seemed conscription was more popular in the abstract than the particular. By the start of 1918, only 22,000 conscripts were available for training; only 25,000 would make it to Europe before the fall, while in the interim attempts to prevent draft dodging in Quebec were met with rioting, peaking on Easter Monday, 1918, when troops fired into a crowd and killed four.
Nevertheless, with Canada’s manpower shortage at least in principle easing up, Borden had good news to report to Lloyd George and the Imperial War Cabinet in London. Canada had a seat there now, thanks to a convenient alignment between the British government’s desire for more effort from the colonies and the colonies’ desire for more say in where that effort went. But meetings with Arthur Currie in England were more disturbing. Currie was angry with the British High Command, feeling his men were not being utilized effectively, and that in fact the British had no idea how to fight the war. His big example that winter was Passchendaele: heavy rainfall and perpetual shelling had turned one corner of Flanders into a bottomless mire, where men and horses drowned standing up and the British had lost nearly 70,000 men trying to get to the relative heights of Passchendaele “ridge”, a meters-high rise held by the Germans. In October, the High Command turned to the Canadian Corps. Currie said with preparation he could do it, at the cost of 16,000 men. His men built floating light rail and artillery platforms, and on October 26th went on the attack; two weeks and 15,654 Canadians later, the Allies held the ridge. But that wasn’t the point, insisted Currie to Borden; nothing had been gained from the entire battle and all those lives had been wasted. Borden took that back to Lloyd George. “Mr Prime Minister, I want to tell you that if there is ever a repetition of the Battle of Passchendaele, not a single Canadian soldier will ever leave the shores of Canada [again]...”
The war was changing Canada fast - Imperialist Tories were becoming Canadian nationalists, the closest thing Canada had had to nationalists were becoming aggressively pro-Quebecois. German-Canadian society was basically eliminated, between the Wartime Measures Act, extra-legal oppression, and the simple desire to fit in in their new home; Ukranian-Canadians, less favoured in the best of times, went to labour camps in the interior (until their self-evident lack of threat and the manpower shortage sprung them out again). The Imperial Munitions Board regulated war-critical industries (which in practice, meant everything) and established factories to provide direct war supplies; the Wheat Board bought the entire annual crop and sold it to keep the food supply steady. Health care, vocational retraining, and pensions for veterans were all established, along with support for their widows and orphans. In 1916 the Parliament Buildings burned down and and in 1917 a munitions ship exploded in Halifax Harbour, killing 2000 people in the largest manmade explosion before Hiroshima. Both accidents were blamed on hypothetical German saboteurs.
But for all that Canada was changing under the strain of the war, other countries were changing faster. Russia collapsed into chaos and revolution in 1917, and the Central Powers, hollowing out under the Allied blockade and manpower shortages that dwarfed anything Canada was seeing, were close behind. When the United States, prompted by German submarine warfare and almost unbelievable German diplomatic blunders, entered the war in 1917, time was running out for the German Army. The spring of 1918 saw Germany throw essentially everything they could pull together into one last, sweeping series of offensives; despite huge initial gains that saw (amongst other things, and to Currie’s great disgust) Passchendaele given up without a fight, their momentum petered out and by the end of July the line was steady again. The Canadians had not been on it since being thrown into containing the first German push in mid-March; through most of the spring and summer, they had been resting, rebuilding, and training as shock troops for the massive Allied counterpush planned for August. On August 8th, the Canadians hit the German line at Amiens and pushed 13 kilometers in one day, capturing 5000 men in the process. By the end of August the Allies were at the formidable Hindenburg Line, which the Canadians broke at the northern end on September 2nd; the remainder of the month saw them outflank the German line at the Canal du Nord and then they were on to open country, untouched by war since the German offensive of 1914. On November 11th, with Canadian troops in Mons, Belgium, a previously-unimagined 70 km past the line in July, the Allies agreed to an armistice which, it rapidly became clear, amounted to a German surrender. The war was over.
Next time: the King-Byng-Thing.
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Good points especially regarding the conscription crises but couple of things to emphasis:
1) Vimy Ridge was the first pure Canadian operation with all 4 divisions of the Canadian Army. The ridge was take at a cost of just over 10,000 dead but was a major unifying event in both the Canadian Army and the nation. It was also one of the first battles where all troops were trained in their objectives instead of just officers and the heavy use of a creeping barrage of artillery meant major departures in tactics from previous failed attempts. It is also the site of the largest Canadian war memorial in France from ww1 and the site itself has been ceeded to Canada in recognition of her losses in ww1.
2) Paschendale...good coverage and an utter waste of men except for the fact the french armies were in a state of mutiny and much of the attack wasn't so much as for tactical objectives but as a means of keep the german army focused on the attack. Also attrition was brought forward as a supporting reason as the US was starting to prepare for operations and bleeding germany dry was felt to be the way to win the war.
3) During the 100 day offensive at the end of the war the Canadian Corp was assigned several difficult targets...some of which were deemed to be tougher than Vimy Ridge and required being attacked with little preperation. At a cost of 46,000 casulties at times attacking defended positions with fewer men than there were defenders many of the key gains were gained by the shock troops as Canadians (and the ANZAC Corp) had become known as. Will get try to get the disparity in forces tonight from home because it's pretty stunning.
4) the last man killed on the western front was Canadian...2 minutes before the armistice.
Keep it up man,
foresterab
1) Vimy Ridge was the first pure Canadian operation with all 4 divisions of the Canadian Army. The ridge was take at a cost of just over 10,000 dead but was a major unifying event in both the Canadian Army and the nation. It was also one of the first battles where all troops were trained in their objectives instead of just officers and the heavy use of a creeping barrage of artillery meant major departures in tactics from previous failed attempts. It is also the site of the largest Canadian war memorial in France from ww1 and the site itself has been ceeded to Canada in recognition of her losses in ww1.
2) Paschendale...good coverage and an utter waste of men except for the fact the french armies were in a state of mutiny and much of the attack wasn't so much as for tactical objectives but as a means of keep the german army focused on the attack. Also attrition was brought forward as a supporting reason as the US was starting to prepare for operations and bleeding germany dry was felt to be the way to win the war.
3) During the 100 day offensive at the end of the war the Canadian Corp was assigned several difficult targets...some of which were deemed to be tougher than Vimy Ridge and required being attacked with little preperation. At a cost of 46,000 casulties at times attacking defended positions with fewer men than there were defenders many of the key gains were gained by the shock troops as Canadians (and the ANZAC Corp) had become known as. Will get try to get the disparity in forces tonight from home because it's pretty stunning.
4) the last man killed on the western front was Canadian...2 minutes before the armistice.
Keep it up man,
foresterab
I think I covered 1 in my previous post, 2 is true from Haig's perspective but it doesn't make Currie or Borden any less disgusted, and I think I covered a bit of 3 (Hindenburg line and Canal du Nord) and 4 but mainly just ran out of space.
Thanks for the appreciation, all!
100 Day Offensive Stats since to read them it doesn't seem belivable and I never heard much about it in school ....
Amiens - Canadians met and defeated elements of 14 german divisions, captured 9311 prisoners, 201 guns and 755 machine guns. 3 German divisions would not be reformed after this battle. plus over two dozen kilometers of new advances.
Arras Trench System - 2000 more prisoners taken, another 1.5 kilometers of advance and several thousand germans killed.
fresnes-rouvroy line - several german divisions shattered, 3300 prisoners and many more germans killed.
drocourt quenct line* - 10 kilometers of advance through the strongest trench system on the western front. Elements from at least 7 divisons defeated, 10492 prisoners taken, 123 guns, 927 machine guns
Canal du Nord/Cambrai - several kilometers of advance in the face of 1 to 4.5 defender odds (4th division alone faced and defeated 55 battalions) and defeated 12 divisions plus 13 idependent machine gun companies and 1063 machine guns.
Since Amiens:
37 km of advance
31 german divisions met and either defeated or destroyed. This represented 25% of the german forces on the western front.
2745 machine guns captured.
suffered roughly 42% canadian casulties.
Valenciennces* - 1379 prisoners from 19 battalions representing 5 divisions and 2 machine gun detachments. 800 germans killed.
Mons - last commonwealth soldier of the First World War, Private Lawrence Price killed just before the armistace went into effect.
*includes a british division attached to the Canadian Corp.
By the end of the war:
Overall 55% of the Canadian Expeditionary Force became a casulty figure with rougly 1 in 8 serving killed. Of those who were in the front lines roughly 2/3rds of the soldiers were killed or wounded and if you were part of the poor bloody infantry the odds went up to 82% to your being a casulty. 15% of the soldiers who went overseas never returned. Roughly 425,000 men and women served out of less than 7.8 million Canadians almost all of whom were volunteers.
Numbers taken Tim Cook's - Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917-1918
Amiens - Canadians met and defeated elements of 14 german divisions, captured 9311 prisoners, 201 guns and 755 machine guns. 3 German divisions would not be reformed after this battle. plus over two dozen kilometers of new advances.
Arras Trench System - 2000 more prisoners taken, another 1.5 kilometers of advance and several thousand germans killed.
fresnes-rouvroy line - several german divisions shattered, 3300 prisoners and many more germans killed.
drocourt quenct line* - 10 kilometers of advance through the strongest trench system on the western front. Elements from at least 7 divisons defeated, 10492 prisoners taken, 123 guns, 927 machine guns
Canal du Nord/Cambrai - several kilometers of advance in the face of 1 to 4.5 defender odds (4th division alone faced and defeated 55 battalions) and defeated 12 divisions plus 13 idependent machine gun companies and 1063 machine guns.
Since Amiens:
37 km of advance
31 german divisions met and either defeated or destroyed. This represented 25% of the german forces on the western front.
2745 machine guns captured.
suffered roughly 42% canadian casulties.
Valenciennces* - 1379 prisoners from 19 battalions representing 5 divisions and 2 machine gun detachments. 800 germans killed.
Mons - last commonwealth soldier of the First World War, Private Lawrence Price killed just before the armistace went into effect.
*includes a british division attached to the Canadian Corp.
By the end of the war:
Overall 55% of the Canadian Expeditionary Force became a casulty figure with rougly 1 in 8 serving killed. Of those who were in the front lines roughly 2/3rds of the soldiers were killed or wounded and if you were part of the poor bloody infantry the odds went up to 82% to your being a casulty. 15% of the soldiers who went overseas never returned. Roughly 425,000 men and women served out of less than 7.8 million Canadians almost all of whom were volunteers.
Numbers taken Tim Cook's - Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917-1918
Exactly. People find it weird when they find out that Canada kicked major amounts of ass in WWI. So many just see/saw us as another arm of the British Empire. It's also terrible what happened to the Newfoundlanders at Beaumont-Hamel.