I was watching a show recently...
Ahhh... The Hitler... I mean the "History" Channel strikes again... Did they run out of shows about ghosts?
... the Canadians decided to provide convoys...
With what? What orifice is Canada going to pull the required escorts out of? Where will they be based? How will they be fueled or supplied or manned?
... for what American ships they could until the US realised the use of convoys?
For Christ's sake, the US knew convoys were needed. They'd been part of a convoy effort in WW1 after all. What happened was that the US lacked the organizational unity and, above all, the escorts needed for a coastal convoy system.
Clay Blair and many other historians have disproved and otherwise explained the flaws in this
"Hurr Durr King Was A Dope Herp Derp" nonsense since 1945 yet people keep repeating it. King didn't have the types of escorts he knew would be needed, King didn't have the numbers of escorts he knew would be needed, King didn't have organizational control over USAAF maritime patrols, King didn't have organizational control over the USCG, King couldn't order cities to blackout, King couldn't even order "interstate" merchant ships into convoy, and King was ordered by his political superiors to provide escorts for priority missions out of his limited pool of ships yet the Happy Time was all King's and the USN's fault?
Sure, whatever you need to believe.
Here's an example of what the Hitler Channel didn't tell you. King chaired a late 1930s ASW commission which recommended that a USN version of the then current USCG patrol cutter be built for convoy escorts. Congress balked at providing the money the militarized cutter program required and FDR thought his beloved sub-chasers could get the job done, so tiny, low endurance, barely armed sub chasers it was.
So, when 1942 rolled around and, among many other things, King didn't have the types and kinds of escorts he had said were necessary years before and the u-boats had a field day off the East Coast, it was all King's fault. Right?
King was a lot of things, a rat bastard, a serial drunk, and a reflexive US Army-phobe and Anglophobe, but he wasn't
fucking stupid.