A colourful and well-researched account of Canada's submarine service, from its beginnings on the first day of the First World War to its uncertain future today. Ferguson details the careers of the Canadians who served in British submarines in all theatres of the Second World War then goes on to examine the modern era.

A comprehensive history of Canada’s submarine service and the people who have served in it. Through a Canadian Periscope’s second edition celebrates the story of the Canadian submarine service on the occasion of its centenary in 2014. Created in 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Canada’s submarine force has overcome repeated attempts to sink it since then. Surprise, controversy, political expediency, and naval manipulation flow through its one hundred-year history. Heroes and eccentrics, and ordinary people populate its remarkable story, epitomizing the true essence of the service. Fully updated and with new and restored images, Through a Canadian Periscope offers a colourful and thoroughly researched account of the Canadian submarine service, from its unexpected inauguration in British Columbia on the first day of the World War I, through its uncertain future in the 1990s, to the present day. This vivid account celebrates the individuals who dedicated themselves to the Canadian submarine service and in some instances lost their lives in submarines.

A part-sequel to Through a Canadian Periscope (Dundurn 1995 and 2014), the second edition of Deeply Canadian explains why the RCN needs submarines and tells the story of how Canada nearly lost her submarine service in the 1990s after decades of dedicated duty. The book ends with the process to acquire four Victoria class submarines in the 1990s and their service to 2014, the year of the Canadian submarine service's centenary. Available as an e-book only and is best read on a tablet to enjoy the new and restored images.

A wide-ranging look at the history of the Canadian Navy, from its beginnings in 18th-century exploration and trade, to its astonishing expansion during the Second World War, through to its current roles in operations with United Nations and NATO forces.

The Halifax Explosion of 1917 is a defining event in the Canadian consciousness, yet it has never been the subject of a sustained analytical history. Astonishingly, until now no one has consulted the large federal government archives that contain first-hand accounts of the disaster and the response of national authorities. Canada's recently established navy was at the epicentre of the crisis. Armstrong reveals the navy's compelling, and little-known, story by carefully retracing the events preceding the disaster and the role of the military in its aftermath. He catches the pulse of disaster response in official Ottawa and provides a compelling analysis of the legal manoeuvres, rhetoric, blunders, public controversy, and crisis management that ensued. His disturbing conclusion is that federal officials knew of potential dangers in the harbour before the explosion, took no corrective action, and kept the information from the public.

From its eighteenth-century roots in exploration and trade, to the major conflicts of the First and Second World Wars, through to current roles in multinational operations with United Nations and NATO forces, Canada's navy – now celebrating its one hundredth anniversary – has been an expression of Canadian nationhood and a catalyst in the complex process of national unity. In the second edition of Canada’s Navy, Marc Milner brings his classic work up to date and looks back at one hundred years of the navy in Canada. With supplementary photographs, updated sources, a new preface and epilogue, and an additional chapter on the navy’s global reach from 1991 to 2010, this edition carries Canadian naval history into the twenty-first century. Milner brings effortless prose and exacting detail to discussions about topics as diverse as Arctic sovereignty, fishing wars, and international piracy. Comprehensive and accessible, Canada’s Navy will continue to provoke discussion about the past and future of the country’s naval forces and their evolving role in the interwoven issues of maritime politics and economics, defence and strategy, and national and foreign policy.

This book offers a fresh perspective on North American history, and the key role played by Halifax and Victoria in ensuring that Canada emerged as an independent country in the 20th century. Brian Elson focuses on the significance of the bases for the all-powerful British navy at Halifax and Victoria through the 19th century and the First World War. As he explains, Halifax gave the Royal Navy the land base they needed to project British power along the whole east Atlantic coast of North America. Victoria’s Esquimault did the same thing for the Pacific coast. During the 1800s the United States grew dramatically, adding huge swaths of lands west, south and north that had belonged to France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia – while pushing aside native peoples. More than once the American government came into conflict with Britain over British territory in North America. There were threats of war and annexation, and American popular support for absorbing Canada was strong. In this book Bryan Elson shows how the British presence in Halifax, and later in Victoria, stood in the way of US designs on Canada. American leaders knew that the British Navy, with its bases on both coasts, had the power to cut them off from the rest of the world with a naval blockade. The American threat to Canada was effectively countered by the British presence in these two cities. The two bastions played their most important role in the early years of the First World War. As Bryan Elson explains, in 1914 the United States stood aside while the British Empire, including Canada, took on Germany. In this situation, the British navy – including the Canadian navy’s first east coast warship – mounted a show of force by stopping all incoming and outgoing traffic from the port of New York. This lasted until the US finally opted into the war, on the side of Britain, in 1917. Meanwhile, on the west coast the Equimault naval base was buttressed by the extraordinary action of the B.C. provincial government – which at the start of the war bought two new submarines from a shipyard in Seattle for the fledgling Canadian navy.