This highly illustrated commemorative volume chronicles the full century of the Canadian navy as a proud national institution. Comprehensive coverage includes the origins of the Canadian navy in 1867, both world wars, the Korean conflict, the postwar period, and a look at the navy of the future.

Based on extensive archival research, it traces the story of the navy, from its beginnings as Lauriers tinpot navy, and includes the interwar years.

Beginning in Canada's earliest days, our ancestors were required to perform some form of military service, often as militia. This title provides the archival, library, and computer resources that can be employed to explore your family's military history, using items such as documents, uniforms, medals, and other militaria to guide the search.

In the first major study of the Royal Canadian Navy's contribution to foreign policy, Nicholas Tracy takes a comprehensive look at the paradox that Canada faces in participating in a system of collective defence as a means of avoiding subordination to other countries. Created in 1910 to support Canadian autonomy, the Royal Canadian Navy has played an important role in defining Canada's relationship with the United Kingdom, the United States, and NATO. Initially involved with participation in Imperial and Commonwealth defence, the RCN's role shifted following the Second World War to primarily ensuring the survival of the NATO alliance and deflecting American influence over Canada. Tracy demonstrates the ways in which the Navy's priorities have realigned since the end of the Cold War, this time partnering with the US and NATO navies in global policing. Insightful, detailed, and grounded in solid historical scholarship, A Two-Edged Sword presents a complete portrait of the shifting relevance and future of a cornerstone of Canadian defence.

Now celebrating its tenth edition, _World Naval Review_ provides an affordable but yet authoritative summary of global naval developments over the past 12 months. Regional surveys of fleet evolution and procurement by editor Conrad Waters are supplemented by in-depth articles from a range of subject experts focusing on significant new warships, technological advances and specific navies. Features in this edition include extended reviews of the new aircraft carriers USS _Gerald R. Ford_ and HMS _Queen Elizabeth_, the largest ships ever to serve in their respective fleets. Technological subjects include assessments of naval communications by Norman Friedman and autonomous systems by Richard Scott, whilst David Hobbs’ usual review of naval aviation is expanded to include a broader analysis of key trends over the last decade. Meanwhile, reviews of specific fleets focus on the navies of Canada, Peru and Singapore, all medium-sized naval powers at critical – if very different – phases of their development. Firmly established as providing the only annual naval overview of its type, World Naval Review is essential reading for anyone – whether enthusiast or professional – interested in contemporary maritime affairs.

During the Second World War, hundreds of children were sent from the UK to stay with family and friends in Canada as “war guests.” This book collects the letters of one such war guest, young W.A.B (Alec) Douglas, who wrote from his wartime home in Toronto to his mother back home in London. Alec wrote home every week, although sometimes he forgot to post his letters, and they were delayed, and some letters did not get through. Occasionally his godmother and host, Mavis Fry, would add comments and write her own more detailed letters. Also included are letters from Lillian Kingston, who brought Alec to North America in 1940. This is a story of exposure, at an impressionable age, to ocean passage in wartime, the sights and sounds of New York, the totally new and unfamiliar world of Canada, the wonderful excitement of passage home in a Woolworth Aircraft Carrier as a "Guest of the Admiralty," and his eventful return to a world he had left behind three years before. A War Guest in Canada includes a foreword by Cynthia Comacchio and an introduction by Roger Sarty.

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.

This commemorative volume produced on the occasion of the centennial of the Canadian Navy, 1910-2010, records a special kind of dual citizenship: Canadians exercising the profession of the sea in their nation's service, while also living out the demands of their civilian occupations in their home communities. The perspectives of the part-time citizen-sailors who have made up Canada's Naval Reserve over the past century provide an interesting, valuable, and timely alternative history of the Canadian Navy. Most of the contributors to this volume have served in Canada's Naval Reserve, and all are respected authorities in their fields. Whether read on its own, or as the intended companion to The Naval Service of Canada, 1910-2010: The Centennial Story, readers will find much to delight and inform in this lavish combination of text, photos, and illustrations of the people, ships, and aircraft that have formed a proud national institution.

“Quick-paced, well-researched and well-illustrated, this is the first new history of Canada’s armed forces in decades.” — J. L. Granatstein, author of Canada’s Army Punching Above Our Weight takes readers on a riveting exploration spanning one hundred and fifty years of Canadian forces. This photograph-rich history of 150 years of the Canadian military traces the evolution of the country’s armed forces from a small, underfunded, poorly trained militia to the modern, effective military it is today. From the Red River Resistance and the Boer War through the world wars to modern peacekeeping and the long war in Afghanistan, David A. Borys details the conflicts and operations that Canadian soldiers have served in. He highlights the key battles, among them Amiens, the Scheldt Estuary, and Operation Medusa; the significant people, including Louis Riel, Arthur Currie, and Guy Simonds; and the decisive moments, such as the passing of conscription in August 1917, Canada’s declaration of war in 1939, and the peacekeeping crises of the 1990s, that came to define the scope of Canada’s participation in international conflicts and cement its global reputation. Borys also explores the challenges that the Canadian nation and its military have faced over those years, including major cultural and demographic shifts, a continual struggle for resources from generally disinterested governments, battlefield failures, and notorious and shocking scandals, along with ever-changing global threats. Punching Above Our Weight brings to light a new perspective on the Canadian military and its place in the world.

Co-winner of the 2014-2015 Charles P. Stacey Award Tim Cook, Canada’s leading war historian, ventures deep into World War Two in this epic two-volume story of heroism and horror, of loss and longing, sacrifice and endurance. Written in Cook’s compelling narrative style, this book shows in impressive detail how soldiers, airmen, and sailors fought—the evolving tactics, weapons of war, logistics, and technology. It gauges Canadian effectiveness against the skilled enemy whom they confronted in battlefields from 1939 to 1943, from the sweltering heat of Sicily to the frigid North Atlantic, and from the urban warfare of Ortona to the dark skies over Germany. The Necessary War examines the equally important factors of morale, discipline, and fortitude of the Canadian citizen-soldiers. The war was an engine of transformation for Canada. With a population of fewer than twelve million, Canada embraced its role as an arsenal of democracy, exporting war supplies, feeding its allies, and raising a million-strong armed forces that served and fought in nearly every theatre of war. The nation was mobilized like never before in the fight to preserve the liberal democratic order. The six-year-long exertion caused disruption, provoked nationwide industrialization, ushered in changes to gender roles, exacerbated the tension between English and French, and forged a new sense of Canadian identity. Canadians were willing to bear almost any burden and to pay the ultimate price in the pursuit of victory. As with his award-winning two-volume series on WWI, Tim Cook uses original sources, letters from soldiers, rare documents, and maps of battlefields to illustrate the contributions and sacrifices made by what is often called the greatest generation. Magisterial in its scope, The Necessary War illuminates Canada’s past as never before. From the Western Front to the home front, Canadians served many roles in a war that had to be fought and won.