A Military History of Canada
Updated to 2007, including Canada’s war on terrorism.
Is Canada really “a peaceable kingdom” with “an unmilitary people”? Nonsense, says Desmond Morton. This is a country that has been shaped, divided, and transformed by war — there is no greater influence in Canadian history, recent or remote.
From the shrewd tactics of Canada’s Fir …
9/12, 2001
On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, Captain Mike Jellinek of the Canadian navy took command of the watch at the subterranean headquarters of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, near Colorado Springs. By American law, NORAD still looked outward, not inward, chiefly at former Cold War enemies, evidence to its critics of military preoccupations outdated more than a decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. An airliner hijacking was reported near Boston, in NORAD’s northeastern sector. Local jet fighters had been scrambled. Jellinek phoned NORAD’s commander. Could
he react? Yes. Before the first hijacked airliner tore into the World Trade Center in New York, Jellinek had fighters vectored on its heading. If passengers on the fourth airliner had not fought their captors and crashed into a Pennsylvania field, NORAD interceptors would have met them over Washington. A Canadian had launched Operation Noble Eagle. Could anyone have saved the three thousand who would die? It was not a question NORAD had to answer.
It ordered every civilian aircraft out of North American skies. Combat air patrols swept over every major city. Non-conforming aircraft would be destroyed. Canadian airports filled with diverted international flights; communities took in marooned strangers without a second thought. Rallying his shocked and frightened country, President George W. Bush declared an unlimited war on terror. Any nation that did not wholeheartedly back the United States in this war would be treated as an enemy. Meeting in an emergency session on Wednesday, September 12, NATO representatives dealt for the first time in their sixty-two-year history with the proposition that had originally created the organization: an attack on one member was an attack on all.
That same morning, September 12, Canadians awoke to learn that the United States had slammed its borders shut, stopping four-fifths of Canada’s foreign trade, eliminating 43 per cent of its gross domestic product. This was an economic disaster on the scale of two simultaneous Great Depressions. Huge columns of trucks snaked back from major border crossings. Border cities, economies built on just-in-time deliveries, ground to a halt. By noon, cities farther away felt the crunch. Much that followed in Canada reflected the 9/12 crisis.
Canada had gone to war in 1914 because the British Empire had declared war. British Canadians, at least, responded as British patriots. That experience persuaded W. L. Mackenzie King and most other
Canadians that next time “Parliament would decide.” In 1939 and 1950, Canada’s Parliament had decided on war. It would do so again in 2001, but this time most Canadians understood that the price for
neutrality was unacceptable. Canada’s 1988 decision to link its trade as well as its defences to its hugely powerful neighbour left the Chrétien government no choice but to reassure President Bush that Canada would do all it could to back the American war. Many countries echoed that pledge; few had Canada’s practical obligation to respect it.
A Short History of Canada
Most of us know bits and pieces of our history but would like to be more sure of how it all fits together. The trick is to find a history that is so absorbing you will want to read it from beginning to end. With this book, Desmond Morton, one of Canada’s most noted and highly respected historians, shows how the choices we can make at the dawn of …
Canada and the Two World Wars
Marching to Armageddon: Canadians and the Great War, 1914–1919 and A Nation Forged in Fire: Canadians and the Second World War, 1939–1945 remain classic examinations of Canada's wartime experience. In Canada and the Two World Wars, these two important books are brought together in one volume, featuring a new introduction by the authors, two of …
Fight or Pay
The First World War is remembered largely for the immense sacrifice inlife and limb of Canadian soldiers. In Fight or Pay, DesmondMorton turns his eye to the stories of those who paid in lieu offighting – the wives, mothers, and families left behind whensoldiers went to war. A pan-Canadian story, Fight or Paybrings to light the lives of thousands …
Free Trade
Free Trade provides a historical framework for ongoing discussion of economic and environmental issues. While there is empirical evidence on trade flows - they increased dramatically in both directions - the debate on related issues continues. The impact of free trade on jobs and manufacturing Productivity, the effectiveness of dispute settlement, …
The Mystery of Frankenberg's Canadian Airman
A German-Canadian's search for the truth about the murder of a Canadian airman near his hometown, and his quest for truth, justice and reconciliation in Canada and in Germany
Growing up in Hitler's Germany, Peter Hessel witnessed the Allies' ruthless bombing of his hometown, Chemnitz. Nearly sixty years later in Canada, Hessel heard about a brutal, …
United Nations, The
A non-fiction book for children
What Next?
WHAT NEXT? is a collection of Aislin’s best cartoons from the past two years published by McArthur and Company in October of 2006. It includes an introduction by historian, Desmond Morton.
When Your Number's Up
Regardless of ancestry, background or status, almost every Canadian had a relative in the First World War. Yet very few of us realize what it was like or what exactly the Canadians were asked to do for country and king. How were these men trained? What was it like tin the trenches? Why did the early disasters of 1915 and 1916 end in the victories o …
Working People
Desmond Morton highlights the great events of labour history -- the 1902 meeting that enabled international unions to dominate Canadian unionism for seventy years, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and an obscure 1944 order-in-council that became the charter of labour's rights and freedoms. He looks at the "new model" unions that used their memb …
