The World Descends Into Another War

The third gallery at the War Museum concerns itself with the Second World War.

The Great Depression hit Canada hard, as it did elsewhere in the world. It would also give rise to the dictators who took power in Germany, Italy, and Japan.

The first artifact in this area is this Mercedes. This belonged to Hitler himself, and was captured by the Americans at the end of the war. It later ended up in Canadian hands.

When Hitler launched his attack on Poland, Canada swiftly became part of the war effort, declaring war on Nazi Germany.

An army of volunteers would have to be raised to send across the ocean to Europe. Here we have the typical uniform of a Canadian soldier.

The Nazi blitzkrieg swept western Europe, occupying neighbours and spreading tyranny. The fall of France left Britain, along with Commonwealth counterparts like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, seeming to be alone.

Canadians went to war as pilots in the Royal Canadian Air Force, fighting in the Battle of Britain and afterwards throughout the war.

Canada became a training ground for commonwealth pilots. Its vast spaces were ideal, and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was initiated. Franklin Roosevelt, who foresaw the dangers of the world long before his countrymen could accept it, called Canada the aerodrome of democracy. 

Every city and town on this map of the country housed a training base under that plan. It was a big operation.

The Canadian navy was in it from the beginning as part of the Battle of the Atlantic, facing the threat of German u-boats. They protected convoys of merchant ships bringing much needed supplies to Britain and elsewhere. 

This is the uniform of Joan Voller. She went to war as part of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service, nicknamed the Wrens. I still remember she would be here for many a Remembrance Day alongside her uniform, still bright and chipper, telling stories of her war service, and meeting her navy husband. We'll return to the series after the theme day.

An Ending To The Great War

 This temporary grave marker is from the Battle of Arras, part of the Hundred Days. Canadians fought in places like Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, the Canal du Nord, and ultimately at Mons, driving the Germans back in each battle. This was being repeated all along the line by the Allies during those days. It was just a matter of time. Following the war, permanent gravestones would be erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission, founded in the war. Today its work continues as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

At Cambrai, the momentum continued, another costly victory.

Soldiers collected souvenirs from surrendering Germans. Among them was this spiked helmet, marked with the date and time of the previous owner's surrender.

This is the ceremonial headdress of Francis Pegahmagabow, the most decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian history, considered one of the deadliest snipers in military history. Following the war, he took a leadership role not just among the Ojibwe, but among First Nations peoples in the country as a whole, working for equal treatment.

The last Canadian killed in the war was George Price, shot by a German minutes before the armistice.

Canadians ended the Hundred Days by liberating the Belgian town of Mons, which had been occupied from the beginning of the war. The townspeople met them with open arms.

The cost of the war was enormous. More than one in ten of those Canadians who went to serve died, and there were even more casualties. An entire generation had people they had known who would never come home. This was typical of many countries involved in that war.

Afterwards, grief was expressed in memorial windows in churches, or town cenotaphs. Gravestones would be placed overseas where Canadians had died in action. And two decades later, another horrible war would engulf the world. 

Battles Of A Hundred Days

 Here we see a battlefield medical kit of the World War One era.

Blood transfusion sets were being brought to the field of battle, saving lives.

Men from across Canada and all sorts of backgrounds fought in the First World War. Women served as nurses and in other capacities, as well as doing work at home.

The Hundred Days is the final stage of that war, in which the stalemate of four years of trench warfare was finally broken, and victory was achieved at a high cost, a series of battles along the western front in which Germany was pushed back again and again.

What broke the stalemate? The concept of combined-arms fighting, simply the coordinated work of infantry, artillery, tanks, and aircraft in fighting together and supporting each other in battle. After four years of futility and throwing masses of men at heavily defended positions for nothing, someone finally got it right. 

Arthur Currie commanded the Canadians from June 1917. While not a popular commander among his men, he was nonetheless a very effective general, and a believer in being prepared. His ceremonial sword is displayed here.

Newfoundland was a separate dominion at the time, not part of Canada, and sent troops to fight in the war, and yet also sent some of them to fight alongside their Canadian counterparts. Robert Pilot was one of them. In the years afterwards he would be known for his vivid art.

Lieutenant Samuel Honey won the Victoria Cross for his bravery and leadership at the Canal du Nord, part of the Hundred Days. Like so many others, he did what seemed impossible, but did it anyway.

This is a model of a tank making its way across terrain, with supporting infantry.

The tank was brand new to warfare; while slow, they provided a reason for the enemy to worry.

The Conquerors is a work by Eric Kennington, painted after the war. It depicts Canadian soldiers during the Hundred Days on the march. Among them, characterized by pale faces and black rimmed eyes, are the ghosts of their fallen comrades.

The Hundred Days saw Canadians doing the extraordinary, pushing back the Germans time and again in a series of fierce battles, but at an enormous cost in casualties.

Hell Unleashed On Earth

 A collage of newspaper headlines here speak to how much the country was focused on the war.

It was a tense time at home, with debates about conscription.

An election was held during the war, with Prime Minister Robert Borden facing a former prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, who by that time was in the twilight of his life.

The painting above is Convoy In Bedford Basin,by Arthur Lismer, a commissioned war artist, depicting the harbour at Halifax. After the war, Lismer and several of his friends founded the Group of Seven, which changed Canadian art forever.

Halifax saw an explosion in its harbour on the 6th of December, 1917. A collision between two ships, one of which was carrying explosives, set off one of the largest non-nuclear and artificial explosions in history, killing almost two thousand people and wounding nine thousand more.

A piece of one of the ships is displayed here, along with medals related to the response.

That fall in France, Canadians were called upon to do what British and French forces had been unable to do- to take the ridge at the village of Passchendaele. Once again, they did what couldn't be done, achieving victory in a brutal battle that comes as close to hell on earth as anything in the history of warfare.

This is particularly vivid- a recreation of the shattered landscape you can walk through, with equipment, weapons, and even a body pounded into the mud. The Western Front still surrenders bodies back to the surface to this day.

The Front And Home

These are flight log books and the medal set of Captain Roy Brown, a Canadian pilot from the town of Carleton Place, which is near Ottawa.

Brown dueled with Manfred von Richthofen in the skies over the Western Front on the 21st of April, 1918. He is credited with shooting down the man who history remembers as the Red Baron, though Australian infantry also claimed credit.

A before and after- the great Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge would come to be part of the national story, and after the war, France gave the ridge to Canada for a memorial. The Vimy Memorial, pictured here during its dedication, commemorated the dead of that battle, and of the war as a whole.

The creeping barrage- the idea of artillery supporting an infantry advance- really depended on the competence of the artillery teams, as there were times the shells fell short into the ranks of your own side. But the concept would be perfected by war's end as part of what would be called combined arms fighting, the very thing that broke the stalemate.

This large painting is Canadian Artillery in Action, by Kenneth Forbes, a commissioned war artist.

Back at home, the war loomed large in Canadian society, with fathers, husbands, and sons overseas, and families worried about them.

This service flag hung at the home of the Adie family of St. Catherines. Four of their sons went to war. Only one survived.

Postcards and letters from Lawrence Rogers and his family. He went to war, leaving his wife to raise their young children, and they kept in touch as much as possible. 

He carried with him a small teddy bear from his daughter. A letter sent by his son never reached him- he died on the western front. His comrades ensured that the bear was returned to the family.

This was his uniform coat and cap.