Canada went to war in 1939 burdened with two bitter and interwoven legacies from the Great War of 1914–18. One was of conscription and the other of the alleged betrayal of those who had served overseas. Canadian nationhood, it has been argued, was born on the battlefields of France, but the “war to end all wars” also cost many lives, divided French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians as never before, and produced a generation of angry and disgruntled veterans. Many lessons were learned from all this, not least by William Lyon Mackenzie King, who led the country through World War II....

By 1914, Canada had learned something about veterans. The militia pension regulations in 1914 had been hurriedly improvised for the 1885 Rebellion and differed only in detail from arrangements made for the War of 1812.¹ Widows received pensions only if they were in need, remained unmarried, and “proved worthy of it.” Like much else in Canada, pensions followed the British example. The counterpart of a host of British military charities was the Patriotic Fund, first established for the War of 1812 and revived, with some changes, for the Crimean and Boer wars. Private charities, like the Patriotic Fund, were managed...

Morale and cohesion in military formations are maintained by a variety of means, some planned and implemented centrally, others unplanned and distributed unevenly. A carefully designed training regimen, whether autocratic or democratic in nature, can foster loyalty to peer group and unit; a charismatic and successful commander can overcome weaknesses in training, doctrine, and equipment to motivate individual performance in the face of extreme distress. Leavened by good training, effective leadership, or other qualities (ideological conviction, for example), fighting formations can face the test of battle reasonably confident of internal stability. Armies and their constituent parts do disintegrate under combat...

As Canadians devised their benefit programs for the World War II veterans, it might be said that they were guided by the oft-repeated dictum, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”¹ Of considerable concern to the key mandarins and government ministers, as well as to countless soldiers and civilians, were the years immediately following the Great War – years that, rather than witnessing the arrival of a new and progressive era, as promised during the conflict, saw the emergence of economic and social instability, to which poorly organized and penurious government support programs for veterans contributed. This...

“The Veterans Charter” was the term devised by the Government of Canada to characterize the compendium of legislation designed for the veterans of World War II. While aimed at different social and economic effects, Charter legislation embodied two allied but distinct principles: “the compensation principle” and “the principle of recognition for service.” This chapter focuses on the second principle, particularly as it affected the entitlement and disentitlement to benefits in the past and as it continues to influence the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) today and into the future.

The legislation contained in the Veterans Charter can be grouped into...

On 21 June 1945, the Ford Motor Company placed a full-page advertisement in theWindsor Star.This outlined proposals to grant seniority, based on the time they had spent in the armed forces, to veterans who had not previously worked for the company. By definition, this policy would lead to the displacement of many union men who had joined the workforce between 1939 and 1945, but Ford officials defended the fairness of their plan:

Today and everyday, more and more veterans of this war are coming home. They want – and are entitled to – more than just three cheers and a...

It was during World War II that universities in Canada met big government. This encounter had several dimensions. Governments looked to universities to carry out essential war-related scientific and technical research, and this led to a mutually advantageous flow of research funds between Ottawa and the country’s postsecondary institutions. Once started, this stream continued to run. Universities and the national government also worked closely together on arrangements for bringing students into military service. The goal here was to ensure fairness and to meet the requirements of the armed forces while respecting the needs of industry and society for educated workers...

As long as there have been wars, individuals have suffered from the after-effects of traumatic experiences. Stories of nightmares, involuntary trembling, and dramatic reactions to sudden noises are part of the lore of every combat veteran’s family. Folk memory and literature, if not formal history, are full of examples of the returned soldier who became a burnt-out case, the promising young man who was never the same again, the chronic alcoholic who couldn’t get over the war. The universal character of this phenomenon is easy enough to establish. What requires investigation are the intellectual and ultimately social constructs developed to...

After World War I, Canada was one of the first countries to develop specialized programs for medical rehabilitation, vocational training, pension assessment, and the provision of prosthetic services for veterans with disabilities.¹ The Canadian programs focused on early “retraining for those who were handicapped for their pre-enlistment occupation,”² and as a result, disabled veterans provided some of the first significant examples that such individuals could live and work in the community.³ However, despite their example, programs for medical rehabilitation and vocational training for disabled civilians did not develop during the 1920s and 1930s, and most disabled Canadians lived in poor...

On a hot midsummer day in 1944, in the midst of the parliamentary debate over family allowances, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King captured precisely the symbolic change in thinking about wartime social policy which underpinned Canada's emerging welfare state.“Charity has become a nauseating thing,” King told the House of Commons.“The new order is not going to have things done as charity.¹ What is to be done will be done as a matter of right.”¹ This shift in emphasis from charity to entitlement has long been viewed as a central metaphorical turn in the construction of the welfare state. The...

Since the 1960s, or even earlier, historians in the United States have emphasized the impact of the Cold War on the psyche of the average American. The Cold War has become an explanation for the insecurities and anxieties of the postwar age. As David Halberstam wrote, America has been obsessed with it.¹ Everything from movies to the emphasis on the family has been seen through a Cold War filter.² Recently and elaborately, Elaine Tyler May has argued for a social construction of “containment” that derived from the Cold War and applied to family relationships, propriety, and, most especially, the role...

Thanks to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I had the good fortune to be able to attend the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of D-day in Normandy and London in June 1994 and the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of VE-day in Apeldoorn and London in May 1995. These were both astonishing events, at once of supreme interest to a historian of Canada’s part in World War II and also deeply, wrenchingly emotional. As I think back on them, it seems to me that I spent both trips in tears most of the time. To watch the old men, once young, marching through the streets...