Bryan Elson - Canada’s Bastions of Empire: Halifax, Victoria and the Royal Navy 1749-1918

The voluminous literature on Canadas participation in the Great War of 19141918 contains very little information on its home defences; only six pages of 596 in Volume 1 of the official history. For the army, the glorious story of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France completely overshadows the unglamorous work of the thousands of men who manned the eastern and western coastal fortresses continually from the first day of the war to the last. Relatively better documented is the work of the infant Royal Canadian Navy. Unfortunately it too was condemned to a humdrum role, thanks to earlier governmental neglect. With no opportunity for heroes to shine forth it produced none. Not for these forgotten soldiers and sailors the stirring deeds of their overseas compatriots; simply four years of unremitting strain and later exclusion from the national memory.

The dearth of historical information is paralleled by a striking lack of personal accounts. The stressful but largely routine nature of home service did not lend it itself to the writing of memoirs such as those that emerged from the years of trench warfare. For men serving very largely in their own communities the need to write letters home was much less pressing, and those that were written would contain little worth preserving about their monotonous routine. Nor would they have much of interest to transmit orally to succeeding generations of their families.

On June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, a Serbian patriot named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones. Such was the bad blood between the two countries that war between them was a real possibility. In previous decades the major European powers had formed two rival alliances that could easily be drawn into a much wider war.

Canadians were aware that if Britain became a combatant it would mean that Canada would automatically be committed. But Europe was far away, and Canada itself seemed secure, facing no credible threat, and in any case was under the protection of the Royal Navy. That thousands of Canadian soldiers would eventually fight and die in the trenches of France was simply unimaginable.

But for two Canadian cities the perspective was very different. Halifax and Victoria were each home to a strategically important naval base, and for many years had been fortified and garrisoned for the purpose of defending them. Each was a provincial capital, a fact that in the case of Esquimalt was to become very important. They were 6,060 kilometres apart, with very different climates, economies and histories, but they shared the distinction of being the nations coastal sentries, each a fortified stronghold protecting a naval base. In August 1914 that became an important reality differentiating them from all other Canadian cities.

This is the story of their response to threats, both actual and imaginary, as the possibility of war became real. Before turning to the critical events of 1914 the development of both places, as cities and as fortified naval bases, must be traced. In the nineteenth century, that development took place in an evolving political and strategic context, complicated by rapid changes in technology, and especially in military technology. By 1914, this complex and sometimes chaotic process had determined the capacities of the two bastions and the naval forces they protected to meet the challenges of war. As I researched the subject it became apparent that those capacities had been predetermined by the story of Canada itself in the 165 years between 1749 and 1914.

Underlying the entire story was one fundamental geopolitical constant. After the American Revolution, mainland British North America was made up of the scattered colonies of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Lower and Upper Canada, each a separate entity with limited but growing self-government. The Hudsons Bay Company, chartered by Great Britain, traded in the vast expanse west of Hudsons Bay, as far as the Pacific, with no interference or political supervision from the homeland.

Throughout the period Canada was a dependency of Great Britain and part of the British Empire. Until 1867 the separate colonies were loosely grouped under the term British North America. Confederation united them in the Dominion of Canada, signifying that the new country was internally self-governing. However, Dominion status did not include control over foreign affairs or defence.

The mother country had full responsibility for the protection of this mostly wilderness part of the Empire. As a world power Britains potential enemies were numerous. Her interests could and did conflict with those of European nations such as France and Russia, as evidenced by the Crimean War. But in the North American context only the United States really mattered. Whatever the cause of a war between the two, the obvious American strategy would be to invade Canada. That threat had a long history. During the Revolutionary War the Americans had unsuccessfully laid siege to Quebec, and a plan to attack Halifax was abandoned only when George Washingtons spies learned that the place was more heavily defended than expected. During the War of 1812 several invasions took place at various points on the Great LakesSt. Lawrence border.

It followed that British foreign and defence policy would determine the security of British North America and, later, Canada. The views of the various colonies and the later Dominion were very much secondary to the broader interests of the empire as a whole, as conceived by the British government. Sometimes they coincided; if not, it would often be imperial rather than colonial interests that took precedence. For Canadas coastal fortresses imperial interests were synonymous with the strategic interests of the Royal Navy: those defences were there to protect the naval bases from which the strongest navy in the world would sally forth to implement imperial policy. They provided the Navy with the land bases required in the event that Britain would find itself in conflict with the United States, and with a need to project its naval power along the American coast to strangle trade and to put pressure on the United States government. Or to mount an attack, as happened in the War of 1812. They also gave the British government the military presence necessary for an authoritative response to any attempt by the United States to invade or annex Canada an idea that, as we will see, was openly discussed at various times in the nineteenth century as the new country expanded its territory in every direction but north.

After Canadas 1867 emergence as an internally self-governing dominion Britain retained control of its foreign affairs and defence. But as nascent Canadian nationalism became stronger the country began its journey from colony to nation. That journey would be complicated by the ambiguity of entrusting the defence of a would-be nation to the armed forces of the mother country. These tensions were played out and reflected in the development of the coastal fortresses and of the Canadian navy.