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Canada's military relationship with UK has been complicated. Read Armageddon, Max Hastings - Canadian PM King (I think it was) in the 1940s had enormous political pressure from the French Canadian population - they didn't want to contribute to a repeat of the bloodletting of WWI. Nor were they enthusiastic about fighting what they considered to be UK's/British Empire's war. & so Canadian troops had to volunteer to get to UK, & I believe their service during WWII was limited to the ETO. Also, once D-Day took place in June 1944, the losses piled up very fast, & Canada had real problems replacing riflemen (most of the casualties) with similar skills & training (so did the UK, for that matter, & the US).
Wasent this done to placate Quebeckers, many of whom openly sympathized with the Axis?
The sources that I have read say iot was due to isolationism, not pro axis sentiments. A large number of Quebecois had been in Canada for centuries, and no longer had any ties to Europe, not even with France. As a result, were very isolationist. The isolationist Quebecois were mirrored by isolationist Anglophones, whose families had also been in Canada for centuries and had no ties to Great Britain. But.. the Anglophone segment of Canada also contained substantial numbers of first or second generation immigrants from Great Britain. These people still had ties to the mother country and favored a large Canadian intervention.
So.... the Canadian government developed a compromise for WWI and WWII. Canada would intervene, but to keep the isolationists from both language groups happy, they were promised that combat positions would be filled by all volunteers. This promise was kept, but in WWII at least, as the number of genuine volunteers dried up, the definition of "combat position" was changed. In the end, only front line, battalion level of lower infantry and armor positions and aviation positions were considered "combat" for purposes of the no conscripts policy. Conscripts were then placed in artillery units, engineers, and all kinds of support units at Brigade and higher.
Prime Minister Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace prise for ending the conflict of the Suez Channel crisis in the 1950s and later tried to keep Canada out of the Vietnam conflict and then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was never a fan for the America also keep Canada out of this conflict , but Canada did send peace keepers into Vietnam , and did sell arms to America for the war
The Vietnam war was one of the darkest periods in our history IMO. Canada was smart to stay the Hell out of this mess.
Don
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