History Browser

The Battle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which saw German U-boats penetrate the Cabot Strait and the Strait of Belle Isle to sink 23 ships between 1942 and 1944, marked the only time since the War of 1812 that enemy warships inflicted death within Canada's inland waters. The battle advanced to within 300 kilometres of Québec City. A war that pervaded people's lives but was still somehow remote, had become immediate, threatening, and very real. This site outlines the story of this battle.

In fighting along the Cote d’Azur at the end of WW2, the Canadian officer Ralph Wilson Becket won the American Silver Star, along with Sergeant Thomas Price, the most decorated Canadian aboriginal soldier.

In 1944 German U-boats returned to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which had been re-opened to trans-Atlantic vessels, intent on repeating their successes of 1942. By this time the Royal Canadian Navy was more adept at anti-submarine warfare, and its convoy procedures were much improved. Maritime air patrols were more proficient too. The U-boats returned with a potentially deadly advantage, however: the newly invented schnorkel mast.

On 6 June 1944, Allied forces invaded Western Europe along an 80-kilometre front in Normandy, France. Of the nearly 150,000 Allied troops who landed or parachuted into the invasion area on D-Day, 14,000 were Canadians.

This article explains the history of the Cold War era of NATO, the Warsaw Pact. It focuses on Canada's role during this era. Includes a list of suggested readings.

This report discusses the measures taken by the Army to safeguard the civil population and vital installations in the Lower St. Lawrence region as a result of the incursion of German submarines into the Gulf and River in 1942. After Japanese forces struck at Pearl Harbour, the whole perspective of the war was changed and the Allied powers had to redistribute their naval resources to cover the new areas in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The German enemy's response to this new situation was to mount more agressive U-boat attacks from the Atlantic and heading westward.

By 1942, fearing an Allied invasion in the west while embroiled in war with the Soviet Union in the east, Hitler endeavoured to create the "Atlantic Wall", or "Fortress Europe", by encrusting the Atlantic seacoast with concrete and steel defences. This article describes these German fortifications and how the First Canadian Army participated in capturing these defensive positions. Includes reading list.

The Canadians pushed rapidly eastward through France towards Belgium while British and American troops advanced into Holland. After an unsuccessful Allied airborne attack it became apparent that the war would continue into 1945.

A young Canadian officer, Ralph Wilson Becket, joined the First Special Service Force, a combined Canadian-American mountain warfare force, and saw service at Kiska and the invasion of southern France.

During the Battle of the St. Lawrence, the last loss of the 1942 season was the largest, and perhaps the most tragic. It was the Sydney to Port aux Basques ferry Caribou, which was sunk by a German U-boat in Cabot Strait during the early morning hours of October 14, 1942. More than any other event, the loss of the Caribou revealed to all Canadians our vulnerability to seaward attack and brought home the fact that the war wasn't just a European show.