Although it’s not considered polite to say it, Canada has never really been an independent country. Not quite.
A reading of a new book on Canada’s military history tells us this without meaning to. David Borys’s “Punching Above Our Weight” offers a comprehensive account of Canada’s military entanglements from Confederation to Afghanistan, and beyond.
If you want a clear summary of the slow creation of an independent Canadian military, tracing its roots from early battles against the Métis in the West up to the Boer War and through the great wars of the 20th century, you’ll find it here.
Borys is especially good on the great wars, but there’s plenty more to chew on. This isn’t a book of nitty-gritty detail, but it does give an overarching account and pops into conflicts to tell the stories of heroic Canadians and to recount the shifting military tactics and strategies used and developed by Canadians.
The title — “Punching Above Our Weight” — is inadvertently revealing. It seems complimentary — like Canada has done more than you’d expect. In the shadow of our bigger and more powerful allies, Borys makes the case that Canada has contributed mightily to military entanglements abroad.
This, though, is the problem. Reading this book right now brings home the extent to which Canadian history has been a buddy movie, with Canada being the less good looking, weaker, very much “lesser” buddy.
We started as an imperial creation, ushered into existence under the guidance of first France and then Britain. Canada’s wars were British wars and vice versa. And most Canadians were absolutely fine with that.
You’ll hear a lot these days about how “we” burned down the White House in the War of 1812. And we did. But only if by “we” you mean “we Brits.” Because it was British regulars who took on that daring engagement.
Even when we became Canada in 1867, we didn’t become independent. We fought our first battles as British North Americans — whether that was putting down Métis rebellions in the West or heading over to Egypt to help the British take revenge for Gen. Charles George Gordon’s fall in Khartoum, or heading to South Africa to fight the Boers.
It’s not that we didn’t think we were distinct from the British, or that our engagement in conflicts didn’t instill a sense of national pride. Plenty of Canadians served resentfully under posh British officers in the First World War and felt all the more Canadian for it. But Canada was always a lesser ally — part of a team — hopefully, as the book puts it, punching above its weight.
Just when it seemed, in the Second World War, like we might be stepping up to take on a starting position — perhaps a chance to be Scottie Pippen to the British Michael Jordan, we got traded. To the American side.
That’s the second phase of Canada’s buddy-movie history. Facing the possible defeat of Britain in 1940, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called up Prime Minister Mackenzie King and asked to meet him in Ogdensburg, N.Y. King went — just like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went down to Mar-a-Lago at the end of November. When the great and powerful call, the little guy, Canada, comes.
Then came joint continental defence, Korea, NORAD and the DEW line.
One version of Canadian history tells the story of Canada since the Second World War as a tale of growing national independence on the world stage.
There are key spots for Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and his Nobel prize, for Canadian peacekeeping and for Canada’s push for multilateral institutions like NATO and the United Nations. This is the version that Trudeau was appealing to when he announced that “Canada is back.”
It all now seems so naive. At the very least, it is a strategy no longer fit for the times.
Even as Canada was preening itself as a somewhat independent ally of the Americans — adopting independentist postures like continuing trade with Cuba or staying out of the Iraq War — it’s clear that this was a kind of self-delusion. We were always part of the American sphere, incorporated into both its military and economic orbit.
Most Canadian leaders realized this and simply tried to find the most independent, dignity-saving way of living with it. What we weren’t prepared for was an era in which it might all come crashing down, leaving Canada alone and “buddy-less,” next to, yet still dependent on, an unpredictable United States.
To really see how Canada has remained a country trapped in adolescence, all you need to do is compare our own history with that of someplace like Israel that had to, from before its birth, fight for its own existence, beset on all sides by hostile powers.
That kind of adversity — that kind of true independence — can breed a collective will. It inspires you to build a military that will fend for itself, to make a garden from a desert, to win Nobel prizes and then more Nobel prizes. It makes you understand what your true national interests are.
Canada might now be entering into its first phase of true independence. This will mean living in a world that exists lower down on the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. All that nice stuff about self-actualization and diversity and hand-wringing about microaggressions are very much not the issues of the day. We are faced with threats to our safety and security — with ensuring food and shelter.
It seems very much like a new day. Even if U.S. President Donald Trump balks and completely withdraws the tariff threat, it would be foolish to go back.
When you’re pushed, unwillingly, into adulthood, you need to take the step and accept the challenge.
National Post