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Canada Enters the War and the Battle of the Atlantic Starts
On September 10th, 1939, a week after Britain, Canada declared war on Germany. (1) The same day Canada's navy, merchant marine, and air force were sent to join the battle with the primary role of being an escort to the hundreds of convoys that gathered in Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia waiting to journey across the Atlantic. (2) -
Production of War Material
Canada’s navy was small, only having six destroyers and about 3,500 personnel. To make up for its smaller size, Canada started producing a mass amount of war material, mainly smaller warships known as corvettes. They were quick and inexpensive to build, about half the size of a destroyer and armed with only a single gun. The convoys also received aerial protection from the Royal Air Force Coastal Command which includes the Royal Canadian Air Force. (3) -
Canadian Troops are Stationed at Hong Kong
Despite struggling against the Germans, Britain decided to send reinforcements to Hong Kong in an attempt to deter any attacks from the Japanese. The Prime Minister agreed, and sent two battalions to Hong Kong. Despite the two battalions being filled with inexperienced soldiers, they believed they would only be doing garrison duty and that even if anything did happen their white troops would be superior over the Japanese Soldiers. (4) -
Hong Kong is Attacked by the Japanese Army
Three weeks after the Canadian troops arrived in Hong Kong, Japan attacked the United States' naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. Just a mere six hours after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Japanese 38th Division attacked Hong Kong. (5) -
Hong Kong Falls to the Japanese Attacks
After 17 days, the remaining Canadian troops are forced to surrender to the Japanese. Of they 1,975 Canadian troops dispatched, 290 were killed with the survivors being taken prisoner, with another 260 of them dying as prisoners of war. (6) -
Germans Attack in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
The Germans' goal was to cripple the vital supply chain to Great Britain. In May 1942, the German U-boats entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sinking 21 ships, including the SS Caribou. Between March and September, U-boats sank almost 100 merchant ships a month. Around 2000 merchant ships had been destroyed, and thousands of sailors being killed. (8) -
The Dieppe Raid
By August of 1942, Canada was involved in the war against Germany for almost 3 years, with its army not seeing any action besides the defense of Hong Kong. This was the first Canadian Army Engagement against the European theater of the war. On August 19th, 1942, a major raid was launched on the French coastal port of Dieppe by the Allies. It did not go well, it resulted in the fatality of more than 900 Canadian soldiers and thousands more wounded and taken prisoner. (7) -
D-Day and the Battle of Normandy starts
Canadian sailors, soldiers and airmen played a critical role in the Allied invasion of Normandy, the beginning of the bloody campaign to liberate Western Europe from the Nazis reign. Of the nearly 150,000 Allied troops that landed into the invasion area on D-Day, around 14,000 of them were Canadians. The Royal Canadian Navy contributed 124 vessels and 10,000 sailors and the Royal Canadian Air Force contributed 39 squadrons to the operation. (9) -
The Assault on Carpiquet Airport
The first week after D-Day, the Canadian and British waged war around the Norman capital city of Caen. Canadian forces were in the vanguard of the push toward Caen, during this push they were opposed by the fierce 12th SS Panzer Divison. On July 4th, the Canadian forces began an assault on Carpiquet airport, outside Caen. Both Caen and Carpiquet fell to the Allies in early July, but despite this there was still weeks of fighting left before the Normandy campaign was over. (10) -
The End of the Normandy Campaign
On the 21st of August, 1994, the Normandy campaign was over, with Canadians playing an important role in closing the Falaise Gap and capturing approximately 50,000 German soldiers. This allowed the Allies to being the pursuit of the enemy in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. (11) -
The Liberation of the Netherlands Begins
Operation Market Garden began in mid-September, 1944, three months after the D-Day landings in Normandy. It was a massive campaign to secure bridges across the Maas, Waal, and Rhine rivers. The capture of these bridges would allow thm to liberate the Netherlands, outflank the German defences of the Siegfried Line and advance into Germany. However, Operation Market Garden failed keeping most of the Netherlands under German control. (13) -
Battle of the Scheldt
The Allies needed a large harbour through which to ship supplies to their advancing armies. The city of Antwerp had already been liberated, but the 70 km long estuary of the Sheldt River, which connected Antwerp to the sea, was still held by the Germans. The First Canadian Army was given the task of clearing them out. They lost nearly 13,000 men during the fight, however, by the 8th of November the estuary and its large islands had been secured and on the 28th the first ships entered the port.14 -
The End of the Battle of the Atlantic
Just three weeks before the end of the war, the minesweeper HMCS Esquimalt was torpedoed and sunk, killing 44 crew members. Three weeks later, its attacker, U-190, surrendered to the Canadian forces. (12) -
The End of the Liberation of the Netherlands
While the other Allied armies crossed the Rhine into Germany, the First Canadian Army began rooting out German forces that remained in the Netherlands. The Canadians were greeted as heroes as they liberated the remaining small towns and major cities. The German forces remaining in the Netherlands surrendered on the 5th of May, 1945 and two days later, the rest of the German forces surrendered, marking the end of the war in Europe. (15) -
VJ-Day and the End of the War
Canadians only played a small role in the Pacific war, attached to British or Allied combined operations units. The war in the Pacific ended on the 14th of August, 1945, five days after the second atomic bomb dropped. (16)