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In 2010 we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Canadian Navy, but in fact, it did not really begin for some time. Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals adopted the idea of a Canadian navy, with a Canadian system for training officers and seamen and a domestic shipbuilding industry, as a compromise. Robert Borden’s Conservatives considered a Canadian navy imperial heresy and preferred instead simply to make a financial contribution to the Royal Navy, which would commission the construction of new battleships in British yards by British shipbuilders and man them with British sailors. The first such battleship was named HMS Canada, but was eventually sold to Chile, and the British did not remit the proceeds.

On the other hand, Henri Bourassa’s Quebec Nationalists, who had worked with Borden’s Conservatives to defeat Laurier in 1911 (their shared opposition to Liberals being almost the only thing they could agree on), opposed any contribution to any navy as likely to increase the chances of Canada becoming entangled in a European war that was no earthly concern of Canada’s. French Canada has never had any significant maternal attachments to France in the way English-speaking Canada has had to Britain. Although French-Canadians have always been militant about defending this country, and largely saved it from joining the American Revolution and from being annexed in the War of 1812, they have generally been rather isolationist and are more resistant to this day than English-speaking Canadians to supporting alliance initiatives overseas. The one exception to this was the Korean War. The Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis and the Roman Catholic Church leadership whipped the population up to such paroxysms of anti-Communism, Quebec was eager to send a larger contingent than Canada did to Korea. The archbishop of Quebec, the subsequent Cardinal Maurice Roy,had served in the chaplains’ corps in the Second World War, attaining the rank of colonel and receiving the Order of the British Empire for bravery in combat. He eventually became the chaplain general of the Canadian army.