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Defending the Indefensible: Some Historical Perspectives on Canadian Defence 1867–1987

Canada's history, wrote Charles Stacey in 1939, has alternated between 'long periods when the national defences are almost utterly neglected' and 'short violent interludes, arising out of sudden foreign complications, when the country awakes to the inadequacy of those defences and tries to make up for earlier inactivity.'1 Stacey wrote at a time when Ottawa had finally recognized the imminence of a second world war. In the ensuing half-century, as Stacey emerged as Canada's greatest military historian, his generalization retained its validity. After the Cold War rearmament of the 1950s, national defence has played a minor role in the Canadian consciousness. Debates about uniforms sometimes seem to have absorbed as much attention as the cosmic issue of national survival in the thermonuclear age. Knowledgeable Canadians are accustomed to being berated about the level of their defence effort. A budget of $10 billion and a strength of 82,000 men and women certainly dwarfs Canada's peacetime military effort when Stacey wrote in 1939 but almost all its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization