Posts Tagged ‘Canada And The Second World War’

Private Bill Cameron could not know that enlisting in the Second World War would end with him shot through the back and left face down in the mud in France. He was just one of so many Canadian boys who volunteered to fight the Germans. For over a year he wrote home faithfully and those letters contain a detailed account of his experience overseas. In July 1944, the letters stopped.

On April 14, 1941, federal agriculture minister James Gardiner delivered an urgent address to the nation’s farmers. His words were broadcast coast-to-coast by CBC Radio. Canada had been at war for nearly 20 months and Gardiner began by summarizing where things stood. The Allies were in the midst of a titanic and deadly struggle with Nazi Germany for control of the North Atlantic. They had to win, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had earlier warned, or totalitarianism would triumph over democracy, slavery over freedom, evil over good. “I do not come offering,” Gardiner declared, “I come asking. Asking that every Canadian dollar and every Canadian acre be made to yield its utmost toward the accomplishment of Churchill’s double purpose—the winning of the Battle of the Atlantic in order that Britain and her allied nations may be armed, munitioned and fed while the forces of democracy are making ready for the greatest battle of all time....”