Posts Tagged ‘Wartime Saint John’

While residents of British Columbia waited for the war to reach their shores in the early months of 1942, submarines attacked along the east coast for the first time since 1918. For most historians the assault on Canada’s shipping began with the sinking of the steamers Nicoya and Leto in the mouth of the St. Lawrence on May 12. There is no denying the impact on the collective Canadian psyche of this brazen incident in the main seasonal artery of Canadian trade, but Canada’s trade links had been under siege for months by then.

Naval historians have naturally concentrated on the great naval base of Halifax, and on the secondary naval bases developed at Sydney, N.S., and St John’s, Nfld. And much has been written on the role of minor ports and bases, such as Gaspé, Que., in the Battle of the St. Lawrence in 1942. Through it all, Canada’s major east coast commercial port, Saint John, N.B., scarcely earns a nod, but between the freeze-up of the St. Lawrence River in late November until its re-opening for shipping in May, Saint John was Canada’s busiest commercial port.