A National Force

Canadians consider the period between the Second World War and the unification of the armed services in 1968 as a “golden age,” an era when their army overcame its imperial past and emerged as a truly national peacekeeping force.

In this landmark book, Peter Kasurak draws on recently declassified documents to show that this era was in fact clouded by the military leadership’s failure to loosen the grasp of British army culture. As a colonial force, the Canadian Army had never developed mechanisms to produce its own doctrine or to advise political leaders effectively. During the Cold War, its pursuit of a “big army” policy in the absence of adequate funds and equipment placed the army at odds with citizens and the state. The discrepancy between the army’s goals and the state’s aspirations as a peacemaker in the postwar world resulted in a series of civilian-military crises that ended only when the scandal of the Somalia Affair in 1993 forced reform.

This groundbreaking account of regimentalism, reaction, and reform reveals that the Canadian Army had not achieved full professional independence prior to unification. It took years of organizational growing pains to develop into an army that reflected the aspirations of both its country and its military leadership.