Canada's Involvement in The Second World War

Canada involvement in the second world war was well calculated because unlike the first world war, where it plunged into the war as soon as the United Kingdom got involved, in the second world war, Mackenzie King, the Canadian leader had to wait until the parliament consented to the involvement and Canada got involved only after Hitler invade Poland in 1939.

Unlike many countries especially in Europe that suffered economic slump during the Second World War, Canada remained virtually unaffected during the war and its involvement set up a foundation through which the country prospered during the years after the war. This paper will look at the impact of the Second World War on the various aspects of life of the Canadians.

Preview

Home front refers to the civilian activities when the nations are involved in war. The Second World War was a full blown war and what was more important to the allied and the axis powers was homeland production. Home front life during the second world war was an integral part of the war effort for all the nations that took part in the second world war and its impact was felt far and wide especially in the outcome of the war (Zuehlke 24). During the war, many governments, the Canadian government included were actively involved in their respective home fronts as a measure to educate them on a wide variety of protective measures both at the individual and at the national level. There was widespread propaganda to influence the citizenry and women were a significant part of the home front because they were the ones who were the pillars of the country during the war because most of the men were away from home fighting.

Impacts

In the years after the Second World War, Canada became one of the leading nations in the world because the conclusion of the war spearheaded economic prosperity allover Canada especially because of the political alterations that took place in the country (Finkel 99). The country became more vocal in the international affairs especially after moving away from the shadow of Britain. Apart from economic and political transformations, there were also cultural transformations that took place that ensured that the Canadian culture were preserved in the wake of the on going Americanization that was taking place immediately after the war, and the increasing immigrant population (Finkel 99). Canada is one of the countries that emerged from the Second World War stronger especially because of the position it took during the war and the role it played.

The economy of Canada improved unexpectedly at the outbreak of the Second World War, just like the USA. Canada involvement in the second world war was well calculated because unlike the first world war, where it plunged into the war as soon as the United Kingdom got involved, in the second world war, Mackenzie King, the Canadian leader had to wait until the parliament consented to the involvement and Canada got involved only after Hitler invaded

Poland in 1939 (Finkel 101). One of the major contributions of Canada in the war that helped it even later after the war was its commonwealth training plan where the pilots and air crews of the allies were trained at various air bases in Canada. This has helped Canada to become one of the worlds leading trainers in the aviation sector even to date. The Canadian women were very much involved in the war efforts and there were some who got fully involved in the armed activities at a time in the world when there were very less women in the armed forces. Initially the women were involved as nurses but as time went on the Canadian women corps army, the royal Canadian women’s division in the air force and the royal Canadian naval division for women were formed and this provided avenues through which women could actively be involved in the Second World War efforts. However, women were not allowed to enter combat zones, though they would perform other administrative duties in the armed force of Canada (Zuehlke 44).

More than 45,000 women were involved in the war efforts with a ninth of the number serving overseas. There were a large number of men serving in the army and the rest of the economic areas of interest seemed to suffer a beating due to the large scale of Canadian involvement in the Second World War and there emerged very many opportunities for women in the workplaces, some of them they had never handled (Graham 21). The government encouraged the women to work in the male oriented fields like in the factories, machinery stores and even in the heavy industries by giving women tax breaks and free care for their children.

During the war, many supplies were required and it was the women who were involved in the recycling and salvaging in order to meet the demand out there. There were very many volunteer organizations formed and headed by women that helped in preparing packages for the army officers working overseas or the POWs based in the axis countries (Graham 23). The reason the economy of Canada was not affected by the overly involvement of the country in the second world war is because of the active involvement in the economic sectors that were left behind by the men who had gone to fight in the war (Zuehlke 47). The dire need of employees in the workplace was satisfied by the compliance by women to join economic sectors that were not traditionally identified with women and this meant that economic production was not affected by the involvement in the war. By the end of the Second World War, the number of women in the workforce was twice the number that was there at the beginning of the war in 1939. This means that the success of Canada both at the home front and at the war had its foundations on the role of the women as the supporting pillars that enabled the country to continue going on at all avenues.

Another front which the Second World War had a very heavy impact on the Canadian way of life was in the technology and engineering. Most of the research that aided the allies in the Second World War took place in Canada. The first decompression chamber for high attitude flights in the world was manufactured in Canada as the war went on (Graham 24). The NRC was at the centre of global ontribution to the technology of radar and Canada was the one that installed the coastal defense system at a place called Halifax and it was called the night watchman. Some years later Canada mass produced radar systems for the British. The advantage that Canada had is that it was being used to supply the allies with a wide variety of war equipment and technology and in the process; Canada was building its own foundations in the same areas that helped it in quick expansion years after the war while others were busy trying to reconstruct their nations after the war.

The other impact of the war on Canada was the total transformation from an agricultural nation to an industrial one in a span of five years (Zuehlke 47). Before the war, the Canadians were concentrated in the countryside and the country was almost sixty percent an agricultural nation. There was no heavy industrialization, but the war activated the people who moved from the rural areas to the towns and cities where they learnt a variety of industrial skills especially the ones who joined the military and these are the skills that were used even in the economic transformation of Canada even after the war. The other impact was the expansion of the entire transport network because the war forced Canada to build more than 250 new air fields for the commonwealth training program that targeted more than 35 nations (Zuehlke 48). The focus on training of the air force and other military personnel had a positive impact even after the war because, though the purpose of the training was to feed other countries like Britain that actively participated in the war, by the end of the war, Canada was left with a very strong armed forces and in fact it had the third largest and strongest navy in the world by 1950. To date, the Canadian air force is one of the best in the world and Canada leads in the manufacture of military trucks that have been consumed by a wide variety of countries throughout the world. These are but some of the positive ways in which the war changed Canada but the most negative way in which the Second World War affected Canada was the massive loss of young men who died in the process of the war and most of them were never even buried at home (Zuehlke 50).