Canada neglected to reflect deeply on the Second World War. Is it too late?
Canada hastened to leave the Second World War behind. We’re now paying attention, but is it too late?
Those who go on John Goheen’s tours call it the “Middle of Nowhere Tour.” Goheen, a 54- year- old middle school principal from Port Coquitlam, B.C., acts as a guide and historian for the Royal Canadian Legion’s Pilgrimage of Remembrance in which he takes Canadian tourists across Europe to important sites for the first and second world wars.
When he started doing the tours mainly across France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Goheen says his group would mostly be comprised of Second World War veterans. But nowadays, it’s their children and grandchildren, trying to retrace their relatives’ footsteps.
“I give them stories; I call them gateways,” Goheen said. “It’s really trying to offer an emotional gateway to the past.”
When Goheen brings a group to an important Second World War landmark, he tries to get them to visualize the events that happened here 75 years ago. But oftentimes, he ends up taking them to an unmarked field in the middle of the countryside, without a plaque or memorial to indicate what happened there.
Hence, The Middle of Nowhere Tour.
“If you didn’t know, you’re standing in the middle of a field or a hill and there’s nothing there. But it’s a hugely significant site and there’s nothing there that commemorates it,” Goheen said. “No plaque, no tablet, no cairn, anything. People 25 years from now will drive by and have no clue that anything happened there. And why would they?”
Sept. 2, 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the official surrender of the Empire of Japan, as well as the official end of the Second World War. But for years, after almost a million veterans returned from the war, their stories were barely told and the Second World War quickly vanished from Canadians’ collective memory. It’s only in recent years that we’ve started to get it back.
In his new book, The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering, and Remaking Canada’s Second World War, historian Tim Cook argues that the country as a whole quickly moved away from the war. Hundreds of thousands of veterans needed to be reintegrated into society, and the relatives and loved ones of more than 45,000 fallen soldiers needed to find a way to move on. The Veterans Charter, which provided returning soldiers with financial benefits and other incentives — such as the chance to attend a Canadian university for free — was crucial in providing the safety net they needed.
“We were moving forward into the prosperous 20th century,” Cook, a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the Order of Canada, told the National Post. “We treated our veterans well, they reintegrated back into society, for the most part.”
But though they were treated well, Cook argues that collectively and politically, Canada quickly moved away from the Second World War.
The First World War was a traumatic experience for Canadians, Cook says, and when it ended, the country built thousands of monuments, locally and abroad, notably at Vimy Ridge in France and the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Canadians celebrated Armistice Day, later known as Remembrance Day, annually on Nov. 11, and began wearing poppies.
And while Second World War veterans accepted some of the symbols of their past generation, many wanted their own monuments erected. But the government of the time, led by Liberal William Lyon Mackenzie King, turned down their requests. The National War Memorial had just been completed in 1939, and a national survey of Canadians supported the idea of building “functional memorials” instead.
Instead of the traditional stone monoliths built after the First World War, Canadians wanted to erect buildings such as libraries, community centres and swimming pools and dedicate them in honour of the veterans. They hoped that these memorials could become vibrant gathering places in communities, where fallen soldiers could be remembered the way they had been when alive. But in hindsight, Cook says, that often wasn’t the case.
“Critics were saying they weren’t sacred spaces, they’re not places to gather and to bear witness, and to reflect upon service and sacrifice,” he said. “And they haven’t been that. Most of them have not survived over the 75 years.
“The lack of memorials has diminished the place of the Second World War in memory.”
At the same time, the British and the Americans were writing books, plays and films to commemorate their contribution to the war, while Canadian stories were left behind. “It’s absolutely crucial to understand why we forgot the war. If you don’t tell your own story, it will be forgotten,” Cook said.
The Vietnam War left a sour taste in the mouths of many Canadians and anti- war sentiments were everywhere. Canada began to develop a reputation as being peacekeepers in times of war. But, Cook says, peacekeeping became an easy way to view the country’s military history and started to obscure the country’s role in the wars of the past.
Decades went by and slowly but surely the memory of the Second World War was vanishing from the minds of Canadians. But historians say there was a major turning point: the 50th anniversary of D- Day, when the allied forces landed in Normandy and laid the groundwork for victory.
In anticipation of the 50th anniversary in 1994, Canadian military historian Jack Granatstein was brought on by the CBC to help with their coverage, which he said was a “major effort.” Granatstein said The National host Peter Mansbridge, whose father fought with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, wanted to overcome pushback that the network had been receiving since releasing The Valour and the Horror miniseries in 1992. The series accused the Canadian military during the Second World War of incompetence and alleged hidden war crimes.
Accompanied with a swath of cameras and staff, Granatstein spent a few weeks in London and France to record and broadcast information about the Allied Forces’ invasion. Ultimately, the coverage greatly impacted Canadians, most of whom had connections to veterans still living at the time.
“It had real impact, and I think it finally brought home to Canadians that their fathers had done great things in the world,” Granatstein said. “It wasn’t just the Americans and the Brits who’d won that war, it was Canadians, too. I think that really mattered.”
Canadians were interested in learning about the war again. Veterans were invited into classrooms to tell their stories, memoirs and historical books were published and plays were produced. The Juno Beach Centre was opened in Normandy and a new Canadian War Museum building was erected in Ottawa.
People are starting to remember again, Cook says, but sadly, it comes at a time where there are fewer than 30,000 Second World War veterans still alive.
When he stops to think about it, John Goheen feels like he carries a huge weight. The headline announcing the death of the last Canadian Second World War veteran is inevitably coming, but he thinks about what might happen when his generation, one of the last to have living memories of First and Second World War veterans, is gone as well.
“I feel this burden sometimes,” he said. “They’re in my head, but how will these be preserved? And right now, they’re not going to be. That’s the sad part.”