Canada's Closest Warzone: Newfoundland

By Malcolm MacLeod, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Newfoundland was not part of Canada during the Second World War, and had a different set of experiences that were particularly complicated and many-sided. People entered military services organized by three different governments; Newfoundland itself became an active theatre of engagement with the enemy; and there was a large-scale invasion of the country by friendly foreign forces.

Nearly half of about 16,000 Newfoundlanders who experienced active service did so in British Forces. In the Royal Navy and merchant navy, they were thoroughly scattered. The Royal Air Force, however, created the 125^th (Nfld) squadron, and there were two identified units of Royal Artillery. The 166^th (Nfld) Field Regiment fought in North Africa and Italy, while in 1944-45, the 59^th (Nfld) Heavy Regiment advanced from Normandy through Belgium and The Netherlands to a crossing of the Rhine.

The Newfoundland government mustered two units: the Overseas Forestry Corps (to cut wood in Scotland) and the Newfoundland Regiment which, activated from militia to full-time status and placed under Canadian command, saw service across the colony.

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Image: Library and Archives Canada/Second World War Collection/C-091596

Newfoundlanders also enlisted directly in the Armed Forces of Canada. The precise number is not known - these were individual acts rather than processes of well-documented units. More than 3,000 served in Canadian uniform, including 500 women - for unlike Britain, Canada aimed at recruiting both sexes.

In most parts of Canada, the worst war violence came from airplane crashes by students learning to fly in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Newfoundland, however, was a front line in the Battle of the Atlantic. When patrol planes lifted off from airfields there, observers knew that within a few minutes they would be scudding low over ocean pathways to attack submarines on the surface, or at least spot a white-waked periscope. These death-dealing patrols, coupled with the regular pulse of naval convoy escorts out of St. John's and Argentia, finally won the upper hand in the U-boat war.

But not before the enemy struck back. In 1943, four ore carriers were sunk by daring German submarine attacks in the protected anchorage at Bell Island, and the railway ferry Caribou was torpedoed and sunk on its normal run to Port-aux-Basques. More than 200 lives were lost in these actions, mostly civilians. As in Europe, unlike tranquil Canada, death and destruction were part of Newfoundland's war experience.

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While absorbing these enemy attacks, Newfoundland was inundated by large foreign contingents. Canadians arrived first. Soon after sirens screamed in Europe, Ottawa moved to get everyone's agreement - even Washington's - to the principle that chief responsibility for Newfoundland's defence lay with Canada. Under this strategic umbrella, Canada ringed Newfoundland ports with coastal artillery, developed air fighting bases at Gander, Torbay and Goose Bay, and made St. John's into the Canadian Navy's second-largest operational base.

United States forces came next. Under a 1940 agreement with Britain, the Americans built at Stephenville, St. John's and Argentia, by war's end spending $112 million on infrastructure (to Canada's $65 million). The maximum number of troops at any one time came to 16,000; the Canadian total was slightly larger. The two North American countries had several dozen radar, weather and other specialized facilities scattered everywhere. Few Newfoundlanders were very distant, none immune, from these purposeful outsiders, their influence and example.

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The first widely-felt impact of foreign bases was economic. Unemployment and the dole, widespread earlier, disappeared entirely by 1942. Probably the social impacts were more significant. The bases' influence was a modernizing one, promoting large-scale organization, wage labour, and new attitudes. Helen Porter, a Newfoundland writer who was teen-aged at the time, recorded the stir these troops caused in Newfoundland girldom.

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All across Canada, peace brought a flood of war brides from Europe. In Newfoundland, however, the arrival of British brides was more than balanced by the outflow of young women into new families on the North American mainland. Altogether, socioeconomic and psychological impacts were particularly intense for Newfoundlanders. The war meant the scattering of warriors into a half-dozen different theatres, while the enemy - and new partners - intruded right across their own threshold.

Because Newfoundland was not a part of Canada until 1949, much of the "Canadian" statistics and information mentioned in the previous section does not necessarily take into consideration Newfoundland's sacrifices and contributions in support of world peace during the Second World War. On that basis, it was felt that a special section be included in this guide to provide a better insight into the significant role played by Canada's newest province.