Most of the basic training of soldiers who enlisted in Ontario took place close to home, like Camp Borden northwest of Toronto, before they were shipped overseas.

The training program illustrated early in the war would have seemed tame to the Canadian troops who attacked the German fortifications at Juno Beach in 1944. They had spent the intervening years in training, and experiences like the Dieppe Raid in 1942 transformed raw recruits into experienced soldiers.

The video clips below illustrate the Canadian Officer Training Corps (C.O.T.C.) exercises on the Ontario Agricultural College Campus in Guelph, [ca. 1941].

Ministry of Agriculture and Food
motion picture films.
16mm, black and white, silent.
RG 16-35-0-3

The Service Flight Training Schools (S.F.T.S.) were part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which graduated more than 120,000 pilots, aircrew and ground crew for the Canadian, British, Australian and New Zealand Air Forces between 1940 and 1945.

Camp Borden and No. 14 S.F.T.S. Aylmer were among the 31 air training facilities located in Ontario, with a total of 96 across Canada. The training school at Aylmer provided advanced flight instruction in single seater fighter aircraft between 1941 and 1943. Harvards, as depicted in four of the video clips, were used for flight training at No. 14 S.F.T.S. Aylmer. Norman Irwin of Whitby, Ontario, who shot the 16mm amateur footage of training activities, served as Commanding Officer at Aylmer from June 1941 to July 1943.

Although most of Europe was occupied by Germany by 1941, many individuals escaped and served in national formations organized in Britain.

Soldiers, sailors and airmen from Norway, Holland, and other countries were sent to Canada for training and in some cases, served in units attached to the Canadian Army after the invasion of Europe began.

Little Norway was a training facility operated by the Royal Norwegian Air Force, first at the Island Airport at Toronto and later in the war in Muskoka.

Click to see a larger image (105K)
Little Norway, Royal Norwegian
Air Force, November 1940
Herbert Nott fonds
Black and white negative
Reference Code: C 109-2-0-18
Archives of Ontario, I0008981

The Dutch language Free Holland poster behind the crokinole players is a good illustration of the incentive motivating most of the foreign nationals training in Canada during the build up to the invasion of western Europe.