History of the Canadian Army

[4] The primary action that the newly formed militia saw was from the Fenians, a group of Irish radicals who made several attempts in the late 19th century to invade some parts of southern Canada from the United States.

[6] The 10,000 people, many of them Métis in the Red River Colony in what is now southern Manitoba, were not consulted about the sale, and under the leadership of Louis Riel rebelled, setting up a provisional government to negotiate their admission to Confederation.

[6] Donald Smith of the Hudson's Bay Company had been appointed to negotiate with Riel by Ottawa and arranged a settlement under which Canada would create a new province called Manitoba in exchange for the Métis laying down their arms.

[6] Riel fled and the rebellion ended without any fighting, and the terms already agreed upon between Smith and Riel were implemented with Manitoba becoming the 5th province[6] After the Treaty of Washington (1871) and the end of the Fenian raids, the British began to downsize their garrisons in Canada, mainly to move troops to other areas of the Empire, but also due to friendlier relations with the United States, Canada's immediate neighbour, and the only country capable of launching an armed invasion of the country.

The Canadian historian René Chartrand wrote: "The government's traditional policy was to spend as little as possible on defence while keeping up a basic military force".

[20] Caught on the spot, Laurier received a note on 9 October from the editor of the Liberal Toronto Globe saying he "must either send troops or get out of office" as the majority of voters in Ontario wanted Canada to fight in South Africa.

[21] Caught between the conflicting pressures in English-Canada and French-Canada, Laurier announced on 14 October that Canada would raise and equip an all-volunteer force to South Africa that once it arrived would operate under British command and be paid for by Britain.

[21] On 30 October, a hastily raised force of 1, 061 volunteers left Quebec City abroad the SS Sardinian (called "the Sardine" by its passengers for cramped conditions) for Cape Town under the command of Colonel William Otter.

[22] Newspaper coverage of the Boer War presented the conflict as a series of Canadian victories while less flattering news such as defective equipment and uniforms were not mentioned.

[29] Hughes was described by the Canadian historian René Chartrand as a man of tremendous energy, charisma and a forceful personality who was also a megalomaniac with a grotesquely inflated sense of his own importance and a "stubborn, pompous racist" who did little to disguise his anti-Catholic and anti-French views.

The modernizing faction of the Army called for a very well-educated officer corps that was capable of interacting with political and diplomatic elites in Ottawa, and giving the military its own voice in national decisions.

[42] Rather than engage in the politically difficult move of conscription, the Defence Minister, Brooke Claxton promised that Canada would raise an all-volunteer Army Special Force for Korea.

[46] On 16 January 1951, General Dwight Eisenhower, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, visited Ottawa to tell the Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and his cabinet that he believed there was a possibility the Red Army would invade West Germany in the near-future and help from Canada was needed at once.

[45] The way in which the North Koreans had driven the Americans back to the Pusan perimeter in the summer of 1950 followed by the Chinese victory along the Yalu in November 1950 had "shocked" Canadian decision-makers and created major doubts about the quality of the U.S.

[51] After Air Marshal Miller resigned, Hellyer appointed General Jean Victor Allard as Chief of the Defence Staff, who supported unification as a way of promoting the "French fact" in the military.

[52] General Allard, who had served with the Royal 22e Régiment in Italy in World War II and in Korea, had a distinguished combat record, but also described by the historian Desmond Morton as a "chronic opportunist" who was forever seeking a way to ingratitude himself with those who held power.

[52] Newspaper cartoonists frequently ridiculed the officers who resigned as an absurd Colonel Blimp types who were anachronistically clinging to British traditions and old-fashioned ideas about war in the modern age while Hellyer was depicted as a bold visionary and a technocratic elitist whose plans to merge the three services into one were in tune with the zeitgeist.

[52] An ambitious man, Hellyer had championed unification to present himself as an innovative leader as he openly aspired to be prime minister one day, and in general the media took his side against his military critics.

[55] In a 1970 white paper, Defence in the Seventies, it was announced the "Priority One" of the Canadian Forces was now internal security, with the future enemy now envisioned as the FLQ instead of the Soviet Union.

[58] The deployment was not popular with the senior leaders of the Canadian Forces, who feared correctly that Trudeau would use the October Crisis as a reason for his "Priority One" of internal security.

[61] Likewise, 400 Swiss-built armoired vehicles were purchased and stationed at various bases and armouries across the country that were meant for the "Priority One" of putting down riots, not war, through their purpose was described only as "peacekeeping".

[67] In 1967, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in its report to Ottawa slammed the Canadian military for mostly operating in English and demanded that more be done to open career opportunities for French-Canadians.

The Minister of National Defence, Léo Cadieux, announced their creation on April 2, 1968, to include artillery and armoured regiments as well as units of the supporting arms, with two battalions of the Royal 22e Régiment at their core.

[68] Morton wrote that: "From being a virtual anglophone monopoly, the Canadian armed forces came, for a time, to resemble the county they served: two mutually resentful solitudes.

[79] Mulroney gave his approval, and the Chief of the Defence Staff, General John de Chastelain, ordered the 5e Groupe Brigade Mecanisee du Canada from their base at Valcartier to Oka and Montreal.

[80] One consequence of the crises of 1990 was the post-Cold War cuts were not as drastic as expected with the defence minister Marcel Masse announcing in September 1991 that the Canadian Forces would close their bases in Germany by 1995 and the military were to lose only 10% of their personnel.

Aside from playing a minor part in the Gulf War in 1991, Canadian Forces were heavily committed to several UN and NATO missions in the former Yugoslavia which tested the shrinking military's abilities and resources.

Chief among these was sensitivity training such as LDA (Leadership in a Diverse Army) and SHARP (Standard for Harassment and Racism Prevention) which became mandatory for all members of the Canadian Forces.

Canada participated in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan during which time emergency equipment purchases were made, including world class artillery and armoured Nyala patrol vehicles, replacing aging howitzers and Iltis utility cars.

[86] In April 2020, the civilians needed rescue service from the Army in Operation LASER, to help them with Long-Term Care Facility (LTCF)-resident senior citizens in Ontario and Quebec that fell prey to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.