[2][3] [4][5] The Allied merchant fleet suffered significant losses in the early years of the Battle of the Atlantic as a result of U-boat attacks.

The Park Steamship Company was created by the Canadian government on April 8, 1942 to oversee construction of a merchant fleet to help replace the lost vessels and to administer the movement of materiel.

[6][7] Over the next three years, the company ordered approximately 160 bulk cargo ships and 20 tankers that would all fly the Canadian flag.

[9][10][11][12] At the same time, Canada produced 90 additional vessels for the American government which were turned over to the British Merchant Navy under a lend-lease agreement.

Also many British and Canadian merchantmen naval gunners as Defensively equipped merchant ship (DEMS) .

In doing this they sustained a considerably greater casualty rate than almost every branch of the armed services and suffered great hardship.

[15] The lost are remembered in The Royal Canadian Naval Ships Memorial Monument in Spencer Smith Park in Burlington, Ontario.

These were all private shipyards located across Canada - on the East Coast at Pictou and Saint John, in Montreal, Sorel and Lauzon on the St. Lawrence River, at Collingwood on Georgian Bay, and Victoria, Vancouver and Prince Rupert on the Pacific Coast.