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In April 1916, the first battalion of Canadian lumberjacks arrived in England to initiate large-scale forestry operations. The remarkable achievements of the men of the Canadian Forestry Corps—who would number almost 32,000 by November 1918—are little known. Astonishingly, over 70% of all the timber used by the Allied armies on the western front was furnished by these men. The county of Devon serves as a useful case study to survey the felling operations undertaken to feed the country’s insatiable appetite for timber. It also provides a lens into the at times ambivalent relationship between the men of the Canadian Forestry Corps and British civilians, on the one hand, and “attached labour”—foreign labourers from Portugal and the growing number of German prisoners of war—on the other.

This chapter highlights British-born migrants who returned home to fight in the dominion contingents during the First World War. It uses Bristol as a case study to explore several interlocking questions concerning migration, identity, and war. It also mentions the digitization of passenger lists, school magazines, honor rolls, newspapers, dominion attestation papers, personnel records, nominal rolls, and repatriation files that chronicle a unique phase of return migration to the United Kingdom. The chapter analyzes the role of soldiers in the processes of cultural transference between the imperial metropole and the colonial periphery. It points out how soldiers helped construct a wider British identity and culture overseas that fed a broader Britishness, some of which was exported back home.

Throughout the 1920s Canadian politicians, immigration officials, eugenicists and political commentators talked about the need to ‘Canadianize’ all migrants who arrived in the dominion, including those from the mother country. This did not mean that Ottawa was out to ‘de-Britannicize’ those arriving from the United Kingdom. British migrants were given preferred status because their common heritage and shared cultural values mirrored those of most Anglo-Canadians. In other words, ‘Britishness’ made up the bedrock of Anglo-Canadian ‘national’ identity prior to the Second World War. Nonetheless, tensions existed between the competing notions of what it was to be ‘British’, ‘Canadian’ or what John Darwin has posited, the formation of a ‘Britannic’ identity. Using the formulation and implementation of assisted migration and empire settlement between 1919 and 1930 as a backcloth, this paper chronicles the long forgotten controversy surrounding the competing national and imperial interests that exacerbated relations between London and Ottawa after the Great War.

The demands of the Second World War had long-term consequences for Britain's future relations with its four self-governing dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Forged by war, a key component in this evolving diplomatic relationship was the office of the high commissioner, which by 1950, became the main conduit of communications between the British and dominion governments. This essay introduces some of the main actors and tensions within the ‘family circle’, especially during the first three years of the conflict, when, after the fall of France in June 1940, the British Empire stood almost alone until the United States entered hostilities in December 1941. Christened the ‘junior war cabinet’, the influence of the dominion high commissioners reached its height in 1940, only to decline rapidly with the coming of Winston Churchill to power in May 1940. Indeed, their influence within Whitehall was directly linked with who was dominions secretary and the influence, or not, they had wit...

This article explores a number of key facets of Vincent Massey's tenure as Canada's wartime high commissioner in London between 1939 and 1942. Using the personal tensions and mutual suspicions which existed between Massey and the mercurial Canadian prime minister, W. L. Mackenzie King, this essay analyses how Massey and his dedicated staff coped with the increasing and punishing workload during the first three years of the Second World War. Wheat, wartime finance and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan dominated Anglo-Canadian relations during the early stages of the war when the British Empire/Commonwealth stood almost alone against the European dictators. What emerges is that, despite King's attempts to restrict Massey's authority in wartime London, the pressure of prime ministerial work in Ottawa allowed Massey, for the first time since his appointment in 1935, to exert the authority and responsibility he so desperately craved prior to the war. However, this essay is not just about high policy a...

In 1938 Sir Gerald Campbell arrived in Ottawa to take up the position as the United Kingdom’s high commissioner. Not much has been written about the man or his period in office (1938—41). Indeed, the sketchy and simplistic assessments of Campbell, which historians on both sides of the Atlantic have relied on for more than four decades, are seriously flawed and out of date. Using the fraught negotiations of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as a backcloth, and in the light of the rich archival material now available, the article seeks to redress and revise the hitherto poor assessment of Campbell’s performance as Britain’s third high commissioner in Canada. Far from being a weak or second-rate official who was constantly being manipulated by the wily and politically savvy dominion premier W.L. Mackenzie King, Campbell proved more than equal to the challenge. However, this analysis is not simply an examination of the personal and professional relationships between Campbell and Mackenzie King. An examination of Campbell’s career in Canada provides an important insight into the ever-changing relationship between Britain and its increasingly restless dominion partners, which overlapped with a critical period of the Second World War when Britain and its empire stood virtually alone against the Axis powers.