Back in 2005, I was informed by an old no longer active member of SE that Canada had only survived because of 200 years of US protection (forgetting about the Invasion in the War of 1812 which he busily justified when I pointed it out). Canada's greatest worry until the 1930's was a renewal of that invasion, and all Canada's 19rh Century Defense budget went into defenses directed toward the US. It's the reason we built a Trans Continental Railroad which we couldn't afford, to link British Columbia, which became a Province in 1870, or 1871. (maybe Manitoba was 1870)
What I didn't know then was the amount of convoying that Canada did of US Ships off the East coast of the US from Florida north. At times apparently it amounted to 50% of the convoying off the US coast. This passes as entirely unremarked in Canadian Histories, as it does in American ones. Canadians just don't talk about that stuff.
Rob
a Canadian co-sponsorship with Britain and it is concerned primarily with the North Atlantic convoys to Britain and the place which the Royal Canadian Navy had in attempting to escort them in Flower Class Corvettes.
(There used to be a 1/72nd kit of an American Corvette, same design, called USN Saucy. Brits and Canucks as they were called then held to the flower naming convention which resulted in some poor sods sailing in HMS Pansy. One of the Canadian ones named in the programme was HMCS Arrowhead (from the Arrowhead lily which grows in the water in about 6 inches of submersion with the arrowhead leaves and flower heads about a foot or more above the water. HMCS Water Lily, Nah, don't think so.).
Great graphics, great interviews with old German U-boar folk, and old Merchant Marine and old RCN people too. In 1942 50% of the convoys were being escorted by the Canadian Navy which had been built in 1939 and 1940. By 1943 they had to be taken off operations and re-equipped because things were just worn out.
Interesting thing you'll never read in American books, the Canadian Navy was called by Washington to convoy ships on the US Eastern Coast. Perfectly logical when you think of it, the US Navy was occupied in the Pacific, and while the US had gotten away with coastal shipping untouched until mid '42, the Kriegsmarine hit it a ton because it was single ships unescorted, against an eastern seaboard undimmed from peacetime levels.
The RCN was bottom of the list for new technology, mostly from Britain, like centimetric radar (which could detect periscopes and Asdic, which we call Sonar.
After a major re-fit, and some American equipment developed from the British samples sent to the US under Lend Lease, and Canadian and British equipment too, the Canadians were back in it to the end.
History Channel, Convoy, great programme.
Rob
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