This book offers a fresh perspective on North American history, and the
key role played by Halifax and Victoria in ensuring that Canada emerged
as an independent country in the 20th century.
Brian Elson focuses on the significance of the bases for the
all-powerful British navy at Halifax and Victoria through the 19th
century and the First World War. As he explains, Halifax gave the Royal
Navy the land base they needed to project British power along the whole
east Atlantic coast of North America. Victoria's Esquimault did the same
thing for the Pacific coast.
During the 1800s the United States grew dramatically, adding huge swaths
of lands west, south and north that had belonged to France, Spain,
Mexico, and Russia - while pushing aside native peoples. More than once
the American government came into conflict with Britain over British
territory in North America. There were threats of war and annexation,
and American popular support for absorbing Canada was strong.
In this book Bryan Elson shows how the British presence in Halifax, and
later in Victoria, stood in the way of US designs on Canada. American
leaders knew that the British Navy, with its bases on both coasts, had
the power to cut them off from the rest of the world with a naval
blockade. The American threat to Canada was effectively countered by the
British presence in these two cities.
The two bastions played their most important role in the early years of
the First World War. As Bryan Elson explains, in 1914 the United States
stood aside while the British Empire, including Canada, took on Germany.
In this situation, the British navy - including the Canadian navy's
first east coast warship - mounted a show of force by stopping all
incoming and outgoing traffic from the port of New York. This lasted
until the US finally opted into the war, on the side of Britain, in
1917.
Meanwhile, on the west coast the Equimault naval base was buttressed by
the extraordinary action of the B.C. provincial government - which at
the start of the war bought two new submarines from a shipyard in
Seattle for the fledgling Canadian navy.
