Transcript
Transcript: World War II: Lessons and Legacy 80 Years Later
[00:00:00 The CSPS animated logo appears onscreen. Text on screen: Webcast.]
[00:00:07 Jill Sinclair and Tim Cook are seated in a room with an audience of public servants, and Canadian Armed Forces personnel in uniform.
The camera shows many different angles of the speakers and the audience throughout the video, including full screen views of each person as they are speaking.]
Jill Sinclair: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Canada School of Public Service, and thanks for joining me, and Tim Cook, as we commemorate and reflect on the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. My name is Jill Sinclair, and I'm delighted to be moderating today's event.
[00:00:28 Text on screen: Jill Sinclair, Retired GC Senior.]
Jill Sinclair: Before we begin, I'd like to start by acknowledging that I'm talking to you from Ottawa, Ontario, which is the traditional and unceded lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people, whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial. Since we have people from all over Canada and the world in attendance today, I encourage each of you to reflect on the traditional and historic custodians of the lands where you find yourselves. Thank you again for joining us.
Today's event is about a truly extraordinary period in history, the Second World War. A transformative time for Canada and for the world. It's an opportunity to remember and to honour the sacrifice and service of the millions, including 1.1 million Canadians, who made victory possible in an existential battle for human dignity, Democracy, peace, and freedom.
We're meeting today just weeks after May 8th, Victory in Europe Day, just days before D-Day, June 6th. And because we're sitting in a virtual room with a community of public servants, this isn't just about looking backwards in history, which of course is very important, and I know Tim will speak to that.
But it's also an opportunity to consider the significance, the impact, and the consequences, to situate the war in both its historical but also its contemporary context. Because the experiences of the Second World War speak to universal and enduring issues; dilemmas, and questions that I think remain all too relevant to today's complexities.
And we can think of those complexities. You all have a list, I'm sure. Whether it's Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine, the rise of populism, flirtations with fascism that we see around the world, or how to define the economic and security relationship with the United States in ways that, to use the Prime Minister's words, ensure Canada's autonomy, sovereignty, and resilience. I think the past can probably help us better understand the present and prepare for the future.
And to help us understand, we're absolutely delighted – that's an understatement – to have Dr. Tim Cook here with us today. Tim Cook is Canada's foremost military historian, an award-winning author and editor of 19 books. Tim is also an extraordinary Canadian, member of the Order of Canada, the Royal Society of Canada. He is the Chief Historian and Director of Research at our most wonderful Canadian War Museum, down the road from us here in Ottawa, everybody should go visit.
As a public historian, Tim brings things to life. Tim, welcome today to the Canada School of Public Service and the tremendous community of public servants who join us today from across Canada and the world. Public servants, civilians, and I'm delighted to see public servants, members of Canada's Armed Forces. Thank you for being here with us today. We're thrilled to have us with you.
And I'm honoured to be shepherding this conversation, and I have to tell you, Tim has insisted that it be a conversation, so I have some notes and things to try and keep us on track, but we may go places that neither of us have imagined.
Tim, I'd like to begin by setting the basic structure of the conversation to show there is a method in our madness. We're going to speak about the significance, the impact, the consequences of the Second World War and why it still matters. I'm reminding myself, but I'm also reminding everyone here that Tim is an historian. He's a public historian. Whilst I am going to drag you into the present and the future and to help us connect the dots, I'd like to start at least with the basics.
Tim, can you maybe talk a little bit about the history, the scope, the experience of the Second World War? We need to know more about the Second World War. Many of us will have read history. Many of us may not have. But you've called the Second World War a "Necessary War". And you've written about how we remember and what we remember matters. Anniversaries matter. So, why? Why a necessary war? Why do anniversaries matter? Why do we need to have this conversation?
[00:04:58 Text on screen: Tim Cook, Chief Historian Canadian War Museum.]
Tim Cook: Yes, thanks, Jill. And thanks to everyone who's here and who's out there as well. That phrase, "The Necessary War", was the title of the first volume in my 3-volume history on the Second World War. And you may have heard that phrase, "The Good War", which is often used by Americans to talk about World War II, as the United States often describes the war.
But of course, this is a war that unleashed horrific, barbarous warfare; millions were killed in direct attacks; tens of millions of civilians wiped out in deliberate strategies; the Holocaust. And so, that idea of "The Good War" sat uneasy with me. And so, I thought "The Necessary War", and it's a war that had to be won.
I think Canadians understood that. I think the West understood that. We can talk about when people came to those assumptions. I'd like to tell my American friends that the war doesn't start in December 1941. But perhaps Chinese and Japanese would tell us that the war doesn't start just in September of 1939, of course, with Japan's invasion of China in 1937, or perhaps even further back to 1931.
Periodization is always difficult, but this idea of a necessary war, I think, holds true, certainly from the West. A war that had to be won, Canadians understood that, British, eventually Americans and others. It's a complex war to talk about. The good guys are never as good as we think they are. The bad guys are sometimes worse. And, well, a good number of people seem to be switching sides.
It's always a surprise, I think, when we remind our friends that the Soviet Union was our ally from June of 1941, but – importantly – not before that. There's just some of the complexities that we might draw out, but if we think of the war, maybe from 1939 to 1945, fought in a global context. So, around the world, quite literally.
The First World War, I should note, is often called a global war. It is less a global war, I think, than the Second World War, which is really fought everywhere, on almost every continent, involving nations, and really in a death struggle. And I think that's important, that existential crisis that everyone felt, which is part of the reasons why everyone fights for so long. That's always been a question. Why don't armies give up? Why do they keep fighting past the point where there is no hope? And we might wish to talk about that – and nations as well.
So, this incredible war killing perhaps 60 million people – and we will talk about some of the legacies – a new world emerging from it, and one that we have inherited and are still, I think, dealing with, as you've alluded to. New structures to hopefully avoid such conflicts, which we will talk about. The legacies are particularly interesting, I think, both in a global sense, but also for Canada. And I think we're going to talk about both of those aspects.
There's more, and perhaps we will talk about the nature of fighting, strategy, tactics, those various campaigns. But it is this incredible conflict that involves total societies. And if we just think about Canada, a country of 11.5 million in 1939. 1.1 million Canadians will eventually serve in uniform. 1 in 10 males, about 1 in 3 adult males. That's an incredible exertion.
And, of course, our fighting contribution is one thing, where our army is fighting in places like Hong Kong and Dieppe, but then in the Italian campaign, where I think your father served, Northwest Europe. The Royal Canadian Navy, which goes from about 2,000 sailors to 100,000 sailors, which is sailing the oceans, involved in critical work, but maybe primarily in the Battle of the Atlantic to keep Britain in this war. The Royal Canadian Air Force, which is fighting again around the world, maybe primarily though in Bomber Command and taking the war to Germany.
And then there's the home front, this incredible industrialization of our country, a legacy where we are producing tens of millions of shells, 16,000 aircraft, 850,000 trucks, which are being used by armies around the world. We're pulling out critical minerals, we are an agrarian power, and this is a war, the Second World War. We don't often think about this, but there is mass starvation. Millions die in India, in China. Food is a weapon. There's more that we could talk about, but that gives just a bit of a sense.
And if I'm talking about things like industrial production, agrarian food, minerals, critical minerals, we might see some echoes to today, when we're talking about our value, our place in the world, which we have had to question a little bit, I think, with the recent turn with our relationship to the United States. And I think we'll probably talk about that as well.
So, there's more to be said, but maybe I'll pause there and see if there's something we can dig into.
Jill Sinclair: Well, Tim, there's lots to dig into there, so thanks for such a rich answer to my first question. And I'm interested that you kind of took us into the present because I'm going to take you back to the past again.
Tim Cook: That's where I'm more comfortable.
Jill Sinclair: There you go. So, I want to go back to this idea of a necessary war, just in the sense that I think sometimes people forget why we went to war. And of course things like appeasement, or let's just try to get along, we don't actually have to fight for this. This was a pretty fraught time in the world's history. So, again, for those who may not have read a lot of the history, can you just remind us what was going on in Nazi Germany in the '30s?
Tim Cook: Sure.
Jill Sinclair: And what were the dilemmas? Churchill, Mackenzie King didn't say, "Okay, yes, absolutely war. We know there's no cost." People understood the dilemmas and the complexities. But why did it have to be won? What was at stake?
Tim Cook: Yes, what was at stake? Well, maybe I'll take us from the past back to the present, but only briefly, because I think those of you reading newspapers, New York Times, Globe and Mail, whatever you read, and hopefully it's still a paper, you see journalists and historians grappling with historical anecdotes or historical time periods of which to try to situate ourselves in this very dangerous world in which we live. The Russian war, war in Gaza, the dozens of wars in Africa, that we never talk about.
And the one that I see people drawing upon is the 1930s, which you've alluded to, I think. That really dangerous period 15 years after the end of the First World War, that terrible war that had killed 9 million soldiers and millions of other civilians, of which people said, prayed, maybe pleaded the war to end all wars. The '20s with the League of Nations of attempting to find a structure to at least help peace.
And, of course, Germany had been eviscerated financially, had suffered 2 million dead as well. France angry and hoping to keep Germany down. But we know through history the rise of fascism in the early 1930s, although I suppose with Mussolini, you can go back to 1922, I think, in Italy.
But certainly Hitler, the fascism, the anger, the grievance that arises out of the economic depression, the Great Depression, which threw millions out of work and created the conditions, certainly, I think, in Germany where the German people were looking for a demagogic leader and they found one in Hitler. And, of course, that rise of fascism; the Italians with their illegal war in Abyssinia, in North Africa; Hitler rearming, threatening his neighbours; Japan's war of aggression against China. The world is a dangerous place.
There were 2 schools really, those who really wanted to appease – we'll just maybe talk about Hitler here, the appeasement of Hitler – and hopefully give him enough, let him take over various countries because perhaps we had treated Germany too hard. In effect, try to negotiate because appeasement really has a bad word, of course, but it is a form of negotiation. I think poor Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, the Great Appeaser, who has not gone down well in history, he was trying to find a diplomatic solution, but perhaps going too far, perhaps knowing or not knowing when to dig in.
The other option, of course, was to rearm. The West was very slow to rearm. We didn't want another war. We prayed that there would not be another war. Surely the Germans do not want another war. Surely the Japanese do not want a war. Surely Italy does not want a war, but of course they did.
I think those are some of those lessons that we see today where sometimes there is a rational decision, or one hopefully looking for a way out, that doesn't involve a shooting war, but that simply would not work in the 1930s with Germany and Hitler especially hell-bent on war, and we know that.
And so, that's where there's some interesting links to today with ideas of appeasement, because appeasement is probably one of those words in national security that gets used most often when you're trying to denigrate someone else's argument. And maybe rightly so. Certainly when we look back to the '30s, that's the lesson that we took away, that appeasement failed.
But in Canada, if we just focus on Canada, I think we were very slow to rearm. We were focused on other things, just as we, today, have been slow to rearm, to see the danger in front of us. But eventually our Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was not seen as a warlike Prime Minister, he basically pulled his cabinet and demanded that they had to begin to significantly rearm, really in 1938, after Hitler had gobbled up Austria and Czechoslovakia in '38 and '39.
And war was coming, and everyone could see it was coming, but we were slow. And nonetheless, when war comes on the 1st of September 1939, with Germany's invasion of Poland, with their allies, the Soviet Union – we should note, not a formal alliance but a non-aggression pact – we have a decision in Canada, just as Britain and France had a decision. And they had said, "No more, no more" up to that point. And of course, they come into the war on the 3rd of September.
But then there's a decision for Canada, and it's really interesting. There's a fascinating debate. If you go back and look at Hansard and the House of Commons, you can see what Canadians were talking about. Most of them are saying we have to stand by Britain. There was talk of standing by democracies. For democracy.
But there were some who said, "What about the United States? They're staying neutral and we're safe, largely, in North America." Because, what is our greatest shield? It has always been geography. Nonetheless, of course, we go to war on the 10th of September 1939. And I think from there we may talk about other aspects, but there is an understanding that the appeasement was impossible after a certain point and that war was coming.
And it was a war – to come back to your initial question – perhaps not initially "The Necessary War", not that existential crisis, although Canadians at the time thought that if Britain and France are defeated, our worldview will change. More than likely – and Mackenzie King and others talked about this – we'll be gobbled up by the United States. There's just no way that we can survive Britain being defeated.
So, that was an existential crisis for those Canadians of the day. It's different for Britain, it's different for France. But complexity, and like with so many things in history, and perhaps today for national security issues, no easy answers.
Jill Sinclair: Tim, you spoke a little bit about what Canada did in this war. And we'll come back to a lot of these other existential issues, so don't worry. I'm so delighted you've raised all of these questions about how the past connects to the present.
But I think it's really interesting at the moment. You spoke a little bit about how we kind of spooled up our industrial base; our critical minerals; agriculture; convoys across the North Atlantic. For a long time, I think people thought that Canada had no military culture or tradition. They think we've only been peacekeepers. Others have wondered why we have a military. Though, I'm glad to say, that seems to be less in dispute these days.
But I think it's important for us to have what the military called a common operating picture here. Remind us again what Canada brought to this fight: personnel; the battlefields, but the capacity and how we went from, as you said nothing to 850,000 trucks. Because again, some of this sort of resonates today.
Tim Cook: It does, yes. My last book, current book I suppose, called "The Good Allies", it's Canada-US in the Second World War. And I wrote it partially because I visited the wonderful World War II Museum in New Orleans. I don't know if anyone's in there. It's a great museum. It's the one that Spielberg and Hanks are associated with, so they have more money than God and great exhibitions and great stories and just buildings filled with amazing artifacts. And I'm walking through it and of course, there's like 2 references to Canada.
And I left there thinking, oh, okay I get it. It's largely the American story here, but there's a lot on the British and the Germans and the Soviets and Brazil and everybody, India and Japan, but not Canada. And I remember, that's odd. And I've been reading military history for a while. It wasn't a complete surprise because I have talked to American colleagues who have literally said things to me like, "I forgot Canada was in the war. At a conference, you reminded me." Or, "Geez, I had no idea that you had raised an army of 450,000 soldiers commanded by General Harry Crerar."
The first Canadian Army in early 1945, of which there were more Americans and Polish soldiers than Canadians in there, but our 2 corps in the Second World War – one fighting in Italy, one in Northwest Europe, coming together at the end of the war to help liberate the Dutch – it's about 170,000 strong. It's an enormous fighting force. The Royal Canadian Air Force, something like 235,000 strong. 48 overseas squadrons and defending the East Coast and the West Coast. It goes on and on. We were a significant fighting force.
And to come back maybe to "The Good Allies", I came back to Canada. I thought, "Well, I don't really expect the Americans to write Canadian history. That's our job." So, I sat down to write it. I wrote a couple books in between that, but it had been eating away at me a bit. And I wrote it partially to tell our American friends our contribution.
It came out in September of 2024, so about 6 months ago. I didn't know who would be the president at that time. None of us did. But I did hope that somebody might read it in the U.S. And some people have read it, so that's nice. And our American Embassy invited me down, and our military attachés there handed it out to their colleagues. So, it was nice.
And part of that book, interesting for me, was to look both at the fighting forces but also, importantly, the home front. What did we do in North America? We did an awful lot. It struck me that I had overlooked this in my 3-volume history on the Second World War. It's lots on Dieppe and Normandy and Falaise and the Battle of the Atlantic and changing tactics and technology and issues of command and control and morale, face of battle. But I hadn't focused really on North America.
And it's a bit of an obvious one to think about, but you need to secure North America before you can send expeditionary forces abroad. Canadians had to be secure, and the corollary to that is the United States had to be secure. They had to know that their northern neighbours who were at war – think about that. We're at war, they're neutral – and they're thinking, "What are we doing with these Canucks?"
And so, there's all kinds of relationships that are formed during the war. The Permanent Joint Board on Defence, which I think you told me you had done many briefings in your career too. I was able to speak to them at an event, a great historical – an organization like so many that came out of the Second World War.
Entwined wartime economy. When I talk about those 16,000 aircraft that we created, or the tens of millions of shells, or the several thousand tanks, the trucks, which may be our most important contribution, we couldn't have done that without the Americans. That's the entwined wartime economies that we see today that are, frankly, not easy to untangle, and they really come from the Second World War as just one of those legacy points.
So, the defence of North America: critical on the East Coast against the U-boats; on the West Coast, after Pearl Harbor in building up our defences there. There was a sense, a dread that the Japanese might continue their advances where they had been fighting really successfully for 6 months up until Midway in June of '42.
We built up defences partially to calm our American friends, and that may be something that certainly resonates today that we can talk about, but we did it and we built those factories. We were a poor and fairly pathetic country in the 1930s. We'd been devastated by the Depression, as you know. Farms swept away, probably 25 to 30% of the population unemployed, not able to get much going. But the Second World War supercharges us, and we'll talk more about those legacies coming out of the war.
But I think if there's something to think about here – and I wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail, at some point about this – is that there are a lot of lessons to take away from the Second World War. We can explore them, but 2 that I talked about there, at least I think I did, but I will certainly talk to you about.
One is that we did something hard together. Canadians understood that. We shouldn't think that all 11.5 million Canadians were heaving together. No, there are a lot of people who didn't care about the war. And someone else's kid could go to war. But when you have 1 in 3 adult males in the war, that's almost everybody. And it's across the country, it's every community, it's every class, it's almost every religion. And they are there either fighting at home or fighting overseas and contributing in countless ways.
And I think there's probably a lesson there because there aren't too many times in our history where we've really had to dig deep in an existential crisis. We could talk about them at some point, maybe 1995, but that was a different issue with Quebec, maybe 2001, maybe 2008 for the economy, maybe 2025, historians will say, looking back on this time period. So, we did something hard together. English Canadians and French Canadians and new Canadians and Indigenous Canadians, as I said, all coming together.
The second thing is that we took the pain. And that one worries me a little more. I'm not sure in 2025 Canadians can absorb the pain. The pain of losing tens of thousands of Canadians, 45,000 killed during the Second World War, 55,000 wounded. We may come back to that. The pain of having your sons – and some daughters, 50,000 women who served in the Second World War – going off; going in harm's way. The pain of accepting the hardship that comes with rationing and shortages and the uncertainty of what will come out of that. Can we do that today? Are we built for that?
Maybe we can say the Canadians of '39 to '45 were conditioned from the Depression. Those are hard years. A lot of people ate one meal a day. Talk to your grandfathers or grandmothers or great-grandmothers or great-great-great depending on ages. But that's not just it. It's not that they just came through the Depression. I think that there was a mission, a purpose, and a crusade in this existential crisis that galvanized Canadians.
And we have seen a bit of that. We've seen something really exciting. "Elbows up" and new Canadian ideas and the ethos and the pride and the patriotism. When was the last time we used those words when talking about Canadians? We've seen that over the last couple months with the trade war enacted upon us and the attacks on our sovereignty. Seen first as a joke, I think, and then more seriously.
I think there's still lessons maybe to come back to what we did during the Second World War, both at home and then our fighting forces, which are really quite astonishing of our contributions. And the Battle of the Atlantic, to give you a few stats, 50% of the convoys were protected by the Royal Navy, 48% by the Royal Canadian Navy, 2% by the Americans.
Those convoys are essential to take the soldiers and the war supplies, the tens of millions of shells. They got to get to Britain somehow for the invasion on the 6th of June 1944, or to Italy. Canadians playing a key role there. The bomber war, I think it's 14 squadrons, 15 squadrons we have as part of 6th Group taking the war to Germany.
There's an ethical question there that we can talk about, a morality question that we might dig into, but that was a direct way to punish the German war economy, but at the same time women and children. We have to acknowledge that. That's the necessary part and not the good part.
And then the fighting in Italy. Does anyone remember we had 100,000 Canadians fighting through the Italian campaign? I hope everyone in this room knows that we were there on D-Day, Juno Beach. 2 British divisions, 2 american divisions with a 3rd in reserve, and the Canadians landing 3 paratroop divisions as well. But we are there with our allies.
And I'll finish up this segment, Jill, just by saying, at the end of the war, Churchill is going to a conference with Stalin. I think it's Potsdam. And the French are trying to get in on this. The French, of course, who had been occupied since June of 1940, and de Gaulle with the Free French and Resistance. And, of course, de Gaulle is one of those great characters of history, completely unbelievable if you saw him in a film, his absurd pride and his biting the hand that feeds him relentlessly like a ravenous beast. And yet he was doing it to keep France as a power, not a great power, but as a power.
And he demands that he should be there. And Churchill, who'd been fed up with de Gaulle, said, "The French? It should be the Canadians if it's anyone else." Americans, British, Soviets. It wasn't the Canadians. That's an important footnote. But it could have been, because if you talk about ranking allies in the West, the Soviets fighting their own war, it is Britain, the United States, and Canada.
Jill Sinclair: Again, Tim, there's so much in what you've said. And I want to do another pitch for your books, because if you want to get into some of this history and you want to understand what Tim's talking about when he talks about de Gaulle, and some of his imperiousness, and biting the hand that feeds him, or read any good history book, I can obviously commend Tim's.
Look, I do want to take you back again a little bit on, on Canada's contribution in the following way because it would be an understatement to say that a number of the things that you've talked about resonate today. But can you just— we spooled up very quickly, and you've talked about Canadian agriculture, you've talked about our protecting the convoys. My father-in-law, who I never knew, but he spent the whole of the war as a naval chaplain going back and forth on our corvettes.
But we went pretty quickly from nothing to producing. Not that I'm suggesting there's any parallels with today, but it seems to me the Prime Minister just had a chat with the premiers yesterday and talked about the need to look at resilience and look at economic sovereignty and to do things quickly and at scale. Again, those numbers, what were we doing with trucks and with ships and with aircraft in 1939 and what were we doing in 1941?
Tim Cook: Yes, quickly and at scale. That's a nice way to frame it. So, what was our armed forces in September of 1939 when we declare war on the most powerful military in the world, Nazi Germany? I think we had about 3,000 in the Army and about 2,500 in the Navy and about the same number in the Air Force.
And we had almost no modern tanks, very few vehicles, shortages of machine guns, because there had been a wonderful defence scandal in 1938 over the Bren Gun, which was a very effective machine gun, which almost stopped production on that. Our Navy had rearmed a little bit. I think we had about 10 modern destroyers, which was our most powerful force.
Eventually, by the end of the war, we'll have over 400 warships, those corvettes you mentioned, which were small, and nasty little ships, but effective in convoy duties, again, in protecting against those U-boats and helping the convoys get across. So, we go through a massive rearmament, and in September of '39, something like 50,000 Canadians volunteer, for the army primarily, and then we scale up very quickly there, so much so that we couldn't accommodate them.
And there are probably brighter people in this room than I who know this, but we're going to have a challenge scaling up right now. We can throw all kinds of money at buying new subs and training new soldiers or any sort of service personnel, but it takes time. And those subs, you don't just buy them off the shelf. And over-the-horizon radar is hideously complex. And everything is challenging. Nonetheless, Canadians did it in '39 and '40 and '41.
Now, some might say that we were lucky not to really be in the worst part of the shooting war. You'll remember when Germany invades France and Belgium and other countries, it's April 1940 in France, May of 1940. And the whole plan there, interestingly, the North American plan, not that it was coordinated between Canada and the US, but the US plan, which collapses within 6 weeks, is that France will hold on with Britain. There'll be another Western Front.
Remember, we'd fought the Great War, and France had fought tenaciously for 4 years. That's what everyone thought they would do again. The collapse was monumental. The most cataclysmic surprise of the war said a senior American official. That's more so than Pearl Harbor, the collapse of France.
So, that changes everything. Canada was not there. We had a division overseas commanded by Major General Andrew McNaughton, which was sent to France and then ingloriously turned around and brought home. We were lucky not to have been there. The Navy is involved in a bit of that, the Air Force in the battle to defend Britain, where we send really our only squadron overseas.
That's not much of a fighting force. Not by the end of the war, when we have 2 corps, 5 divisions, 2 armoured brigades when we have hundreds of thousands of soldiers defending North America on the East Coast and the West Coast, the Navy of 400 warships, those squadrons I was talking about. We are a military power by the end.
And so, how did we do it over 6 years? Well, with great urgency. With that urgency that comes when you are facing the gallows. And that's that existential crisis. When you throw everything at it. And today, we're not throwing everything at it. All right, go fast, do this, maybe we'll get rid of some regulations. That's not an existential crisis. You could probably argue we're not in an existential crisis.
But the problem with existential crises is that they don't really tell you when they're coming. They just end up on your doorstep, and you better be ready. And I think that's something that I think we have understood, not since the new president of the United States. It's before that. It's the Ukraine war. I think we understood the shocking situation that there was a full-scale land war happening in Eastern Europe. And that changes a lot, I think.
And I think from then we've nonetheless been slow, but again, our greatest shield being geography allows us to be more complacent than Latvia, for instance.
Jill Sinclair: I want to come back on some of those issues, especially about recognizing existentialism before it gets you, but we'll do that a little bit farther on. What I'd like to do now, you've kind of mapped out some of the essential contours of the war and Canada's contribution there, I'd like you to talk a little bit, Tim, you alluded to this, about what came after the Second World War, but really how the Second World War shaped what came after that.
You know, this world that we've been living in in the past 80 years, largely a rules-based kind of world, it also brought us nuclear weapons, brought us the Cold War, but it brought us institutions like the United Nations. And I have to say that I'm an old fan of the United Nations, and when you read the Charter of the UN, the opening lines of the Charter are quite extraordinary. Written just after the end of the Second World War, June 26th, 1945. The peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
I guess I have to ask you, what was it that nations saw and experienced during the war? What concentrated their minds? What were they trying to avoid, prevent, mitigate in the processes and the structures and the institutions and frankly the hope, the hope that came out at the end of the Second World War?
Tim Cook: Yes, the hope. I mean, I love that word, the scourge of war, and if ever there was a war that could be described as such, the Second World War was it. Those Canadian forces who were moving through Germany, the eastern part and the northeast part, just saw the devastated cities, the eviscerated cities that had been bombed. And you've seen the photographs.
And of course, a few months after those prophetic and powerful words, the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan, which changes warfare and changes human history. The Holocaust being revealed at that point. So, horror upon horror. The displaced people, the refugees. If we think of the aftermath of war, something like 11 or 12 million people displaced, driven from their homes, either from direct attack or driven out by armies advancing in one direction or the other.
So, that's the scourge. That's the 60 million dead. That's the world in ruins. That's the scourge that Canada contributed to in this fight, that necessary fight, that we won through hard power, that we won through service and through sacrifice.
So, what are some of those legacies? Well, you've mentioned the United Nations. Again, this hope for a better world, a rules-based world. Financial, the IMF, and some of the Bretton Woods ideas of structuring the world in a new way to avoid this horror of what had come before.
But the wars – that war and all wars – they don't end when the shooting stops. They don't end on the 8th of May, '45. It's the day we mark. It didn't end on the 15th of August 1945, or the 2nd of September 1945, the signing of the war to end with Japan. Because there are those legacies, that long tale of horror sometimes, and hope.
If I come back to those displaced people, it took often years for them to find them a home. The United Nations contributing as well as NGOs to where they would live. That's astonishing. Jewish people who had survived the Holocaust going to Israel and the legacy in the Middle East unspooling. The decolonization that occurs after the Second World War is perhaps the most titanic change. Britain and France and the Netherlands and Belgium losing their empires, struggling to hold on to it.
But if we think of independence for India, a major event, if we think of France trying to hold on to Vietnam and losing in 1954 and what that begat after it. The rise of the new nationalism that emerged from that war, which we still live with. The list goes on and on of these global changes, which in talking about the Second World War, you still see today. A critical one, of course, being the emergence of the Cold War, of thinking 2 new superpowers with the world pretty much in ruin, but the rise of the Soviet Union and the United States.
And I was just reflecting on what if the United States had returned to isolationism, as it had through the First World War in the '20s and the '30s, and being really dragged into the Second World War. What if the Americans had just gone home, as they mostly did? They demobilized most of their 5-million-man army in '45 and '46.
But the rise of the communist threat becoming more aggressive under Stalin, of course, here in Ottawa, the Guzenko revelations. Igor Guzenko, a low-level cipher clerk in Ottawa, absconding with documents that revealed this worldwide Soviet spying network. Maybe overplayed a bit because we live in Ottawa, but an important event in contributing to this hardening of the bipolar world.
And of course, that Cold War spooled out with nuclear threats and other wars, proxy wars, real wars. Think of the United States in Vietnam, think of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, over and over. And then that post-war period, which continued back, can be linked back to the Second World War thing. And to come up to the war in Ukraine today, perhaps, is to see not a direct line from 1945, but certainly a dotted line.
Jill Sinclair: Yes, Tim, and you talked about the United States in the post-war period, and I think about the Marshall Plan, and I think about what the United States did to build this world order that we actually have been living in until fairly recently. Also, I talk about being a fan of the United Nations, at least its aspirations. I think we can all say that maybe it hasn't lived up to everything that we hoped for.
But we also saw, a few years later, things like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization emerge. And of course, we're getting ready for summit in The Hague in a couple of weeks' time. What about those sorts of alliances and how do those track back to the Second World War?
Tim Cook: Well, NATO is a great one, isn't it? Formed 4th of April 1949, Canada playing an important part in that. NATO, of course, still with us. The most successful alliance ever in human history, and an alliance that has been periodically threatened and is now, I think firmly, at least being questioned by some in the United States. And NATO probably doesn't work without the United States.
So, we're always in a fraught period. The history of NATO, I think, is fascinating insofar as it's a difficult alliance. All those countries. Maybe there are some of you who've worked there. It is a place of great diplomacy among many serving personnel. But it was necessary, and it directly links to the Second World War and the Cold War and creating this defensive alliance.
I guess if we just backtrack to the Second World War, the great genius, I would argue, of the Western Allies was the alliance-making. The alliance largely between Britain and the United States, where Canada plays a key role. Mackenzie King and many of his ministers and deputy ministers and key civil servants who really play a critical role in 1940 in bridging some of those gaps between Britain and the United States. That alliance is so important, and it carries forward. That's what draws the United States out of its isolationism. That's what helps to win the Second World War.
The Axis powers had their own alliance. It wasn't very successful though. They didn't know how to fight together. They didn't want to fight together. Japan didn't really coordinate with Nazi Germany, and the Italians were largely laughable. And so, that creation of a forgeable alliance is hugely complicated, requires concessions, tremendous diplomacy, but working together. And Canada, the United States, and Britain are able to do that. Canada less so, but we are often there.
And that is what NATO becomes, a new alliance system. And I would argue that I think the United States' great power, during the Cold War and beyond, has still been its ability to create alliances, although that's been shaken today. And I think anybody who's doing national security in the U.S. today must be pulling their hair out as to how to coordinate an alliance system that is continuously being under threat. It seems to fly in the face of history.
Now, I may be written out of the Historians Guild. I'm not one of those guys who says, "If you don't understand the past, you're going to repeat it in the present." You can still understand the past and still screw up in the present. But you are more grounded if you know how people did it in the past. How they succeeded, when they failed, why they succeeded, why they failed. There are lessons there. And where else are you going to look?
So, history can be an important guide there. And if you're just thinking alliances, to threaten your alliances in the present is to fly in the face of history.
Jill Sinclair: Well, certainly alliances are very much in Canada's mind these days, both the traditional ones but also new alliances and partnerships. And when you're talking about the Axis powers, it reminds me of the confluence of interests that we see today with Russia and China and Iran and North Korea gathering forces vis-à-vis the war on Ukraine, and in other mischievous ways around the world, even as we speak. So, I think there are echoes definitely of the past there.
I'd like to bring it back a little bit to Canada. We've still got about 40 minutes to go, so I have lots of things that I want to talk about. But I'd like you to speak a little bit, Tim, about the significance and the impact of the war for Canadians and the shaping of Canadian society.
I must say, as I read your books, one of the things that I really didn't know about was this important story about the decisions taken and the society that Canada shaped coming out of the Second World War. It really resonated with me, as a former public servant, that so many of the things that I see, the social security programs, the catalytic effect of the return of the veterans, the expectations of people to have a fairer society, all of that.
And the fact that we were thinking big and bigger, again, a little bit of resonance today about renewing and transforming society for all Canadians for the future. But can you tell us a little bit about some of the details of what happened? What did we create in this post-war period?
Tim Cook: Yes, war is a great catalyst of change, which is just undeniable. And you see it in the Second World War, probably most prominently in Canadian history, of what happens afterwards. And I think there's a lot of ways to talk about this, but maybe I'll just talk about the veterans.
As I said, 1.1 million Canadians in uniform, 45,000 killed, 55,000 wounded. We had to reintegrate 1/3 of those adult males back into society. There was a lesson. It was in the First World War, and we hadn't done it very well because we didn't have that sense of Keynesian economics. We didn't have an embracing of the state creating programs. We largely left the First World War veterans on their own.
They actually have an influence on the politicians in the Second World War and the civil servants who are working together to bring those veterans back. And we create something called the Veterans Charter, which is really a compendium of programs to reintegrate veterans.
So, 55,000 go to university. That's a huge change. Almost no one could afford to go to university in the 1930s. Veterans come back. They're offered that. They're offered loans for small businesses. They are offered land to farm. We create huge new housing communities because one of the great shortages in Canada in 1945 is housing. So, we have to create – it goes through various names – but the same housing and mortgage board that we have today to incentivize Canadian builders to build those small homes.
Maybe some of you have owned those small little 3-bedroom homes, the veterans' homes, which began to spring up really in about '47, '48, '49. I live in Manor Park here in Ottawa, which is, I think, 1951. Of course, all those homes have been knocked down and now there's bigger homes, but you can sometimes see the bones there. Those communities that sprang up, Ajax is a neat one. We built a huge shell factory there. And then after the war, as we transition from guns to butter, as we begin to make things, we begin to build the houses around there.
The legacy continues. The Social Security net. We've got civil servants from across the country here who are still contributing to the good of Canadians that emerged from the war. Not always in 1945, but this idea that we had all pulled together during the war, we had endured the pain, and now we deserved the peace dividend. And it would be the care of the elderly, social programs that we would pay through income tax, an enlarged civil service, many of which were veterans of the war.
Our country has fundamentally changed culture-wise. We don't often associate war and culture. But, of course, the Massey Commission, which crosses the country in '49 to '51 and emerges and says, "We have to do a better job because all the culture here is American." CBC and NFB really developed during the Second World War.
The list goes on and on of the social programs, the cultural programs, the caring for all Canadians, the reintegration of veterans who will build up this country. Looking outwards, you've mentioned this with NATO and other things, but Canada, again, which had been largely insignificant before this, putting aside the First World War, agreeing that it must take part on the global stage. And we were lucky to have leaders like Louis St-Laurent and Lester B. Pearson, both who will become prime ministers, who will continue this journey for Canada.
It's a long way to say that Canada is fundamentally changed. And we open up – last point perhaps – immigration to this country. And from about 1949 onwards, but '47 in certain cases, we begin to welcome new Canadians, looking for other Canadians, some of those displaced Canadians, displaced people in Europe who come here. Hundreds of thousands of Dutch Canadians who we had liberated, who chose Canada as their new home. There are now 1.1 million Dutch Canadians in Canada. There were almost none before 1947. The list goes on.
I think you were telling me your dad, who served in the British Army, who chose to come here. Canada has fundamentally changed from the Second World War, which is just one of those reasons why I think we continue to reflect upon its legacy and see its history unspool over the decades.
Jill Sinclair: Tim, thanks, you've mentioned my dad twice, and I have to say I'm a very proud, proud daughter of a father who actually fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino, for those of you who know that battle. But he was inspired by Canadians. There were Canadians in Italy, and this sort of the egalitarian – they were British, my parents – and you've written in one of your books that there was also a desire to build a fairer and more equitable country.
So, I'd like you to just talk a little bit about kind of the values agenda that also came out of the war for Canada, because we often talk about Canadian values and these didn't spontaneously combust. They came from somewhere. So, could you talk a little bit about that?
Tim Cook: Yes. And I think we have to be careful. I mean, the aspiration for a fairer and better society didn't mean that it occurred in 1946. I think we were then, and remain today, a country that has great inequalities; that faces the stigma of racism and issues related to class and wealth and other elements. And you live in the modern Canada just as I do, and we know the troubles.
But there was a sense, coming out of the war, that the state – and think of civil servants – should play a more important role in the lives of Canadians to help in guiding them forward, because we had embraced that during the war. That total war effort required that harnessing of power and energy.
Canada, at the end of the Second World War, is in a challenging place, a place that we have not seen before, a foreign country. We are a wealthy country. We'd been poor and pathetic before that. Britain is ruined. It is no longer Great Britain. It's just Britain.
We lend billions to the British. A little bit. The British hadn't always treated Canada well during the war, taken us for granted. Churchill, who I find great inspiration in his actions and words, who was an imperfect human to say the least was only too happy to use the power of Canada to help bolster his case in dealing with the Americans. And yet at the end of the war, we are a wealthy country because we're tied to the United States and we're not in ruins.
Here's a lesson for you. What was that movie, The Princess Bride? Remember where they say, "Don't ever start a war in Asia?" You know, one of those lessons? Well, if you can, try not to have a war on your home territory because it destroys infrastructure and tremendous death and destruction. And we didn't have that.
And so, while U-boats sailed down the St. Lawrence in May of 1942, and we were shelled a bit on the West Coast from Japanese submarines, and we lost significant naval forces off the East Coast as part of the Battle of the Atlantic, we did not suffer the scourge of invading armies looting and raping and killing their way across our terrain. That helps us. The discussion we had earlier being tied to the U.S., that's critical for us.
And yet in 1945, there's a hearts and head thing going on. Our heart is still with Britain and the British Empire for the most part. I think French Canada is different, but for the most part. But we know in our head that we have to be North American, and that's a fundamental change for Canada. We become a North American nation. We had always been that geographically, but not in seeing that in ourselves. It'll take another generation of really disentangling from the British Empire. Although, as we saw the King of Canada arriving here recently, there are still important ties there. And symbols, which I think are probably more important than the actual reality of still having the monarchy.
But how do we change? Well, I want to be careful because I think most people are not thinking about a fair, more equitable society. I think most people are coming back, a 24-year-old private, and he just wants to start a family. And he wants to have kids, and he wants to have a job. But we're able to set the conditions for that. We're able to create that, have that wealth, and to keep it. And to integrate people back into our economy and then support them through our social programs, which then allows you to indulge in things like culture.
Now, culture is a force. It is a sword and a shield. A sword to carve out our identity, a shield to protect us from American culture. That's important in developing who we are. Immigration, having new Canadians come to this country, is important, but that will take a generation.
I guess the most evident place you can see that is probably on the world stage, in an area you and I probably are more comfortable with, and how we wanted to project ourselves and our desire to join NATO, fighting in the Korean War in 1950 to '53, where we had about 30,000 Canadians there, continuing to work with the Americans to develop the country. And developing and projecting what it is to be a Canadian, which was furthered by the Second World War.
And now, how do you say, "What is a Canadian?" We say, "We're not American." Back then, I think it was, "We're not British and we're not American." It would still take some time for us to figure out who we were as a people. I think that's a journey that has unfolded. But the Second World War is certainly an important catalyst to that.
Jill Sinclair: Tim, I'm always interested in the lessons learned of any experience, not just of history, but anything that we live on a daily basis. One of my favourite quotes is T.S. Eliot: "We had the experience, but we missed the meaning." And so, I'm always trying to think, how do we wring the meaning out of things?
So, I wondered if you could start to talk a little bit about lessons learned in the following sense. And I'm going to use a speech from the throne, so thanks for mentioning the fact that the King was here reading it just last week. In the SFT, there was a line that said, "We must be clear-eyed. The world is a more dangerous and uncertain place than at any other point since the Second World War. Canada is facing challenges that are unprecedented in our lifetimes."
As an historian, do you think there are lessons that we may have forgotten, we haven't yet learned, at our peril we forget? What do we do as we move into this uncertain time?
Tim Cook: Yes. We're always forgetting the past. We're always coming to it with new eyes, I think, partially because we are changing as individuals, as communities, as a country. That what the Second World War meant in 1946 is different probably than what it meant in 1969 and different again in 2025. So, in effect, the past doesn't change, but we change in how we reflect on it. So, we did forget some of those lessons.
I think we forgot we were a military power. I think you mentioned this at the top, where we embrace peacekeeping. I'm very proud of our peacekeeping history. But I've talked to enough people in my life, enough serving members who are frustrated in their discussions with colleagues or neighbours who assumed there was a branch called the peacekeeping branch in the Canadian Armed Forces. There isn't. Everyone is trained, and it's difficult work.
And peacekeeping was successful for a limited period, largely during the Cold War. And after the end of the Cold War, the peace dividend we thought might be there really wasn't there, as in the killing fields of Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia, or Somalia, of course, where we thrust Canadians into very difficult positions where there was no peace to keep.
But somehow we forgot our history. And I wrote a book, called "The Fight for History", about that. In 2020, it came out. And it was about how we had not taught our history. Largely it was about the Second World War. How we forgot that a third of adult males had served in the armed forces and that we were a significant force. How we didn't build the same monuments to the Second World War.
Think of the structures of remembrance that emerges from the First World War: the poppy and John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" and the Legion that comes there, and Armistice Day in 1919 and renamed Remembrance Day in 1931, and the national monument downtown, and Vimy overseas. And it's largely First World War.
And so, what do we do in the Second World War? We largely put the same names and battles on those First World War monuments. And there's a great fight among Second World War veterans to have a separate national monument, which was going to be built overlooking the Ottawa River where the National Gallery is today. And several times this comes up.
The Diefenbaker government agrees to it in 1957 and '58, and then eventually it dies a slow death. Eventually, in 1967, it was cancelled. And it wasn't until 1982 that we added the dates of World War II, or the Second World War, to the national monument with the Korean War. There's a strange absence there. And I argue that we largely forgot our history.
And so, if you forget that, then you can think of yourself as a country of peacekeepers because we were good at it and we were proud of it and we projected that part of our identity perhaps as a nation of peacekeepers rather than warriors. And why do we do that? Partially to distinguish ourselves from the United States, which was mired in places like Vietnam during that time period.
So, how we think of the past matters. The stories we tell matter, I think. And if we think of 1969, where we've largely forgotten that history, fast forward to 2025, I think we have a greater sense that we can be a contributing force in the world, and we're going to have to be with the threats that are upon us.
I think it would bode well for us to reflect back on what we did during the Second World War or other times of crisis. I think there are lessons there. We've talked a lot about them, so I won't repeat them, except that we can do hard things together and we can do them fast. We could do them when it is necessary to – they're forced upon us. We can strengthen an alliance system and change it, maybe away from the north-south axis to a North Atlantic one, which ironically is where we were before the Second World War changed things. And the list goes on.
So, history can be a force for good. It can be a force for ill. It is used and misused and abused, so we should be careful. But I think generally there are lessons there for us to think about. And to engage with critically.
Jill Sinclair: Tim, I'm glad you talked about history being used and abused because I'd like to maybe take a little sort of esoteric detour here, but one that I think is quite relevant.
History is based on facts. I'm talking to an historian here, so I'm going to be careful with my words. Facts are in increasingly short supply these days from some media sources, some political sources. You can name, I think, the places where you think there's a little misinformation or disinformation, maybe even lies. How do you deal with that reality? And what's the message here for public servants who are actually creating, in real time, the history of Canada, in a way?
Tim Cook: They are. Public servants play a critical role there. Near and dear to my heart is the Library Archives Canada, where I started and where I know a lot of good people who have worked there. That, of course, is the memory house of the nation, where the records are stored and archived and made available. But we've got to create those records, and we've got to preserve them.
And we were talking a bit about this in your long career, the changeover from paper records to digital records and how you store and keep them. So, a modest plea to colleagues out there, please keep your records. Please listen to your archivists at Library Archives and other spots, because it matters. That's the stuff of history. It's how we know and understand.
And yet, not everything is written down. And we know challenges with ATIP and ways around that. And we won't go into all those details, except there have been various scandals in the past of people not keeping records or finding ways to fudge them. But this is important in this day and age, I think, this age of post-truth. And frankly, dealing [with] this issue, it ain't going to be civil servants and their record keeping that gets us through this period. But it's a good start, and sometimes we need a foundation of something.
How do we deal with this? It's a little bit beyond my pay grade and my knowledge base, except I will hearken back to the Second World War, which was a propaganda war, an information war, as much as it was a fighting war. An information war through film and radio; an information war through full-on propaganda. Lessons were learned and they continue to this day, evolving, morphing, perverting our ability to know.
I think this is part of the challenge of 2025, is to know what is happening and how to pull this together. And we have some very smart people in this room, so I'll be I won't go too far down this road except to say that I think this is where the civil service, especially those in national security areas, play a critical role in supporting our decision makers. You, yourself, have done that for many years. I imagine there are many others here.
This is where I find it painful at times when people talk about civil servants being lazy, this and that. I'm deeply biased, but I know every civil servant I know works hard, understands the mission, and contributes to the cause. And I think this is a key part of who we are, as Canadians. This structure which is everywhere across this country in these communities and these people who are helping to arm us with the facts, helping to give us the eyes to see the truth, and we are better off with civil servants doing their work than without.
Jill Sinclair: You know, it reminds me, we're also not just getting ready for the NATO summit, but obviously the G7 summit. And it might have been yesterday or today that scientists from G7 countries wrote to G7 leaders to say how important it is to have evidence-based decision-making. And so, thanks for reminding us about records and about facts, because sometimes it gets a little bit difficult to discern what's real and what's not.
Tim, you're a public historian. And again, I think it's a term that I hadn't heard previously. So, this has not been an academic conversation in case anybody's noticed, and it's not a history lecture. You're a public historian. Can you just let us know what's a public historian?
Tim Cook: Yes, yes. Well, I'm academically trained. I have a PhD in history through the Australian Defence Force Academy; a Master's in War Studies from RMC, and undergrad at Trent University. Great foundations. But I was very lucky to get a job at the Canadian War Museum. And you said kind things at the top, and I will continue to say that.
I'm very proud of my museum and the way that we tell the story of Canada's military history; how war has shaped Canada; how Canadians have been shaped by war; contributed to war; how the country has been changed; the legacies of war; service and sacrifice; loss and destruction. It's not a Whiggish story. I don't think we're a museum of propaganda.
We talk about some of the issues of morality. Strategic bombing, for instance, during the Second World War. And the debate between the effectiveness of bombing cities to hurt – we'll just say the German war machine, but the Italian as well, or Japanese – but at the same time, there are women and children and the elderly in those cities. And those are difficult ethical debates that are still with us today, and we talk about those in the museum.
And so, public historian for me is one, as the name suggests, I'm for Canadians, I'm for sharing our history with Canadians. My books have been successful. And for a while I was called a popular historian, which is almost the kiss of death for an historian, it seemed to me. In fact, I won an award once, which is the Pierre Berton Award for popular history, popularizing Canadian history, something like that. And I remember I was a jerk, and I was like, "Oh I'm not a popular..." So my wife said to me, "It's better to be popular than not popular." And that's true.
But I like public because I feel the history is for all Canadians. And I'm rambling a bit, but when I used to play hockey, I'd be in the dressing room. I was a goalie, so one of those weirdos. And guys would say, "I saw you on TV last night, you looked good, Tim." And I'm, "Well, yes, it's because it was from 9 years ago. It was some documentary I did. I was 26, and you never get old." And I think it's important to get the history out there.
Those guys on that hockey team, they wouldn't probably have picked up a 500-page Tim Cook book, but they might like a documentary, or they might hear something on CBC Radio, or they might watch a commemorative event on D-Day at Juno, or they might come out to Remembrance Day.
And I've been privileged to often play that role as historical commentator in the media. It's challenging. It's very different than giving a lecture. I used to teach at Carleton too, so I can do that. It's very different than sitting here like this, you speak in 45-second sound bites, and some producer is in your ear. But I think it's important.
I think when we talk about our history, we need to engage with the hard parts of it as well. And so, we should talk about war as not just heroic, and not just about sacrifice and Victoria Cross recipients. We should talk about brutality and horrible questions that people on the ground, the decisions they have to make in a split second, and other issues that are a part of our complex story.
And so, that public history element, in my books at least – if you've read my books – I try to write in a narrative style, a book that someone might want to read. But often underpinned by a lot of research at places like Library Archives Canada, where those people in the past, service personnel, civil servants, politicians, created those records and left behind a trail of evidence. I write largely about the 2 World Wars.
I think it'll be more challenging for people to write about Canada's war in Afghanistan, with both the types of records created, but also just the incredible terabytes of information there and how you wrestle that down. But that will be a different generation of historian. I hope it is a different generation of public historian, one that continues to share these stories with Canadians because they're important.
And maybe to come back to my last book, when I left that museum in New Orleans, the World War II Museum. I left a little miffed, but I also left, as I shared with you, "Well, I don't expect the Americans to know Canadian history. It's up to us." I'd like it if they knew some Canadian history, but that it's really up to us to tell our story. This goes for the Second World War, and it goes for 2025, and everything in between, and that further back. It's up to us. We need to do that work.
The great enemy of history is apathy, I think, of shrugging your shoulders and not engaging with the past and knowing who we are, as a people. Public historians can help, but people have to do the work too. And so, what I often tell my colleagues in the academy and universities is I think that they should find the ways to get out their scholarship and their message.
And it might be coming here talking to you, Jill, in an event like this. or others like it, or it's like writing for the Globe and Mail or another piece or speaking on The Hub or some other media site. This is important for us to share these stories, and this is part of the role of the public historian.
Jill Sinclair: Thanks, Tim. Well, we're coming to the end of our chat here, and I'm sure everybody's thinking, "Oh my goodness, but we didn't talk about whatever." For those of you in the room, you'll have an opportunity maybe as Tim is wandering about. And for those of you who are out there, I'm sure Tim's accessible at the War Museum.
Tim, you have written something about history. And so, I'm going to read you some of your words here. You said that, "If we do not embrace our history, it will be forgotten. And without our own history, we run the risk of becoming unmoored and ungrounded. This is our story, a war story that is essential to the unfinished narrative of what it means to be Canadian."
And I must say, that really resonated with me because we seem to be living history at the moment. It feels that we're in an historical moment. So, as we conclude our chat here today, I'd like to ask you what you would like this really amazing community of committed public servants who serve Canada and serve Canadians, what would you like them to go away with? And is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn't?
[01:20:14 Text on screen: Tim Cook, Chief Historian Canadian War Museum.]
Tim Cook: Jill, you did a great job. We'll come back to that. I told Jill before this that this is a 2-way conversation, and I said, "You actually have the harder part because you need to figure out how to bridge somewhat incoherent ramblings." And you've done a wonderful job, so thank you.
You can't live in the past, but I don't think you can go forward into the future without some understanding of our shared history. I think that's important. And it's not just military history, you know. We've passed through and continue to do the hard work of reconciliation in this country, in trying to understand Canadian history.
There's a complexity there. And if there's a couple things we've talked about today, putting aside alliances, putting aside Canada as a fighting force or a martial power, is the idea of the complexity of the past, I suppose. And we've got into that a bit. There's certainly more to be said about any of these topics. But there are no easy answers to any of these questions, and there's no easy answers today.
How we deal with the United States will be exceedingly challenging over the next 4 years, we'll say. How we pivot towards Europe through defence or trade is no easy thing. How we think of India and the Indo-Pacific seemed like a great thing 2 years ago, less so now. What we do with China? God only knows. The list goes on and on. There's no easy solutions. If there were, we would have done them. If there was an easy way forward in 1941, they would have done it. You are not storming the beaches of Juno, but we all face this incredibly complex world and environment, a dangerous place.
And the first step, I suppose, is having woken up to the danger. The second step is figuring out a plan of how to do it. And then it's those things of making it fast and making it effective. I'm one that I would pose to you, as a group smarter than I, of you can't just ramp up to 2% and think that you've done something important there. You need to figure out where the 2% goes. The Arctic is still largely undefended. Latvia is a significant contribution from Canada, but where else do we need to put those resources? They are not limitless. They were not limitless during the Second World War. We made our choices then.
And so, if there's no easy answers and there's a complexity here that we should heed, there may also be some comfort in that. That people in the past have faced their own challenges. They may not be the same as those that we face today, but they nonetheless faced them. They found solutions, imperfect as they were, and yet in the end, there was victory. And I wonder what victory looks like in 2025. It's not May 8th, 1945, victory, but we better figure out what victory looks like for us.
And I think I'll leave it there.
Jill Sinclair: Tim, it's a great place to leave it because I think we all want to figure out what victory looks like, and we know that we have to work on that every single day. The Prime Minister has given us our marching orders, given you your marching orders and you've reminded us in very poignant and visceral ways, Tim, we need to be aware. You have to be aware in order to be able to identify the problem.
[01:24:15 Text on screen: Jill Sinclair, Retired GC Senior Official.]
Jill Sinclair: And then we need to be committed to doing hard things together, which you've talked about. And I think that we have such an extraordinary community of public servants around the country, and who are serving abroad too. We have the Canadian Armed Forces. We have our other members of the national security community. We know from what you've just told us we can do hard things together because we did it back then and we can do it now.
So, Tim, I want to thank you so, so much for joining us today. I want to thank the School. I want to thank our fabulous technical team that made this all seamless and effortless for us. And I want to thank everybody who joined us online and in the room today. Thank you so much for this conversation. Thanks, Tim.
Tim Cook: Thank you.
[01:24:55 The CSPS animated logo appears onscreen. Text on screen: canada.ca/school.]
[01:25:00 The Government of Canada wordmark appears.]
