Normandy 1944, Canada Remembers
"Ready, Aye Ready" Again
« Return to Index » The Long Wait BeginsBy the time of the Normandy invasion, Canada had been at war for almost five years. On the first day of September 1939, Germany, in an unprovoked act of aggression, invaded Poland. Britain and France had pledged to protect Polish sovereignty and, after the demand for a German withdrawal went unanswered, declared war on Germany on September 3.
A depression-wracked country, Canada neither sought nor secured any influence on the diplomatic events of the 1930's that led Europe down the road to war. The country wanted peace and endorsed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's attempts to appease the Nazi Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. In the end, however, it was to be war. Canadians abhorred the prospect of another conflict. Barely a generation had passed since the four-year long clash in the fields of France and Flanders where 66,000 of their young men and women died.
However, as had been the case during the First World War, ancestral ties proved strong. This, combined with a growing realization of the grave threat which Nazism posed to freedom and democracy, led the Canadian Parliament to declare war on Germany on September 10.
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