The Great Depression (72 page)

With the fall of Madrid in March, funds from the Spanish government had dried up. The Friends of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion had also exhausted their thin resources. On May 2, Hazen Sise, Bethune’s former associate, pleaded with Crerar to help out. The situation of these veterans was desperate, he wrote; the French camps had been the subject of an international scandal. It would “cause considerable resentment in Canada, if these remaining volunteers were to be shut up in them, merely because money for transportation was lacking.” After months as prisoners of war, “their physical condition is deplorable and it is doubtful if some of them could withstand further rigorous treatment.” The Friends had borrowed four thousand dollars for ten days with little hope that it could be repaid. It would cost no more than one hundred dollars a man to bring them home. Could the Canadian government not help, Sise asked, either by relieving France of the burden of maintaining the volunteers or by making a grant to the International Red Cross or one of the international refugee committees?

Five days later, Sise got his answer. The government refused to consider the request. A similar request from a senior mandarin, Norman Robertson, first secretary at the Department of External Affairs, was also ignored.

The statistics of the Canadian contribution to the Spanish Civil War are fuzzy. Dr. James McCrorie, executive director of the Canadian Plains Research Centre, who has done considerable work on the subject, has estimated that of the 1,448 Canadians now known to have fought in Spain, 721 never returned home. Hazen Sise’s estimates in his letter to Crerar differ slightly, but
they were compiled as of April 30, 1939. They are also more specific. Sise reported that of 1,239 Canadian volunteers of whom they then had record, 677 had returned home, 86 were still in France or Europe, 32 had been repatriated to other countries, and 444 were killed or missing.

This last is an appalling statistic. Even in the Great War, that most savage of modern conflicts, the casualties did not reach 36 per cent. Yet in spite of this, a great many veterans from Spain enlisted or tried to enlist when war came to Canada in September.

Here again, they were the victims of muddle and confusion and a lack of clear government policy about what to do with “Communists.” Some were welcomed because of their military experience; some were given the cold shoulder. The first four veterans of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion to sign up were discharged four days later because of their record in Spain. A few weeks after that, the policy was revised and they enlisted again.

Jules Paivio, the Finnish Canadian from Sudbury, also had trouble enlisting. A section leader in Spain, he’d spent a year as a prisoner of war. But the army wouldn’t take him until December 1942. On the other hand, Mike Olynuck, who had been a captain, was quickly welcomed into the Toronto Scottish because of his experience.

As Paivio discovered, the RCMP had a file on each man, which followed the Spanish volunteers wherever they went. Fred Kostyck of Winnipeg, who had been cited for bravery in Spain, tried to get a job in a munitions factory when war broke out. He was taken on, then fired after three weeks. When he asked why, he was told it was because he had seen action in Spain.

“I fought against fascism in Spain,” Kostyck said. “Isn’t this war against fascism?”

“There is no debate or argument,” he was told. “Here is your discharge and out you go. If you want to cause any more trouble, you will be blacklisted and you won’t even get a job.”

A week later Kostyck was called up. When he went to the local barracks, he asked if the army was prepared to trust him.

“They couldn’t trust me working in a cordite plant,” he said, “but you’ll trust me with a gun out in the field. Aren’t you making a mistake?” But the army took him in, and Kostyck served his country overseas.

On the other hand, Bill Matthews, who had been an officer in Spain and had suffered wounds to the neck and shoulder, was turned down when he tried to join the tank corps in Calgary. He then tried the air force, where he was asked if he’d ever been in combat.

“Oh, yeah, in Spain,” said Matthews. “We’re filled up,” he was told.

“There’s a war on,” Matthews replied. “There’ll be casualties. I’ll put my application in.”

It was no use. “We don’t want you,” he was told.

Matthews was furious. “Well,” he said, “from now on if you want me you’ll have to come and get me. I’ll probably live a lot longer than you will.” He walked out, hopped an eastbound freight, got a job in Toronto, and never did serve in the forces.

As he later said, “I’m very thankful I didn’t, because the Calgary tank regiment was practically wiped out at Dieppe.”

That spring, the country witnessed the greatest outpouring of enthusiasm and goodwill in its history. There had been royal tours before by princes of the realm, and there have been royal tours since, but never anything like this one. The Royal Tour of 1939 was unique – a month-long revel that came at the end of the darkest of all decades and seemed to wipe away, if only briefly, the memory and the misery of those mean-spirited years.

When, on May 15, the discarded German liner
Tirpitz
, rechristened
Empress of Australia
, reached Quebec City, it marked the first time a reigning British monarch had visited North America. George VI and his consort had insisted on coming by passenger liner because, with international tensions so high, the King did not want to take a warship out of service.

They came, it was said officially, at the invitation of the Prime Minister, who certainly took credit for initiating the tour. Mackenzie King had invited the royal pair directly during the Coronation visit in 1937. In the fall of 1938, with the Munich crisis behind it, the British government gave official approval. But there were other considerations. Canada would be chosen to greet the monarch not only because she was the senior Dominion
but also because the British government saw, or thought it saw, disturbing signs of a spirit of independence and neutrality in certain sections of the country. Mackenzie King had a different reason: a coast-to-coast tour would help bind the nation together and give all Canadians a sense of national pride.

It was King, ever conscious of his position as the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth nation, who insisted on making all the important decisions and who fended off attempts to place the Governor General in the ceremonial forefront. The British – notably Sir Alexander Hardinge, the King’s secretary – had wanted Tweedsmuir to greet the couple when they stepped off the ship at Quebec City. But the Prime Minister was having none of that. It would be seen, he said, as “a reversal to colonial status.” Since His Excellency was, in effect, the King’s stand-in, he would have no real function when his sovereign was on Canadian soil. As a result, Tweedsmuir was packed off on a fishing trip to the Gaspé, and Mackenzie King, as Prime Minister to the “King of Canada” (a new title), took over.

In fact, he scarcely left the royal couple’s side for the entire tour. Every attempt was made to sideline him for their trip to Washington and New York, planned for June. But King would not be cast aside, he said, “like an old boot.” A first-class spat was in the making before royalty so much as touched Canadian shores – King even appealed to Roosevelt – but the British finally backed down. They could not afford to offend the Commonwealth’s senior statesman, who was starting to make warning signals through the Governor General. “You have already lost South Africa pretty well out of the Empire,” he told Tweedsmuir, “have lost Ireland out of it; are rapidly losing Canada.” That came dangerously close to a threat, and it worked. Mackenzie King was front and centre during the entire tour, a situation that was viewed with considerable pique in some circles, where he was accused of “hogging the royal couple.”

The vast crowds straining their eyes in the morning sunshine along the banks of the St. Lawrence were treated to a few moments of old-world pageantry as the white Empress was nudged into the docks at Quebec City. Three hundred members of the international press scribbled furiously as the Prime Minister and his huge Quebec lieutenant, Ernest Lapointe, mounted the gangway, resplendent in gold-braided Windsor uniforms and ostrich-plumed
hats. Then the King and Queen appeared – he tanned and serious in the cocked hat and navy blue of an admiral, she radiant in lavender. Guns boomed; scarlet-coated Canadian Guardsmen in bearskin busbies presented arms with a single
slap;
and the crowd went wild. It was clear from this first glittering moment that a unique and historic event was in the making and that French Canada was eager to be part of it.

Only the Premier of Quebec seemed out of sorts. After receiving Their Majesties, he failed to appear at the luncheon given by the Canadian government, using the transparent excuse that he had to visit his sister, who had just arrived in town. In reality, he was piqued because he felt he had been allotted a seat too far from the royal couple. He turned up in good spirits as host at dinner that night after arranging for the Prime Minister to be seated, tit for tat, at the remote end of the head table.

The two political enemies found themselves thrown together on the journey to Montreal – a disagreeable experience for Mackenzie King, who found the Quebec premier “anything but a pleasant person,” talking only of voters and power in “almost a childish and fanatical way.”

The scenes that followed, however, wiped out that contretemps. Montreal, the worst-hit city during the Depression, now responded with the greatest crowds of the tour. More than a million people lined the twenty-three-mile route of the royal procession, shouting themselves hoarse and conveying the impression (not quite correct) of a united royalist Canada. That night, Camillien Houde, the popular mayor of Montreal – a man of vast belly, bald head, and huge, popping eyes – broke through protocol and had the King laughing uproariously for the first time.

That touch of informality set the tone for the rest of the tour. In Ottawa the couple took part in the first royal walkabout, leaving their car at the National War Memorial in Confederation Square to mingle with a crowd of sixty thousand. Lost even to the sight of their aides, they grasped the hands of veterans who cried out, “You don’t need any bullet-proof glass here,” and, significantly, “If Hitler could see this!”

Tom MacDonnell, who has written a lively and definitive account of the tour
(Daylight Upon Magic
), reports that “no other event in the entire tour had such an impact on Canadians as a
whole or, for that matter, on the King and Queen themselves.” The contrast between the royal pair moving freely among their subjects and the reviewing-stand remoteness of the European dictators was not lost on the international press, who wrote now of the new “common touch.” From that moment, the King and Queen, invigorated by the experience, took advantage of every opportunity to break through the red tape of protocol and get closer to the people.

In spite of his disdain for the British aristocracy, the Prime Minister, like everyone else, was captivated by Their Majesties to the point of sycophancy. While showing them around Laurier House he found himself blurting out that he was prepared to lay his life at their feet “in helping to further great causes which they have at heart.” The success of the tour was exceeding his wildest dreams. When the King, seated in the red Senate Chamber, gave royal assent to nine bills passed by the Canadian Parliament, the Prime Minister gushed that the event marked “the full flowering of our nationhood.”

As the country’s fervour increased, so did that of the Prime Minister. More than nationhood was in flower; universal peace was in bloom, thanks to the Canadian example – or so he thought. “I feel increasingly certain,” King wrote, “that this visit of the King and Queen is going to be the dust in the balance which will save a European and, if so, a world war. The unity, which Canada is showing, will be reflected in Europe. It will help to arouse Germany to be conscious of what she will encounter if the entire British Empire should rise.…”

The Prime Minister’s enthusiasm was dampened in Toronto, however, during the running of the King’s Plate at Woodbine Racetrack. This was
the
social and sporting event of the year. For the first time, the King himself would be on hand to present the traditional purse of gold guineas to the owner of the winning horse. And who did that turn out to be? None other than the Prime Minister’s old
bête noire
, George McCullagh! King immediately suspected a fix. The horse, Archworth, was the favourite. It had led the field by a good ten lengths. George VI himself had picked it to win. Nonetheless, King hinted darkly, “financial circumstances had accounted for it … something had been done to ensure McCullagh winning.” King was convinced the wily
McCullagh had worked behind the scenes to try to prevent his travelling the country on the tour. How could such a man be allowed this moment of triumph?

Canada’s own royalty, the Dionne quintuplets, arrived in Toronto on their own special train – a red-and-gold air-conditioned streamliner. Since 1934 they had been the source of the only really cheerful headlines. At Queen’s Park they made more, spontaneously kissing the royal couple and holding up their dolls and stuffed animals for inspection. But there could be no photographs. N?? Service, which had the Quints under contract, refused to relinquish its rights to any pool photographer.

The official royal train steamed westward by CPR, “a symphony in blue and gold,” to quote the press – a twelve-car luxury hotel on wheels. Now the true shape of Canada was revealed on the front pages of the nation – a long, narrow country, really, from a population point of view, hugging the international border. Here was the armoured barrier of the Canadian Shield, seven hundred miles of Precambrian rock, where Van Home, the railway builder, had erected three dynamite factories to blast a line through the dripping scarps north of Superior. Beyond that lay three hundred miles of muskeg that had once swallowed whole locomotives, now bridged and drained, and beyond that the southern plains, stretching seemingly forever toward the mountain wall, recently drought-ravaged but green now with new shoots of wheat. The downpours seemed to soak the fields just ahead of the royal procession, and the farmers began calling their King “George the Rainmaker.” The immensity of the land and its deceptive shape – the tiny pockets of population isolated by vast natural barriers – gave visitors and natives alike a new insight into the problems the country faced.