Introduction of Conscription
After campaigns in Italy in 1943 and the Normandy invasion in 1944, combined with a lack of volunteers, Canada faced a shortage of troops. A brigade from one of the three "home defence" divisions in Canada was sent to the Aleutian Islands Campaign in 1943 (the islands were technically North American soil and thus deployment there was not considered "overseas"). These divisions were made up largely of conscripts, other than officers and NCOs, and desertions before embarkation were noted. However, no further combat employment was made until early 1945, when 12,908 men were sent overseas, most of whom were from the home service conscripts drafted under the NRMA, rather than from the general population.
The French-Canadian ministers in Cabinet, and Quebec in general, did not trust Defence Minister James Ralston, and King felt it was politically sensible to replace him as Minister of National Defence with the anti-conscription General Andrew McNaughton in November 1944. McNaughton was unable to produce large numbers of volunteers for the army, although there were numerous volunteers for the navy and air force. Some members of King's cabinet threatened to resign and bring down the government. King finally agreed to a one-time levy of 17,000 NRMA conscripts for overseas service in November 1944. When word of the decision reached soldiers stationed in Terrace, British Columbia, it resulted in the short-lived Terrace Mutiny.
Few conscripts saw combat in Europe: only 2463 men reached units on the front lines. Out of these, 79 lost their lives. Politically, this was a successful gamble for King, as he avoided a drawn-out political crisis and remained in power until his retirement in 1948.
The NRMA men who refused to "go active" were derisively called "zombies" both in Canada and overseas; Farley Mowat recalls in his volumes of war memoirs savagely disliking those who wore the uniform but refused to make the same sacrifices he and his brothers-in-arms were called on to make in Italy and North-West Europe.
Read more about this topic: Conscription Crisis Of 1944
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“For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
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