Permanent Active Militia (PAM) was the proper name of Canada's full-time professional land forces from the 19th century to 1940 when the Canadian Army was so designated.
The PAM, also known as the Permanent Force (PF), was in effect Canada's standing army, consisting of one regular infantry regiment and two cavalry regiments up until 1914. The PAM did not participate directly in the First World War; Canada's military contribution was the creation of a separate field force called the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) into which volunteers (and later conscripts) were inducted for war service. The CEF was disbanded after the war.
The Otter Committee then reorganized Canada's post war military, expanding the PF to three infantry regiments and creating a system of perpetuations keeping the traditions of both the pre-war military and the CEF integrated in the Canadian military.
During the Second World War, the Permanent Force was renamed the Canadian Army (Active); it later became known as the Canadian Army Active Force, Canadian Army (Regular), and eventually as Force Mobile Command following Unification on February 1, 1968.
The counterpart to the PAM was the Non-Permanent Active Militia which existed during the same time frame, composed of part-time volunteer soldiers, and replaced in 1940 by the Canadian Army (Reserve).
Read more about Permanent Active Militia: Equipment, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words permanent and/or active:
“Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence; without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The time passes so quickly during these full and active middle years that most people arrive at the end of middle age and the beginning of later maturity with surprise and a sense of having finished the journey while they were still preparing to commence it.”
—Robert Havighurst (20th century)