Review: The Battle of the St. Lawrence
| Author | Carman Miller |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200606100317 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| Reviews |
| 762 | International Journal | Summer 2006 |
THE BATTLE OF THE ST. LAWRENCE
The Second World War in Canada
Nathan M. Greenfield
Toronto: HarperCollins, 2004. xiv, 287pp, $34.95 cloth (ISBN 0-00-
200664-2)
Few Canadians appreciate the extent of military operations, battles, causal-
ities, and material damage that took place within Canadian territorial waters
during World War II, despite a growing literature on the subject.
Determined to control the Atlantic lanes and cut Britain’s access to
Canadian war material, food, and personnel, Germany’s lethal U-boats
stalked Canada’s coastal waters, and penetrated the Gulf of St. Lawrence
where they wreaked considerable damage against unprepared Canadian
defences. During the subsequent “Battle of the St. Lawrence,” “the only
Second World War campaign fought inside North America,” German U-
boats torpedoed “more than 28 ships,” including four Canadian warships
with the loss of some 300 people within “Canadian” waters, 137 of whom
died as a result of the destruction of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry,
the SS Caribou (1). Canada’s initial inability to protect its St. Lawrence con-
voys obliged the government to close the river to shipping for two seasons
and confine its convoy operation to its Atlantic ports.
The author of this book, Nathan Greenfield, Canadian correspondent
for the
Times Education Supplement
and the
Times Literary Supplement
,
recounts in great and vivid detail the sinking of several of these vessels. The
author correctly explains that his “is not an academic history” (5). Its virtu-
oso deployment of technical language to present the story, however, may
further limit its full enjoyment to those who are technically proficient. A
highly overwritten tale, spiced with many firsthand accounts, the book is
based largely on secondary sources, all generously acknowledged in a use-
ful bibliographical essay. Although the text is not footnoted extensively,
often the footnotes themselves contain interesting information, some of
which might have been better placed in the body of the text.
Numerous irritating errors of fact mar the text. The federal election did
not take place in 1922; T. A. Crerar was not leader of the Progressive
Conservative party; Richard Hanson was not leader of the opposition
Progressive party; Canada did not declare war on Germany on 8 September
1939 (though the author later gets it right); Angus L. Macdonald did not
represent “a Halifax riding,” but that of Kingston, Ontario, a point of some
greater relevance owing to the author’s suggestion that his decisions may
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