The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Good Allies - The Canada-US Relationship During WW2

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

A feature interview with celebrated Canadian military historian Tim Cook about his latest book hitting the shelves today.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. How the Canada-U.S. relationship was strengthened during a period of war and the lessons that could mean for today. That story, coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. A special program today, Tuesdays, we like to do feature interviews, and this is one today. You know, as I've often told you, I'm a pretty lucky guy, given the different places, different stories that I've had the opportunity of covering during my career. And I tend to think some of my favorites have been dealing with remembering Canada's history. Right? It could be Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa. It could be at Vimy Ridge, where I've done a number of programs.

Dieppe, Juneau Beach, Appledorn in the Netherlands. And why am I lucky? Not only because I got to go to those places, not only because I got to understand the history of those places, but almost always sitting beside me in those programs was one of Canada's many great historians, military historians. I've sat with the best. And one of them is somebody I'm happy to call a friend as well, Tim Cook.

Now, Tim is a prolific author. I think he's written almost 20 books. He's the chief historian and director of research of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. His best-selling books have won multiple awards. I'm not going to list them all here because we wouldn't have time to discuss his latest book. His latest book is called The Good Allies.

And the subtitle is How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism During the Second World War. I'm sure this is going to be another bestseller to add to the list of bestsellers that Tim has associated with his name and the books he's written. This book comes out today, right? It's available today at the best bookstores across the country and obviously online. I'll warn you now, it's a big one. So let's have our discussion with Tim Cook

because there's so much in this book, you know, I think I've told you before, that I love to pick up a book where I learn things I didn you know, I think I've told you before that I love to pick up a book where I learn things I didn't know, I didn't even have a hint of knowing, and there's lots in this book, lots. So let's get to our conversation with Tim Cook. So Tim, I'm going to start this off in a way that you probably don't normally start things off in terms of an audio interview because i want to talk about a picture and it's your cover photo

because as soon as i saw this i was immediately drawn to it because it's um well it's haunting in a way as a picture but i i want you to explain the picture first of all. For those of you who obviously can't see it on this audio broadcast, it is both on my Twitter feed and my Instagram feed today as promotion for this interview. So there you go. I will describe it briefly. There's two soldiers, clearly Second World War, given their

uniforms, and they're standing over or kneeling over the grave of one assumes a fellow soldier. It's roughly a human grave, you know, with a couple of sticks marking the cross and a helmet on top of the cross. So talk to me about this picture, where you found it and what it symbolizes and how it fits into the good allies, you know, how Canada and the United States fought together to defeat fascism during the Second World War. Yeah, thanks, Peter. And great to be back with you. It's always fun to talk. We have such, I think, a shared love of Canadian history and military history. When I saw this image, it struck me, and I see very visually, I've been lucky to be a curator or a public historian at the Canadian War Museum for over 20 years now. And this image, as you rightly described, of two Canadians from First Special Service Force, that was the Devil's

Brigade. That was the unique Canadian-American unit formed during the war. They're standing over a grave and they're exhausted. They've come out of battle or a hard campaign, and they are staring and caring for the grave of perhaps a comrade and perhaps an enemy soldier. We don't know. There isn't a nameplate on it yet, but there is a helmet. It's a the helmet. But it's a German helmet. And so isn't that interesting? Have they marked a fellow comrade who could be Canadian or American?

Because this was a unique unit that had Canadians and Americans in it with a German helmet. Is it a German soldier that they perhaps killed? There's an ambiguity here. And I think, Peter, both you and I have read enough history, you reporting on it, both of us writing about it, to know about those contradictions in history, those ambiguities, and war is a horrible thing. You know, it's ghastly to force young men and now women into combat. And yet the Second World War, which I have previously called in one of my books, the necessary war, was a war that had to be fought against the fascists, against Hitler and the Nazis primarily, although this new book explores the critical role of Canada and the United States, first defending North America, something we don't often think about,

and maybe we'll talk about that, and then fighting abroad, sending those expeditionary forces overseas to fight on multiple fronts, including this one in the Italian campaign. Let me just, before we move on to some of the things you just mentioned, because they are the things I want to talk about. We talk a lot about where Canada was positioned during the war in terms of in Europe, in terms of whether it was France or the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, whether it was in the Far East, Hong Kong. We know, of course, the disastrous campaign there early in the war. But we don't often talk about the defense of Canada.

And because we're so linked with the United States, there are a lot of things in this book that I found not only fascinating, but I didn't know about. And we'll get to those in a second. But just before we tie the knot on that cover photo, a special Canadian-American force, a special forces team, kind of the forerunner in some ways of whether it was SEAL Team 6 in the States or JTF2 in Canada. But tell us about that, because that was a unique force and one that, as you mentioned,

where the two countries were together on it. Yeah, it's quite remarkable, isn't it? First Special Service Force, a Canadian-American unit comes together in 1942. It really embodies, I believe, the coming together of the two countries, which up to that point, as you've talked about, we're trying to figure out how do we defend North America from this significant fascist threat on the East Coast, the German U-boats that are swarming there on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor and the Japanese attack on the Pacific, the threats there. So we'll come back to that, hopefully North America and the incredible work of Canada and the United States. And as you know, Peter, you've reported on it for years, that doesn't come easy,

trying to figure how you defend a continent together, how you get your wartime industry pumping out those essential weapons, how you deal with finance and trade, the diplomatic side, the political side, all of that is there. But it seems to come together, I think, in this symbol of the Devil's Brigade, as they would later become known famously. And I think it's a fascinating story. As you know, from my previous books, I often read the letters and the diaries of Canadians who have served, the powerful eyewitnesses to history. And I was able to read the letters and diaries of these Canadians who served with American comrades in the same unit. Sometimes they would have an American officer with Canadian privates and NCOs. Sometimes it was the opposite. They learned to fight together. They learned to work together. And very quickly,

those national identities become blurred and they begin to bleed into each other one soldier talked very candidly that they the canadians made it very clear to their american comrades that they were not to joke about the royal family so there was still this canadian identity very strong and the americans made it very clear to the to the canadians that not all of them were Yanks, you know, the southern guys especially. But they learned to fight together. Incredible. In Italy, in one campaign in late 1943, where they have to dislodge Germans from atop literally a mountain. And it's a nearly impossible position.

But these guys, through their incredible training, go up the back of the mountain, climbing a freehand style, fingers bleeding, using ropes where they can. And they get above the Germans and then unleash hell on them in a really titanic battle that drives the Germans off. So it's a part of this, the Canadian and American fighting force. But as I try to do in my histories, I take big ideas. And this was a big book and a daunting book when I started it, I was pretty nervous. But always try to figure out how do you tell those individual stories? How do you ensure that the voices of the Canadians who served 80 or 85 years ago, most of them, Peter, as we know, all gone now, how do we ensure that their stories remain?

Why were you nervous about writing this book? Yeah, it's my 19th book, so I should probably be over those nerves, shouldn't I? But it's a big topic. It's a daunting topic. I'm a military historian first, probably political historian second. I do lots of stuff on memory. We've talked about my book on Vimy and the constructed memory there. But this took me into the field of economic history and trade history, political, diplomatic. I had, you know, I'll be honest, I knew how the war ended. I knew Canada's major contributions abroad. I've written about them in

other books. But the defense of North America, that was new. And it gets glossed over very quickly in our histories because we want to talk about Dieppe or the liberation of the Dutch in 45 or the incredible role of our Navy, the fourth largest in the world and about the Atlantic or the Air Force. And I talk about them here through the lens of Canadian American stories, but it's absolutely crucial, absolutely crucial. Before Canada can send these fighting forces abroad, they need to defend North America. That means building up our defenses on the two coasts. Of course, the Americans were not in the war until December of 1941. And so Canada is at war from September of 1939, almost two full years. And how we work with the Americans is critical to understanding

this whole process. And just, we can't talk about all of this in our limited time, but we send some of our best people to Washington. Lester B. Pearson, former prime minister is there. Lieutenant General Maurice Pope, an unsung Canadian hero, bilingual Canadian general who was down there, who impresses the Americans and the British. All the while, we're trying to carve out a role for ourselves to protect our sovereignty, but also to assist Britain, which is on the front lines. But the only way to do that is to lean into the United States. So that's a big story to tell. I hope I've told it well here. You're always scaling from the international to the national story, to the community story, to the fighting units, to the individual soldiers, sailors, airmen, nurses, and others, and then back up again. And it's a wonderful process. It's why I love researching and writing and finding these stories. But it's also one that is not entirely clear from the start, as you know, from your own books and your own stories, right? You sort of know where

this is going, but no plan survives contact with real archival research or in talking to people or listening to their stories. And that's a wonderful thing for a historian to have to engage with. Let me deal a little bit on this. As you say, there's kind of the military story of the Second World War, and there's the political story. And Canada had to deal with both these issues. And one of the early quotes in the book that I found fascinating was at that time shortly after the Americans got into the war, after Pearl Harbor. And Norman Robertson, who was then the Undersecretary of State

for External Affairs, basically the Foreign Affairs Minister, warns Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister, that the American inclination was to, quote, to take Canadian concurrence and support entirely for granted. And you kind of see that theme through a number of things over those first couple of years of the war. This sense that we're allies, we're good allies, we'll fight together like the example you gave in Italy.

But there was always this in the background, got to be careful who we're dealing with here. Talk about that a little bit. You're exactly right. There's the promise and the peril, which was a title I thought about at one point way, way back. I think it had been used in a different book, not on Canadian-American relations,

but there is a peril here. Not the least being, Canada is at war. The United States is not. It's desperately neutral. Roosevelt, the American president, understands that Americans don't want to go to war again. But our prime minister, William Lyne Mackenzie King, he's desperate to draw the Americans into the war. That's a key thing. He's desperate to acquire American assistance in finance, to buy our weapons, to support our wartime economy, which is nearly dead and gone cold after the Depression, but all of this to help Britain. And so there's a delicate dance here that you nicely capture there with Robertson's statement that the Americans need us, but they have a wider view and they do begin to take us for granted.

And so it's always the challenge of Canadians during the war to fight and to ensure the Americans are aware of our presence, of our support. And frankly, Peter, as you know, it's still the fight today, isn't it? I mean, there's a lot in this book that resonates, I think, in the contemporary world. I'm a military historian. I'm a historian. I'm firmly in the past. But every time I was writing this, I kept thinking, oh, my gosh, this is history echoing forward, casting a dark shadow. And interestingly, I've had a number of senior diplomats and military personnel say, you know, thanks for writing this. They had seen some advanced copies. They heard about it. I asked them about their opinions on things, saying it's good for the Americans to understand, maybe in these dark and fraught times, of how we really stood with them, but also how it's a

challenge to live next to a superpower. And we have done that very well, working with the Americans over a 9,000-kilometer border, figuring out when we work with them, when we swallow our pride, and when we stand firm. And one of the key figures in the book is William Lyne Mackenzie King, who is our longest-serving prime minister, but not a terribly likable historical figure to come and understand. He's become much of a joke in Canadian history. He believed in seances and in speaking to his dead mother and his dead dog to give him guidance. I unpack him in the book. I look at him. He's a fascinating person. He was a lonely man. He was lonely. He never married. And being prime minister for so long, he didn't have a lot of intimate support there. But he's critical in helping to work with President Roosevelt to guide the two countries through this period of when one's at war and one is at peace, and then to move beyond that from December of 1941. One of the early situations where there was that kind of tension in a way

in the background of the relationship was the building of the Alaska Highway. The Americans needed it because they were afraid the Japanese, after Pearl Harbor, would attack Alaska. And so they needed to get there in terms of supplies and equipment. And there was no way to drive there. So they began this process, you know, with the nod from Canada to begin the Alaska Highway and built it in an unbelievably short period of time. But when you read the stuff that was going on in Ottawa,

the fear of this highway, what it could mean, whether they'd ever get the Americans out of that land that they were taking over to build the highway. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, that captures it nicely, and thanks that a little bit. Yeah, that, that captures it nicely. And thanks for bringing that up because on a map, of course, the, uh, the Alaska highway is an incredible exertion, as you say, 2000 kilometers cutting through, uh, you know, just over mountains and through forests and everything.

Um, but we had very few people in Canada's north. Then, as probably you could say now, we hadn't paid much attention, proper attention to the north and to issues of sovereignty. And so the Americans are desperate to build this road, which they wanted to build before the war, and that we had effectively blocked them on. But then the desperation of that period after Pearl Harbor, we allow the Americans to build this highway. But it looks like on a map, and in Ottawa, Mackenzie King and the ministers and generals and politicians are looking at this, it looks like it's going to divide Canada. I mean, this is, it's going to break us up. It's going to connect Alaska to the other states and that we will fall.

I mean, this has always been our great fear from the late 19th century and onwards. So we did it with much trepidation. And it didn't help that the roughly 30,000 American soldiers and civilian personnel up there, they began to answer the phone in a very cheeky way saying, Army of Occupation. Well, that was a bit of a fun gag they were having, but it didn't go over too well in Ottawa. And that's a good example, I think, of that tension, as you say, between the sovereignty issue and the need to work with the Americans. Mackenzie King understood we had to stand with the Americans. We could not be seen as not pulling our weight. We could not be

freeloaders here. And yet, there is great worry and angst. Now, we had already shown our value. We had shown our value on the industrial front, where Canada from 1940 is just pumping out tens of thousands of aircraft and tanks and trucks and artillery shells. We are an arsenal of democracy. It's not really acknowledged by British historians or French historians or American historians, but we're just an incredible exertion on the home front. Our minerals, just this astonished me, Peter, right? Sometimes you and I, we write books to find out more about our topics. Uranium, where we're supplying the Manhattan Project, which will create the atomic bombs. Aluminum is probably one of our greatest

contributions. Something like 3 billion pounds of it is dug out of the earth. And it's essential, as you know, for aircraft production, of which we build 16,000 aircraft. So all of that, we've already shown we are a good ally. On the East Coast, when the Nazi U-boats are sinking American merchant ships that are sailing almost criminally without any convoys. It's the Canadians who step in, the Royal Canadian Navy. On the West Coast, we help the Americans defend in early 1942. We send four squadrons to Alaska and precious anti-aircraft guns to help defend Alaska. All of this we do when the Americans are down and desperate after Pearl Harbor. And yet we worry.

We do not want to lean so far into this new alliance that we lose who we are. And that is always there, this great concern and tension. This is fabulous stuff, Tim. I'm going to take a quick break. I'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. And our special guest today, Tim Cook, the author of The Good Allies, How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism During the Second World War.

And I think this is day one of the book being in bookstores, so you can go ahead and grab your copy. Don't carry too much when you go in to pick up the book because the book is big enough all its own, full of terrific stories and facts that, as you've already heard in this discussion, that you're probably not necessarily aware of. There's, here's a question.

You talk about, in the book, there's one point you mentioned that Canada is the third ranked allied nation between Britain and the United States. How do we manage that relationship given the, I was going to say tension again, but given the history on both sides? It's a great question, Peter. And it's at the start of the war, of course, we are standing by Britain. We would not have gone into this war. Certainly in 1939, we wouldn't have gone in if Britain hadn't gone to war. And why is that? Well, we're protected by geography.

It's our greatest shield. The Atlantic protects us. The U-boats don't really cross until late 40. And even then, their great carnage is in 41 and 42. And yet we are standing by Britain. We need to remember we were a proud British dominion. And yet there was a great desire among at least English Canadians, and in fact, many French Canadians and new Canadians to Indigenous Canadians to stand by Britain. But Britain is on the back foot, as we know, with the fall of France in June of 1940, things are desperate. Britain is about to be invaded, as we know. Canada sends all its best forces, our best destroyers, our squadrons from the RCAF. We send a division is there.

Another division is on its way. Third division will come. And we basically open up our defenses. And the Americans take note of this because they're not in the war. And their great fear is that Britain will fall, but also that Canada will be invaded and that there will be this apocalyptic scenario where Nazi Germany is on the 49th parallel, north of the border. So it's in the United States' interest to assist Canada, but they didn't have to. And our key strategic objective for much of the war is to keep Britain in the war. If Britain

falls, just the world changes overnight for Canada and all the other dominions and, in fact, the Western democracies. So it's this delicate dance, as we've talked about, of how Ottawa positions itself between London and Washington and tries to bring them together. Key figure there is William Lyon Mackenzie King, our not terribly charismatic leader, not particularly well liked by Churchill, who thought he was a weakling. Certainly as Churchill is standing as the bulldog, but Roosevelt likes him. And that's a bit surprising. You know, Roosevelt was this terrifically charismatic character and just a leader of

the United States and his fireside chats, just one of these great orators. And everyone who met him came away thinking he understood them. It was one of his great characteristics. And yet he was friendly to Mackenzie King. And so Mackenzie King works that in 1940 and 41. He makes all of these visits to Washington. He's talking to Roosevelt. And he gets good deals for Canada, good deals in finance to help us rev up those industries as we've talked about.

But why are we doing that? It's to keep Britain in the war. So it's this complicated triangle. And by inserting ourselves into it, it went against Mackenzie King's instincts, really. He doesn't like to put himself into places. He's much happier leading from the rear. But I came away with a greater sense of Mackenzie King's leadership in this book. And I think we have to give him credit when we look at the critical period of 1940 and 41 and early 42.

After that, it becomes more difficult because Britain and the United States, they really forge a strong alliance and they almost squeeze Canada out. Where we remain critical, though, as we've talked about, Peter, is in the defense of North America. The Americans can't do it without us. And I think there's an important lesson there for today. Again, to go back to our earlier discussion, often we're taken for granted. Often the Americans assume we will simply be on side and or elbow us out of the way um you know you need to fight for that influence

you need to struggle for that voice there's a lesson here in what our leaders did in this really difficult fraught period um which i think is relevant today and requires both courage and energy, and sometimes not to simply lay back and be the good guys, as we often are, and say sorry for things that we're not sorry for. This was a situation during the war where we had to impress upon both Britain and the United States, not always successfully, we had to impress on them that they needed us. And we did that on all of those fights, the fighting front, without a doubt. And Peter, we can talk more about our incredible exertions on the oceans, in the air, fighting on multiple continents, but also our industrial output. One example, 850,000 trucks we build in this country. I was astonished to find one stat that Monty, the great British general in North Africa,

fighting against Rommel in 1942, half of the British Eighth Army is using Canadian-made trucks. That's not in our history, right? And that's sort of a hidden part of our history. When we think of the exertions of Canada, we think of the total war environment, right? 11.5 million Canadians, 1.1 million in uniform. There's a point in the book, it's about halfway through the book, where you link up to this issue that you've raised a couple of times in our discussion here already, and that's this issue of

we're contributing so much in so many different ways, sometimes at the expense of our own defense. You say this, Canada often sacrificed its own safety and security to serve on multiple fronts in support of its allies, Britain and the US, in the common war against the Axis powers. Expand on that for me. Yeah, and thanks for bringing that up. I think that, you know, again, if we come back to this idea that we're largely safe from this terrible war raging first in Western Europe, and yet we understand the importance of both standing with Britain, but also, I think, defending democracy. And later in the war, in liberating the oppressed people, when we begin to understand the horror of the Nazis primarily, but also the Japanese Imperial Army and what it does to people who are conquered, mass slaughter, horrendous genocide,

the Holocaust, as we know. There are many reasons why we fight in this war and why it is a total war, as we've discussed. But we have to acknowledge that Canada could have sat it out. There's a debate in early in September of 1939. Should we be involved in this? Shouldn't we maybe just stand with the United States as a neutral country? No, we didn't. And I'm glad those Canadians of that generation understood the importance of this fight. But we sacrifice our own security because we send an army of half a million men that are in Britain, right? We're defending Hong Kong. You mentioned the gallant defense there, but the horrendous things that happened to those Canadians in prisoner of war camps. We have the fourth largest navy in the world,

and we're serving around the world. Our Air Force, 250,000 strong, the Royal Canadian Air Force, fighting on multiple fronts, including my grandfather, who flew out of North Africa. We couldn't have done that without American support. But we didn't really have to do that, but we do it. And so, again, if we're thinking of lessons today, sometimes, I mean, sometimes history is just important to understand in the past. It's important to ground us. I think it makes us better citizens. It allows us to question the constant barrage of information we get. So sometimes history is just fascinating, I think, to read on its own, to know this country, to be a good citizen. But sometimes there are lessons there. And I do think there are lessons for today.

Think of the war in Ukraine and how we are supporting there. Not fighting directly because NATO has made a decision, but NATO, of course, goes back to the legacy of the Second World War and collective security. And one of the more interesting parts in the book, I think, is the legacies and looking at the multiple legacies of this war, one of which, undeniably, is we become more North American. We may have gone into the war in September of 39, standing by Britain as a proud British dominion, but we come out of it a very different country, transformed. We're industrialized. Wartime industry does that. The emergence of the cultural front, And I had a really fun chapter on writing about National

Film Board and the CBC reporters overseas and the newspapers and the creation of Canadian icons. We have a greater sense of who we are as Canadians. Trade-wise, we're linked with the United States. We can't undo that. Security-wise, we understand that we can never again untangle those security alliances. All of this comes back to the Second World War and what we do during the war. And so I think history is history is one thing. This is history, I think, with some lessons for today. And one of them is that idea of sacrificing our security for the greater good. And that's always a debate and a discussion, especially today, if you're talking about the 2% defense spending and other aspects like that. How far do you go? What should we do? There's no easy answers. There were no easy answers, though, in 1942 or 1944. There was no

easy way for us to L-bar our way into the room with the British and the Americans. And sometimes we got locked out, but we had to find ways to make the effort. And I think readers will find that fascinating. Was there much debate internally about how we were, you know, playing our forces and giving up our own defense to help, whether it was in the convoys across the North Atlantic, whether it was, you know, in the run down the eastern coast of the U.S., down to the Caribbean, when, especially when U-boats started popping up in the St. Lawrence, as you talk about extensively in the book. I mean, was there much debate there around that?

There is some debate, but it's great examples, Peter, of how we help, frankly, the Americans in early 1942 when they're being savaged on the East Coast, their merchant ships being blown out of the water by U-boats and the Royal Canadian Navy, which is already stretched thin because some of our best forces are helping defend Britain in British waters. We're running the North Atlantic relentlessly, our sailors, our merchant navy who are keeping Britain in the war. But we do pull off warships to help the Americans. And we take the hit. We take the hit because we know the Americans need help at that point. And one of the sacrifices, as you note, is the Battle of St. Lawrence.

When U-boats get in to the St. Lawrence and go deep in May of 1942, begin sinking ships. You know, we take the hit on that one. And yet, for the larger war effort, we are contributing. Among the fighting soldiers, think of the army. They're very anxious to be in the fight overseas and fighting primarily, as we know, in the Italian campaign and in D-Day, of course. But Dieppe falls out of this. And of course, there's lots of ways to look at Dieppe. And I think you and I, Peter, have talked about it in the past. Were the Canadians sacrificed? Were they too anxious to go forward? Should they have asked harder questions? How could this cock-up have gone forward? It's such a disastrous plan. When the Americans are in the war, they think the British are gun shy from all the defeats. And they want to do an invasion, a D-Day like invasion of Western Europe in 1942. And the British rightly say, that's insane.

Our force will be annihilated. We don't have enough landing craft. There's no way to support them. They'll be decapitated by a panzer strike. But the Americans want this. And so raiding falls into this. And the Canadians do the D-Day raid on the 19th of August 1942. It's a disaster.

900 Canadians killed, 2,000 captured. The rest go home. I found this amazing Eureka document, Peter, when Mackenzie King is talking to Roosevelt about Dieppe. And Roosevelt says to him, I'm very sorry, I'm paraphrasing here, very sorry what happened to the Canadians. But he says, now I have a better sense of what a D-Day-like operation would be like, what an invasion would be, because the Canadians have been annihilated.

And I write something in the book of, you know, this is sometimes the price of playing with the great powers. And I think it offers a new way to look at DF, but also how Canada navigates this really complex relationship. And I had someone ask me a little while ago, geez, Tim, you've written so much on the Second World War. There are so many books. Is there anything left to say? And there is, Peter. There is, and you've captured a lot of it in here,

including when the Americans lost that sort of battle with the British about doing an invasion through France in early 1942 or in 1942, they ended up going to North Africa. The American invasion there, supported by a dozen Canadian warships. Yeah, which we pull off from critical convoy duties and which hurts us. So, again, coming back to that, that point you were making, I think it's really interesting. But, you know, we we stand up to maybe use that slightly overused phrase, we punch above our weight, we show our value on the home front through security, through trade, through wartime industry. The world is in ruins. But all of that with our fighting forces show that we are a consequential nation. A consequential nation.

That is what I argue. And we become important. And one way to look at that, come back to North Africa, is what happens after that? The invasion of Sicily. Who is there? Three British divisions, three American divisions, a Canadian division. That would have been unthinkable. Who's there for the Italian mainland invasion in September of 1943? Canada. And then most

importantly, who is there on D-Day? Two British divisions, two American divisions with a third in support, and Canada on Juneau Beach. These are stories that we have to tell. And I argue in the book, and this is something you and I have talked about before, Peter. It's what I know you've written about in your books. You know, we need to do a better job in this country in telling our stories. We need to do a better job in sharing this history. Neither one of us wants, I think, uncritical history. I'm not here to do hand on my heart, stand behind the flag history. The good and the bad has to be presented, warts and all. There are failures. If you present history as a great success story, it's no use to anyone. It doesn't do any credit to those who struggled and strained in the past. It's no value to us today.

But this is a time when Canada stood up, when we were a nation of consequence. And I want Canadians to know that, because I would suggest to you, Peter, that if you open up any newspaper today or any social media feed, pretty dark stories coming through, stories of grim tides um you know for whatever reason we've been drawn to this relentless criticism it's really hard to find anyone to say anything positive about canada and yet the whole world wants to move to canada we have a rich history we stand up and are a force for good for the most part yes mistakes horrible mistakes, horrible mistakes at times. But we need to remember this. We need to balance it off. And maybe most importantly, Peter, let's not expect the Americans or the British to tell this story. They have their own history.

They have their own interest. One of the reasons why I wrote this book early on, I was motivated, was a visit to the World War II Museum in New Orleans. It's a great museum. I love it. Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks are involved. It's really good. And yet Canada's story is almost completely absent. And I left there thinking, okay, I don't really expect the Americans to do this, but someone in Canada better tell this story. And I suppose I felt maybe I was well-placed to do that. I've often thought if the Americans or the British had elements of our history in their history,

which is already rich enough, their histories, but if they had elements of ours, they'd really go to town on it. In a way, we don't. And so I absolutely echo your comments on that. Tim, look, it's a great book. It addresses many of the issues you've just talked about in the last couple of minutes. And I hope you have great success with it. I'm sure it will be. Thanks for doing it. Thank you so much, Peter. Yeah. And great, great to see you again.

Great to talk and, um, and thank you for shining a light on this book and others like it and, uh, and maybe amplifying, uh, uh, these voices. So thanks very much. You're more than welcome. We'll do it again on the next one. Thanks Tim. Tim Cook. The name of the book is The Good Allies and the subtitle of the book How Canada and the United States

fought together to defeat fascism during the Second World War and this Tuesday is day one of the book's availability in bookstores across the country and online. So if you're interested, please support great Canadian authors and support Canadian history. There's lots in here that you, well, let's put it this way.

There's lots in this book I didn't know about. And there's probably a few things in there you didn't know about either. So it's a good read. As all Tim's books are. All, what did he say, 19? 19 books. Amazing. Okay, that'll wrap it up for this day. A reminder that tomorrow is Encore Wednesday. Thursday, on your turn, the question of the week is, what's on your mind? So don't be shy about that. Send it along. It may have been what happened last night in those by-elections.

It may have been day one of Parliament opening. The excitement never stops. So whatever you have to say, send it along to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Include your name and the location you're writing from. And remember, I'm looking for bite-sized comments. No more than a paragraph, please. That's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again

well, in about 24 hours. I'm Peter Mansbridge thanks so much for listening we'll talk to you again well in about 24 hours