Ottawa: Making a Capital - Constuire une capitale

World War Two and the Making of Modern Ottawa

World War Two and the Making of Modern Ottawa Jeff Keshen1 The Second World War had a profound impact upon Canada. More than 45,000 Canadians died in action, while many more were physically or psychologically maimed. The war forged a stronger and more confident Canadian nationalism, the flowering of Keynesian economic policy and major initiatives with social welfare.2 However, historians have barely touched upon the fact that during these years, Canada's capital city also underwent a remarkable transformation. In general, the topic of communities in wartime remains woefully understudied. Yet, as Arthur Marwick's pioneering work makes clear, community level analysis provides the most comprehensive understanding of the total economic, social and psychological effects ofwar. This observation also underlines a new and massive collaborative work (the first of two planned volumes) under the direction of Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Major on changes in Paris, London and Berlin during the Great War.3 In the introduction, Winter writes: "Whereas the history of nations at war has produced a literature of staggering proportions, the history of communities at war is still in its infancy."4 The literature in the United States and Canada is equally thin.5 The story of Ottawa during World War Two is a particularly interesting and important one; it marks thejuncture when the city truly came of age as agovernment town and major metropolitan centre. In a paper focusing on Ottawa between 1870 and 1930, Peter Gillis of the National Archives of Canada cites the Great War as a more crucial watershed. During these years, Gillis writes, wood-based industries declined to secondary importance while the civil service became the principal employer, growing between 1911 and 1921 from 4,191 to 10,091 employees. Yet, by no means had Ottawa become a bona fide government town. The limited roles still played by Canada's federal government despite the economically lean years of the early 1920s, and then during the Great Depression, revealed that the major expansion of national programmes, and hence the federal bureaucracy, still lay in the future. By 1931, the civil service had grown to only 11,766 employees, and,by the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, to just 11,848.6 In his history of Ottawa, John Taylor is more circumspect than Gillis about the World War One period. Although noting that the growth of the public sector compensated for the decline of wood-based industries, Taylor argues that not until the Second World War did the federal government really "come to dominate" within Ottawa.7 Indeed, modern Ottawa - as home to a massive bureaucracy and interventionist federal government, as a centre of diplomatic activity, as a sprawling metropolitan area, and as a city whose residents developed a greater sense of their city as an inspiring symbol for an emerging nation - was to a large extent a product of conditions created by World War Two. Also closely linked to wartime conditions was the appearance of modern airports, the roots of ahigh-technology sector, and apublicly-ownedtransportation system, and even the creation of the National Capital Commission. 334 Construire une capitale - Ottawa - Making a Capital It is true that some of these changes had been envisioned years earlier, namely the grand planning concepts implementedby the federal government shortly after World WarTwo. But such plans languished during the weak economic times immediately following the Great Warand then during the Great Depression. However, the Second World Warhighlighted problems to the point where they couldno longer be ignored, intensified the pace of change andresulted inthe realization of moribund dreams. Indeed, responses from local and national governments changed Ottawa into a more trulybona fide capital city. Several papers in a 1993 collection entitled Capital Cities/ Les Capitales argue that "true capitals" radiate a sense of control over other areas, provide services necessary to the lives of citizens, and serve as a "symbolic resource" to help create a cohesive national spirit.8 Ottawa, selected by Queen Victoria as Canada's capital in 1857 because of its "natural beauty, security [from the Americans], and location along the border of the two linguistic and cultural groups of Upper and Lower Canada,"9 remained for many years, despite its officially-designated political status, a small, provincial town - that is until September 1939 when Ottawa's rise to true national, andeven to international, capital city status accelerated tremendously. For those who remember the war years, Ottawa's transformation seemed remarkable, if not bewildering. Long-time residents remember pre-war...