Occupied St. John’s: A Social History of a City at War, 1939–1945 (review)

This edited collection brings together the work of Stephen High and nine contributors whose collaborative efforts have led to a splendid volume on the social history of St. John’s, Newfoundland, significantly altered by the sudden arrival of allied personnel during the Second World War, more so in fact than was any other port city in North America. Each chapter documents in vivid detail St. John’s social and urban history from 1939 to the early postwar years, not only transformed during the “friendly invasion” of American and Canadian forces but altered in ways that shaped local and family histories on the Avalon Peninsula and throughout many parts of Newfoundland. With just 40,000 residents at the start of the war, no urban settlement in North America was more stunningly invaded or profoundly affected by a wide variety of social relationships that developed among many, indeed most, civilians and the men and women of the allied forces and Red Cross. Occupied St. John’s stands out as a particularly striking work in terms of its production value (arresting photographs, useful illustrations, even pull-out maps), elucidative analysis, and thematic scope, from a study of the speedy creation of military installations and the social responses that followed to a reassessment of a North Atlantic seaboard city at war in the context of global war.

High and his colleagues took on the challenging task of examining complex and intersecting changes – military, social, and cultural – that quickly took shape with the arrival of Allied forces personnel, especially naval and airborne, who provided the first line of North Atlantic defense against German U-Boat attacks on merchant shipping. The arrival in St. John’s Harbour of the US Naval vessel the Edmund B. Alexander at the end of January 1941 to bolster established and still growing Canadian forces, alongside a scant British presence, marked the shift from the city’s mere home front distance to Europe in September 1939 to its war front proximity as the command centre of an “island fortress” located just off the Grand Banks. Of course, St. John’s location as the most easterly port with its immediate access to the North Atlantic and proximity to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as well as the potential value to the enemy of nearby iron mines and deposit reserves on Bell Island and vast, undersea coal seams off Cape Breton, pre-determined its strategic significance. The Ogdensburg Agreement, and the Permanent Joint Board of Defence that resulted, as well as the Canada/Newfoundland Defence Accord, and the Anglo-American Leased Bases Agreement (known also as the “Destroyers for Bases Deal”) set the planning stage for the sudden influx of uniformed men and women – most, of course, in the ranks and of typical military age – that had such immediate impact on St. John’s and other coastal areas in Newfoundland for the remainder of the war, indeed for the many soon-to-be brides and grooms on family histories on the island today.

Following a useful introduction by High, Christopher A. Sharpe and A.J. Shawyer examine the making of a “wartime landscape,” marked by the installations of Shamrock Field Camp (Newfoundland militia), Lester Field Camp (Canadian army), and Fort Pepperell (American forces). On any day during the thick of the war, the city’s military and harbour facilities housed some 7,000 American soldiers, most stationed at the newly constructed Fort Pepperell on the northeast side of Quidi Vidi Lake, 1,600 Canadian army personnel, 2,400 Royal Canadian Air Force, and 3,600 Royal Canadian naval service men and women.

In part, particularly in High’s own chapter on “Rethinking the Friendly Invasion,” the volume seeks to revisit Peter Neary’s clever observation that “the United States had come into Newfoundland with a first class ticket, while Canada came with a second class ticket which only the British could upgrade.” (190) High...