Canada's forgotten war babies: part one: during the Second World War, Canadian soldiers made love and war

Esprit de Corps, April, 2005 by Jacqueline Chartier

Since the conclusion of the Second World War sixty years ago much has been documented concerning the topic of war brides; one widely accepted statistic is that 45,000 British and 3,000 European war brides married Canadian soldiers. At the end of the war, the majority of them came to Canada to live and they brought 21,000 children with them.

As the Second World War gradually fades from living memory, war brides remain in the spotlight as they continue to be the focus of countless books and movies and receive a considerable amount of media attention. Case in point, one Calgary-based artist, Bev Tosh, is currently paying tribute to their collective experience in a thought-provoking and critically well received exhibit. "I had this image of a ship full of brides, all dressed in white. I found it a magical image," she says of her childhood fantasy.

The truth is that the majority of these starry-eyed newly-weds had to overcome culture shock and endure hardships upon their arrival, but it can also be argued that most ultimately attained domestic contentment and enjoyed the postwar prosperity of their new homeland. Rarely acknowledged over the past six decades is another group of women who never had the opportunity to come to Canada, whose servicemen boyfriends left them behind at the end of the war, pregnant and unmarried. According to most historians, an estimated 30,000 children were born in Britain and Europe during and immediately following the Second World War, the consequence of unions between Canadian servicemen and young single women.

Without the support of their lovers and ostracized by their families and communities, many of these young unwed mothers were forced to give up their children for adoption at birth or hand them over to relatives. What is more, at a time when there were few social supports or economic opportunities for women, those who decided to raise their children on their own usually suffered enormous social consequences. No doubt those who opted to keep their babies endured additional heartache watching their children grow up in an era when society routinely stigmatized them as "illegitimate" and placed them at a blatant disadvantage.

As for the Canadian fathers of these children, they were by and large average soldiers, sailors or airmen--typically in their early to mid twenties, they were away from home for the first time facing a terrifying and uncertain future as they prepared for battle. Following D-Day and the subsequent end to the war, many of the Canadians left for home, never knowing they were about to become fathers; others knew full well but chose to relinquish their responsibility.

MAKING LOVE NOT WAR

As one would expect, most of these illegitimate Canadian offspring (22,000-plus) were born in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, reflecting the length of time the Canadian military spent training in the United Kingdom. Between 1939 and 1945, nearly half a million Canadian soldiers poured into wartime Britain. The Army was concentrated in southern England, and some of the troops who arrived in Aldershot in 1939 spent up to five years there in training. As pilots with the Royal Canadian Air Force arrived to supplement the RAF, they were dispersed throughout the country, but based primarily in the north.

Dr. Pat Brennan, a historian with the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, says that the social and demographic conditions during the war made a high percentage of unplanned pregnancies in the UK inescapable. "The country is simply too cramped for the bases to be cut off from civilian society. The bases were right in civilian communities, so there was endless opportunity for socializing. Inevitably, soldiers and airmen get leave, they go to the pub or to dances," he says, describing the general atmosphere.

Although it has become a cliche, the terror and destruction of war itself have traditionally provided a powerful catalyst for young lovers. For British women, being held in the arms of a Canadian soldier in an air raid shelter during the Blitz would have been extremely comforting and infinitely better than being alone. The passion of such encounters in wartime was heightened by the need to make the most of every hour, and the sadness of frequent partings was intensified by the uncertainty of what fate had in store or whether either partner would survive to meet again.

Certainly the social circumstances of the war allowed many young people to relax their deep-seated inhibitions, including well-established restraints regarding sexuality. Canadian military personnel were far from home and far from the restraints of church, family or the conservative small-town communities to which many had belonged. "There is a certain liberty morally and socially that would not have taken place in Canada," explains Brennan. "You're dealing with a group of males who are under military discipline, but not under the kind of social control that they had been at home."

Likewise, young British women were feeling more independent and less under the control of their parents or families as they assisted with the war effort. They too felt less fettered by the social and moral norms of the time in terms of romance and sex. "We weren't as casual about sex as people are now," recalled one woman who was sexually active during the war. "You held your breath and prayed. It was tough when you didn't want to get pregnant ... There wasn't anything foolproof except abstinence, and who needed that? I'd already tried that and didn't think much of it."