Relations with Canada

‘Keen to Foul Their Own Nests’: Contemporary and Historical Criticism of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence of 1940

“…In May 1942, as Japan's massive Midway offensive loomed, Pope backed Canada's initial refusal to despatch planes to Alaska for he believed, as did British officers in Washington, that the Americans were 'prone to panic'. 53 While praising the PJBD as 'a major step forward', Crerar feared it would bolster a Canadian tendency 'to look inward and think in terms of strict "continental defence"'. As such parochialism threatened Crerar's goal to field seven divisions against Germany, 54 Crerar told Skelton that hemispheric cooperation with America should be mainly 'naval and air'.…”

“…When US PJBD officials sought closer cooperation in 1947, King agreed to it only on a case-by-case basis. 104 While extant, the PJBD's import faded with the North American Aerospace Defence Command's advent in 1958. As a Canadian officer wrote in 1988, whether the PJBD was 'a mechanism kept in place in case of an emergency, or whether it had outlived its usefulness are questions which are unlikely to get answers either in Ottawa or in Washington'.…”