Battles of the First World War Podcast · Mike Cunha

"Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867" with David Borys

·50 min·3 clips

By 1918, the Canadian Corps was punching through the Hindenburg Line in the final 100 days.

The episode opens with the idea of Canada’s military as a force that had to grow into itself. It begins with a small, underfunded, poorly trained militia and follows that story across more than a century of war and service. The Red River resistance appears as an early marker. The Boer War follows. So do the World Wars. Peacekeeping comes into view as part of the same long arc. Afghanistan closes the modern range. The discussion stays anchored in named battles, dates, and people. Amiens is one of the anchors. The Scheldt Estuary is another. Operation Medusa is brought into the frame as well. Louis Real, Arthur Currie, and Guy Simmons are part of the personnel map. Conscription in August 1917 marks a major political and military turn. Canada’s declaration of war in 1939 does the same. The peacekeeping crises of the 1990s widen the lens beyond the trenches. The conversation also lingers on the practical problems the Canadian military faced while trying to build doctrine and effectiveness. That includes the awkward, brutal learning curve of the First World War. The Somme Offensive is used to show how hard that learning was. The Battle of Flair-Courcelette becomes a key example. Tanks appear there as early, ugly machines that helped only a little. Even so, the Canadians advance farther than any single British unit in the offensive. Regina Trench then underlines how the corps kept being pushed into severe positions and kept doing the work. By the end of 1916, the Canadians are presented as a force that has started to understand the battlefield. Their officers, their soldiers, and the surviving core of the corps are shown adapting under pressure. The episode keeps that institutional story tied to terrain and combat. It treats military history as a sequence of decisions, losses, adjustments, and hard-won competence. The tone stays appreciative without losing its analytical edge. It also makes plain that the Canadian military’s reputation was built over time, not assumed at the start.

As heard by us

A clear sweep through 150 years of Canadian military history.

It follows 150 years of Canadian military history, moving from a small, underfunded militia to a modern force. The arc runs from the Red River resistance and the Boer War through the World Wars, peacekeeping, and the Long War in Afghanistan, with Amiens, the Scheldt Estuary, and…

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You want the long arc of Canada’s wars, not just one battle.

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