The changes include the re-introduction of divisional nomenclature and patches for the current Land Force Areas; traditional rank insignia for officers; corps shoulder titles from the restoration of Royal titles to a number of Canadian Army corps in April 2013; and the Canadian Army’s secondary badge. Further, the Minister of National Defence announced the intention to restore the historical Army rank names for non-commissioned members.
“The restoration of these features is a significant step in the restoration of the Canadian Army’s traditions,” said Lieutenant-General Peter Devlin, Commander of the Canadian Army. “Symbols and traditions establish links to soldiers’ heritage, and are important. It is very significant that our non-commissioned members have the prospect of being able to bear the same ranks as their forbearers, and our officers will proudly wear the same insignia worn by Canadians who fought in the First and Second World Wars and Korea.”
These restorations are the next step in the phased approach that began in August 2011, when the historical name of the Canadian Army was restored. Stemming from this initial restoration, and in line with historical lineage, the Canadian Army’s secondary badge will be reinstated, and the Land Force Areas will be renamed under division names, with division patches introduced accordingly.
“It is an announcement that is not substantive,” [Liberal defence critic John McKay] said from Toronto on Monday. “And I am not unmindful they would love to expunge anything Liberal out of Canadian history.”
Via James, who writes – “Oh well, it seems only fair. After all, Trudeau and his successors expunged anything Military out of Canadian history.”
h/t Damian
Too late for me but goodbye at long last to the utter mediocrity of those “Air Canada” officer ranks.
Well thank God.
To me this means that the military is going to slowly return to being run as a military – not a political organ of the liberal agenda. Cripes, down in the States their militaries are being used to promote homosexuality, trannies and feminists and it is getting so bad that young men would be nuts to enlist!
Hopefully our military doesn’t go down that particular road.
And some where in a grave yard in Montreal, a high pitched whirring sound is heard.
Progressive heads are exploding over this @ Reddit. I love it.
Who”d a thunk it ? politicians who value history, heritage and valor.
I hope that Commie SOB Turdeau is spinning like a top.
Hurray! JJM, agreed.
James via Damian is right. The Liberals intent was to evolve the military into a boy scout troop.
I talked to a a young locally raised RCAF helicopter pilot at the Canada Remembers airshow in Saskatoon on Sunday and he is very pleased with the government’s efforts to bring back all the traditions of the Canadian military.
Did he get the post due to his name?
Apparently you don’t need “nuts” to enlist anymore either…
Too late for me too. Part of the reason I got out was the elimination of the traditional names and ranks. Glad to see some sense coming to the military. As has been said, it IS important to those who serve.
Bah! It was Lester Ppearson and Paul Hellyer who did aaway with the traditional nomenclature. Upper Canadians both of them.
What Pierre Trudeau thought of the matter I don’t know. Anyway, he kept the country together when the likes of Pearson and Hellyer were prepared to assent to its partition and demise.
Ah, but the little puke in waiting will move it all back to square Liberal when he ascends the throne. Sarc.off As a former RCAF pilot with a commission signed by that asshat
Paul Hellyer (says so right on the commission document) I am
more than pleased that things are returning to normal.
Four divisions!
Wonderful sense of ambition considering the entire current army has enough bayonet strength to form a weak WW2 Brigade.
Though it is a move to bury the black years of Liberal desecration of Canada’s military legacy.
Actually it is more like 2 brigades of grey haired corporals. I assume the 4 divisions are reserve brigades anchored by a regular brigade.
While I am a great lover of military tradition, the cold war is over we could go back to a reserve centred military like pre-1939. We can picked and choose our conflicts and minimize the civil service in green. Collectively the most useless humanity known to man is an infantry unit at peace. The make-work is constant and stifling.
Great news – every once in a while the CPC seems to forget itself and do something conservative. ‘mazing
Delicious — not just because of this follow-on restoration of proper symbols, nomenclature and organization.
Deliciously ironic, too, don’t you think, that a newspaper named the, er, “Times Colonist” would run a headline like, “Army goes back to the future with return to British-style ranks and designations”? I mean, really and truly, how can two newspapers who merged in 1980 — at the height of the evisceration of the Canadian identity; strike that, sorry: I meant to say at the high-water mark of Trudeaupian multiculturalism — keep the same names that they’ve had since their respective foundings in 1858 and 1884?
Sounds a bit, um, “back to the future” to me. And why exactly would they keep the same names? It wouldn’t have anything to do, would it, with brand loyalty, familiarity and credibility among, you know, the people they purport to serve? Couldn’t be: that’s such a crazy idea that I shouldn’t have even brought it up! On the other hand, if they really wanted to be hip and in the groove of Canadian Liberalism, they would change their name to “Newspaper Capital City Most Western Immediate Sub-Federal Jurisdiction”, which sounds sufficiently arid and devoid of meaning to pass muster with that crowd, so far as I can tell.
On the other hand, Mr. McKay’s comments are, as is typical for Liberals, a bit suspect from a factual point of view. What, none of the organizational nomenclature or new ranks or symbols that are being restored were created during the Second World War or the Korean War? I’d be more than a bit surprised if that were true. And which, er, Party was in power, again, from 1935 until 1957? So, the traditional nomenclature, etc. might just be a part of the Liberal legacy as much as they are of the Conservative legacy?
Details, details.
It’s good news, so naturally the Liberals are opposed. I joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, was commissioned as a Pilot Officer (signed by Douglas Harkness in my case) and served through the dismal green years and back into blues. I was a Flight Lieutenant one day and a Captain the next… While I don’t miss the old RCAF ranks (they used to confuse the Americans) the reversion to ‘Royal’ is a recollection of a glorious past and the rightful dismissal of the disastrous Unification experiment. You will notice that no other countries tried the same politically motivated nonsense.
“Four divisions!
Wonderful sense of ambition considering the entire current army has enough bayonet strength to form a weak WW2 Brigade.”
Although I do understand what you are saying re: strength, it’s only an administrative name change. “Divisions” as opposed to the generic “Land Force Central Area, Atlantic Area, etc.”, giving more of an “Army” rather than “unification” feel. There were also some rumblings of changing the “Canadian Forces Base” title to “Camp” for Army-centric Bases, so you would have Camp Petawawa for example, Trenton would be whatever the RCAF equivalent is…”Station” or something.
“Bah! It was Lester Pearson and Paul Hellyer who did aaway with the traditional nomenclature… What Pierre Trudeau thought of the matter I don’t know. Anyway, he kept the country together when the likes of Pearson and Hellyer were prepared to assent to its partition and demise.”
Although the unification BS did take place under Pearson and Hellyer, no one did more to shove our military out of sight and out of mind than Turdo la First.
Totally understandable, of course. Our armed forces were a constant, irritating reminder of his bravery deficiency during WWII.
And as for your claim that he “kept Canada together” – even if you could prove that this was true, you’d have a hell of a hard time convincing many people that it was a good thing.
It is interesting that the Liberals and communists who usually accuse the Conservatives of creating American style institutions are whining about creating a British style institution. Could they please make up their mind. Actually they simply recreated a Canadian institution.
Now if they would only present a Canadian flag purged of its despicable liberal party colours.
GM
Old soldiers never die. They just lose their privates.
GM
I look positively at all this but the rank names never went out of common use. There is not an Artillery unit in Canada that hasn’t used “Gunner” and “Bombardier” since ’67. It never went out of use except on official docs. Sure once in a while you had to remind Air Force plugs that they were speaking to a Master Bombardier not a Master Corporal but that was not a big deal.
Trudeau’s antipathy towards the military is well known, but I’ve heard about how he was impressed by the response of the Forces during the October Crisis and his administration did push through a big pay raise for the troops.
Mine says Leo Cadieux, signed on 19 April 1968. I am assuming Paul Hellyer was before that.
Jamie, we had a big field exercise in CFB Petawawa with Trudeau watching and we all wanted to puke. But the pipes called and we did it, reluctantly.
gray, exactly, as I had a friend who transferred to the guns and retired as a unit CO and would confirm your comment.
As a former deuce jockey with the RCASC, I heartily agree with the restoration of the Royal designation.
Delighted to hear of the changes…for the better.
What’s the point of preserving history or tradition if you don’t acknowledge its existence?
This is not to say that some stuff gets a little hidebound, but the formal rank structure is worthy of preserving in honour of those who went before.
Considering Trudeau spent part of WWII lolling about with the german “Pickelhaube” gracing his head this is a welcome retort. If you have no respect for the dreaded Huns or enemies that usually means a short life on the battlefield…
For the Canucks this change is long overdue.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Those who despise going “back” to “British” insignia/titles, etc. always avoid mentioning is (a) the officer rank insignia made the Army look French since French Army officers wear bars, not pips/crowns; (b) titles like Master Corporal are caporal chef, a la the French Army; (c)Land Force was like the French Army “Armee de Terre”. Etc. And if “Royal” is so bad, try taking it away from the Royal 22e, every member of which I ever met has said “Royal 22nd…” en anglais. Typical leftoid selective reasoning.
The Canadian Army always looked distinctive because it usually had higher quality uniforms (e.g., WWII battledress, in a distinctive shade of greenish khaki quite superior to the , ahem, mud brown colour the British rankers wore, khaki wool berets, etc.), or unique insignia. No one confuses the Australian Army with the British Army despite retaining pips/crowns, and the Canadian army had very distinctive, high-quality uniforms before the unification green rubbish, such as TWs, the bush uniform, forage caps, etc.
Now, bring back the Red Ensign.
When is the Airborne going to be reconstituted?
Expunge anything Liberal? Everything liberal would be a fine goal.
I was in the branch that had been the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RCEME). At unification it got a new badge and became the Land Ordnance Engineering branch (LORE). About 1990 we took it upon ourselves to bring back the horse (our old badge) and rechristen ourselves the Electrical and Mechanical engineers. Unfortunately to be politically correct the 1990 version of the badge said EME/GEM instead of RCEME. No one ever liked the appellation “LORE” and we were very happy to see it go.
I would be curious to know what the Queen has had to say about this new initiative. The ROYAL title is awarded by the crown. If the past government took it away unilaterally, i suspect the crown was not amused. Now I suspect that the Canadian Government can’t unilaterally decide to call the air arm of the Canadian armed forces the RCAF, when that title was originally awarded by the crown.
“It is an announcement that is not substantive,” [Liberal defence critic John McKay] said from Toronto on Monday. “And I am not unmindful they would love to expunge anything Liberal out of Canadian history.”
We would like to expunge drunken Liberal ‘children of privilege’ who don’t know their Vimy from their Vichy from Canadian History.
Touché my Man! Touché
I had forgotten all about McCallum’s confused substitutions.
It already is…but under a different name and their “expeditions” are never, ever mentioned.
Just bought a Red Ensign flag the other day and am hanging it from my porch. Started this on DOMINIAN DAY It’s a symbol of resistance to 50 years of LIEberal tyranny and social engineering. My I suggest a new movement starts here with all SDA, conservatives and libertarians flying high the flag of our heritage!
“Those who despise going ‘back'” to ‘British’ insignia/titles, etc. always avoid mentioning is (a) the officer rank insignia made the Army look French since French Army officers wear bars, not pips/crowns”
Nonsense. The French have an entirely different system of thin bars (thinner than our Officer Cadet braid) for their officer ranks – and oh, that we had adopted French-style uniforms with some cut and dash to them rather than the boring rifle green unification number. Those outfits didn’t look the slightest bit “French” in any way at all. Sticking our sailors in green actually isolated them from all their NATO navy buddies – including the French navy! – who all had proper (duh!) dark blue navy rig.
Unification wasn’t about “Frenchification”, whatever conspiracy theory you might want to concoct after the fact. No – because frankly, it just wasn’t that sophisticated a notion: Hellyer* et al. simply had a hippie-dippie Sixties “one size fits all” brain fart about the military. As bland as those CF 2Lt-Col ranks were, the inspiration was not the French military but a dumbed-down, sterile take on former RCN and RCAF officer ranks. I doubt the concept behind the unified rank system was nothing more clever than this:
Two out of the three services have braid for officer ranks (RCN and RCAF) so we’ll make that the basis for our new system. Two out of three services use chevrons for the other ranks (Canadian Army and RCAF) so we’ll stick sergeant and corporal’s stripes on our petty officers and lead hands. Welcome to the Canadian Armed Forces!
* And former RCAF Cpl Hellyer had it in for the brass. Some Group Captain probably gave him a hard time once!
Look at what the SQ (Questapo) and Montreal cops wear among senior ranks…faggotty French bars. Real Canadian (i.e., not-faggotty French) police senior ranks wear…pips and crowns(e.g., RCMP, Calgary Police Service, Vancouver, Ottawa, etc., etc.); except maybe the Torstapo seniors, who wear leafs and crowns I think. Ditto the Corps of Commissionaires losing their pips and crowns for the fagotty French bars a few years ago, along with adopting cheap-ass quality mall security guard style uniforms.