In the bay that now carries his name, captain Henry Hudson, his son along with several sick men were set adrift by his crew.
It is our nation’s most famous mutiny.
But it isn’t the only one. There is another, notable revolt but it’s mostly forgotten by Canadians, and it all went down in a northern British Columbia town.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx!
Today, we are heading back to the final years of the Second World War to open the book on the Terrace Mutiny!
Surrounded by mountains, forests, and rivers, this area west of Prince George and east of Prince Rupert is famous for salmon fishing and known for its spectacular scenery.
Humans have inhabited the region before Stonehenge was constructed as it’s been home to the Kitsumkalum and Kitselas people for 6,000 years.
The first Europeans to arrive were Russian fur traders, who travelled along the Skeena River and Kitsumkalum Rivers to trade.
In 1865, The Union, a sternwheeler, was the first steamship to navigate the Skeena River to this area and brought with it supplies for the construction of the Collins Overland Telegraph line.
It helped connect the region to the outside world and soon settlements began popping up along the river after Tom Thornhill became the first European settler in the area in 1892.
Just six years later George Little journeyed west from Ontario for the Klondike Gold Rush and by 1910 he had settled near the Skeena river and then donated 20 hectares of his land for a townsite to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
One year later, it was given the name of Terrace, and the community began to grow.
It was a quiet and isolated town but soon world events would help it make a mark in history and for that we have to skip to The Great War.
(BEAT MUSIC TRANSITION)
When the First World War began, so many Canadians wanted to serve that recruiters could barely keep up with applications.
Men of every walk of life, from teenagers to seniors, signed up to do their part in the trenches.
First Nations people, despite having few rights in the eyes of the government, signed up in large numbers as well.
This was partly because most people expected the war to be over by Christmas.
No one expected it to usher in a new and violent age.
As months passed newspapers were filled with casualty lists as families mourned their lost fathers, brothers and sons.
The Battle of the Somme, which saw 24,000 Canadians killed, wounded or missing led to enlistments drying up.
It came at a terrible time for Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden who had promised the Allied nations that Canada would continue to contribute soldiers.
So how do you force people to fight?
Conscription.
English Canadians overwhelmingly supported conscription. Many felt a strong connection to the British Empire and wanted to serve for King and Country, so to speak.
It was a different story among French-Canadians.
In Quebec, conscription was deeply unpopular.
Many French-Canadians felt no connection to the British Empire, nor France and didn’t want to fight a war that didn’t involve them directly and it didn’t help they were also treated poorly in Anglophone commanded battalions.
Francophones were rarely promoted, let alone in command of a unit.
The conscription issue not only divided Canada, but Parliament as well.
Liberals that supported mandatory military service joined the ruling Conservatives to form the Union Government. Members of Parliament who opposed conscription remained loyal to Liberal leader Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
Despite the risk of losing support in Quebec, Borden’s government passed the Military Service Act on Aug. 29, 1917, allowing the government to conscript men between the ages of 20 and 45 if necessary.
But Borden wanted to ensure he had enough support from Canadians to force conscription, so he forced an election and to make sure he won, he put his thumb on the scale by passing The Military Voters Act and the Wartime Elections Act.
The Military Voters Act gave women who had served as nurses in the military the right to vote.
While this seemed progress towards women’s suffrage, those women were far more likely to be in favour of conscription.
The Act also ensured all soldiers and sailors in the Canadian military could vote in the election, regardless of if they were in the country or not.
Again, seems good right?
But…
The Act gave soldiers two choices…Government and Opposition.
No party or candidate names.
If the soldier didn’t write in a specific candidate on the form, which most didn’t, the government could put the vote in whatever riding they wanted.
Votes for “Government” were placed in ridings where Borden’s party was weak. Votes for “Opposition” were funnelled to ridings where a member of Borden’s government was almost guaranteed a win.
It has been calculated that the government used this provision to win 14 extra seats that the opposition should have won.
And it didn’t stop there.
The Wartime Elections Act took away the right to vote from anyone deemed to be an “enemy-alien”. This meant German, Ukrainian and Polish Canadians.
Guess what party those groups typically voted for…
At the same time, the Act gave the vote to wives, widows, mothers and sisters of soldiers serving overseas.
Again, a good step for women’s suffrage but those women wanted conscription in place in the hopes their loved ones could return home.
On Dec. 17, 1917, Sir Robert Borden’s Union Government won a then-record 153 seats and won every single province except Quebec.
The Liberals under Wilfrid Laurier finished with 82 seats across the country and won 62 of 65 seats in Quebec.
That election changed the Canadian political landscape forever.
Quebec voters never forgot the betrayal and Conservatives didn’t win in that province until 1958.
You’re probably asking…Craig, why are you telling us about conscription in the First World War in a story about a mutiny in the Second World War.
Everything in history is connected and the Conscription Crisis of 1917, played a key role in what was to come in Terrace because Canada entered the Second World War on a promise not to implement a draft.
However, Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was deeply concerned about providing enough soldiers to the war effort.
King had been loyal to Sir Wilfrid Laurier during the 1917 Conscription Crisis, and he saw firsthand how it not only fractured the Liberals, but also Canada.
Under King, The Liberals had governed Canada since the 1920s, lost the 1930 election but returned to power in 1935.
King did not want to lose power over a conscription debate.
His government was also concerned about an attack from Japan along the Pacific Coast.
That led to Japanese Canadians being vilified.
The government used the War Measures Act, to force thousands from their homes and businesses and into internment camps in the interior of the province.
The government then sold their homes, possessions and businesses.
The money was used in the war effort. It remains a dark stain and one that the Canadian government did not apologize for until 1988.
So, as his government attacked Japanese Canadians at home, he knew conscription was still a dicey issue.
To appease Quebec voters, King pledged at the start of the war that there would be no conscription.
He actively pushed for the creation of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as a means for Canada to contribute to the war effort without sending large numbers of soldiers overseas.
You can learn more about that story in my episode from late-2024.
Meanwhile, less than a year into the war, King’s government passed The National Resources Mobilization Act in June of 1940 which drafted Canadian men and women into jobs necessary for wartime production.
The act also opened the door for conscription, but only for Canada’s defence and Conscripts would not be deployed overseas.
Most were fine with this, and about 150,000 men were drafted to bases across Canada, where they were then pressured and ridiculed by superior officers into joining active service.
Eventually, 60,000 of those men served in Europe while those who remained I were mockingly called Zombies.
Back in the 1940s, the term meant people were neither alive nor dead as opposed undead humans who feast on the living.
In Haitian mythology, where the term comes from, means people lived in a void in-between, just like the home defence conscripts.
Unfortunately for King, pressure mounted to send more Canadians overseas and that increased after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
This forced King to hold a non-binding referendum on April 27, 1942, where Canadians voted on the question of releasing the government from its pledge against conscription.
In Quebec, 72.9 percent voted against while outside the province 80 percent of Canadians were in favour.
King, famously said the policy would be quote:
“Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary.”
Soon after, Bill 80 was introduced to the House of Commons to repeal the parts of The National Resources Mobilization Act that prevented overseas conscription.
The Bill passed by a vote of 158 to 58.
And 4,000 kilometres away in a small British Columbia community, a group of soldiers were about to make their displeasure known.
Located near the Pacific Coast, Terrace was key in Canada’s west coast defence.
In February 1942, the Royal Canadian Engineers began building water and sewer facilities for a training camp.
By the summer, 3,000 soldiers, mostly drafted French-Canadians called the base in Terrace home as the community struggled to accommodate the soldiers who outnumbered residents six-to-one.
That first winter was difficult.
The camp infrastructure was poor, and the barracks were bitterly cold.
John Devereux said of his first winter there,
“We built a fire in the stove to fight off the winter cold but unfortunately the heating air tech hadn’t placed the stove pipes, which ran out the window, high enough, and the wind sweeping down the mountain blew all the smoke back into the building making necessary to sleep with gas masks.”
While the barracks received upgrades to make winters more manageable, little could be done to alleviate the boredom.
When they were on-duty, soldiers conducted drills, marched and kept the camp facilities in working order.
Terrace normally had a population of 500 people so when they were off duty, the town was painfully dull.
There were no dance halls, cinemas, or bowling alleys.
Newspapers arrived days later, and radio reception was poor at best.
The troops called Terrace the Siberia of Canada because getting away wasn’t really an option.
First, soldiers had to serve for a year before they were granted two weeks leave but it took most of them 10 days to get home.
This meant that you had to be back on base before you even made it home so leaving for time off was pointless.
Eric Johnson, assistant curator at the Terrace Heritage Park Museum, says that the environment was one ripe for anger.
Nothing to do.
Little contact with the outside world including loved ones.
It’s a recipe for revolt and that’s even before the government voted for overseas conscription [PAUSE]
It’s Nov. 23, 1944, In Ottawa, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King sits down in front of a CBC microphone.
Across the country, Canadians listened on radios in homes, businesses and on trains.
In Terrace, the temperature was a pleasant three degrees Celsius, and just over a centimetre of snow had fallen as the Prime Minister announced that the 16,000 men, originally drafted to serve in Canada, would be put into overseas duty.
Eric Johnson, says that in barracks and the mess hall, the soldiers began to talk amongst themselves.
The 3,000 men in Terrace would be immediately impacted by the news and many feared being sent overseas.
They were part of the home defence, and now the government had betrayed them by forcing them to fight in a war they didn’t want to be a part of.
The situation was made worse by the fact that many of the camp’s senior commanders were in Vancouver at a conference.
That night, as soldiers worried for their futures, some broke into the magazine storage and stole 50,000 rounds of .303 ammunition and thousands of pistol rounds.
The next morning, it seemed to be business as usual.
Soldiers began to march and went about their duties.
But…a dark cloud hung over the camp and by the afternoon things had changed. The Fusiliers du St-Laurent refused to go on parade.
A minor offence, but it was only going to get worse.
That night, a hockey game between air force and army teams took place.
The games could be rough at the best of times, but that night it was especially bad.
Eric Johnson says after an army player was hit hard by an air force player, bottles rained down from the crowd and men were sent in.
Amid the escalating tension, a few mutineers visited barracks to convince others to join their cause and threatened those who wouldn’t support them.
Soon 1,500 men marched through Terrace shouting “Down with Conscription” and “Zombies Strike Back”.
One resident, Ed Kenney, said “They went by our post office and then we heard from people more or less that there was a mutiny on. They would go into restaurants fully equipped, fully armed. They had rifles too. They went into restaurants in groups. There wasn’t too much noise. More grumbling than shouting. If someone shouted at them, they shouted back.”
Lt. Col. W.B. Hendrie asked Judge Robinson, the chief magistrate for Terrace, to close the beer parlours and liquor stores to prevent fueling chances of violence,
Two box cars full of ammunition and alcohol were also removed, and no telegrams were allowed to be sent out.
In one of his smartest moves, he ordered his senior officers avoid escalating violence. If anyone was to fire their weapon, it would be him.
He didn’t want ANY itchy trigger fingers.
On Sunday, Nov. 26, the men who had revolted attended church and agreed not to bring their weapons in with them.
That afternoon, the leaders met with camp officials to present their demands which included letting the government and the public to know they were not in favour of conscription.
They also wanted to go home to Quebec.
If the demands were not agreed to, they would continue their revolt which was starting to spread.
A sergeant assigned a private to do a routine task which he refused to do.
He was immediately arrested and as he was being taken to the guard room, he was rescued by fellow mutineers.
The men in revolt were given the offer of being stationed in Quebec, but they refused and they stated it was worthless unless they were also safe from conscription.
At 11 p.m. that night, an order from Major General George Pearkes, the General Officer Commanding in Chief Pacific Command, was posted.
It stated that the Fusiliers were to immediately begin to obey instructions and orders given by officers and NCOs. They could keep their weapons but not the ammunition, and training and parades were to be resumed immediately. In addition, the Fusiliers would be transferred to Valcartier Camp in Quebec.
The order did nothing to alleviate the tension and end the mutiny.
The next day, the soldiers again refused to go on parade and Pearkes sent a message from Vancouver.
He stated the men were to give up their arms immediately and prepare for transfer to Quebec.
He also ordered a pay freeze.
Eric Johnson says the situation was very tense and in danger of getting worse.
That afternoon, Lt. Col. P.H. L’Heureux, the commanding officer of the Fusiliers who had been in Vancouver, arrived in Terrace and was briefed.
He spoke to the Fusiliers, who were now joined by members of the Prince Edward Island Highlanders and Prince Albert Volunteers.
He appealed to them; in French and English There was a concern in the Air Force that they would also be attacked.
One pilot, Ed McFadden, was the only one trained to operate a machine gun and was sent to a nest near the air base and told to keep watch.
Eric Johnson said that as McFadden sat there, he saw 20 men coming up the road.
Ed never had to make that hard choice because an air force plane flew overhead and fired warning shots.
Aside from that attempt, things back at the army base were beginning to subside. On Nov. 28, men returned to the parade grounds.
That night, the Fusiliers were told they had to prepare to leave for Valcartier Camp on Dec. 3.
Soon cooler heads prevailed as the men in revolt weighed whether it was better to possibly go to Europe or to face a certain court martial and a prison sentence.
For many, the choice was clear.
By the next morning, nearly every soldier was at the morning’s parade.
Eric Johnson says the only group holding out were the Prince Edward Island Highlanders,
Regardless, various units, deemed to be the agitators, were shipped out of Terrace over the next two days and by now, everyone knew it was over.
But why do very few know of the story behind the worst breach of military discipline in Canadian history?
It all comes down to censorship.
Anything that could reveal military information or challenge the Government of Canada and its wartime measures, was deemed a big no-no.
The government prohibited news of a mutiny in Terrace.
Not only would it hurt Canada’s reputation as an Allied country, but there was a risk it could inspire other soldiers.
Rumours however had reached Vernon, Prince George and Nanaimo and by Nov. 28, some stories were printed in national newspapers.
Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King ordered Wilfrid Eggleston, Director of Censorship and general manager of CBC to crackdown on any news related to Terrace and the story quickly faded away.
That censorship however, had long-lasting consequences.
Even today, the Terrace Mutiny is an obscure part of Canadian history.
In Terrace, it is part of the local history, as long-time residents speak about it over coffee.
The Terrace and District Museum Society did its part in preserving this history by releasing a book which was invaluable in my research.
Currently, the museum sits on the site of a 300-bed military hospital that was built during the Second World War.
Quinn Beblow, Executive Director of the Heritage Park Museum there’s one building left from that hospital that is on the museum land parcel, but not part of the museum and they’re asking the city for it.
But what happened to the soldiers who refused to follow orders in Terrace?
Following the mutiny, four courts of inquiry were conducted from December 1944 to February 1945.
A total of 89 Fusiliers were charged but by Jan. 15, 1945, 68 had gone AWOL.
Of the remaining men, only five were available for disciplinary action.
The rest had scattered in the wind as there was little evidence for convictions. Of the five who could be disciplined, one had no witness to his actions available to testify. The other four were ordered to Canadian Military Headquarters for punishment.
None faced prison time.
As for the draft?
13,000 men went overseas as conscripts, and 2,463 reached the frontlines of Europe before the end of the war.
69 never returned home.
