History
Prior to Confederation in 1867, the British Army, which included Canadian militia units, defended Canada in wartime. After 1867, a Permanent Active Militia was formed, and in later decades several regular bodies of troops were created, their descendants becoming the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, the Royal Canadian Dragoons, and the Royal Canadian Regiment. Regular Canadian troops participated in the North West Rebellion in 1885, the South African War (Second Boer War) in 1899, and, in much larger numbers, constituted the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I.
In 1940, during World War II, the Permanent Active Militia was renamed the Canadian Army (Active), supplemented by the non-permanent militia, which was named the Canadian Army (Reserve). The Army participated in the Korean War and formed part of the NATO presence in West Germany during the Cold War. In the years following its unification with the navy and air force in 1968, the size of Canada's land forces was reduced, but Canadian troops participated in a number of military actions with Canada's allies, including the Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as well as peacekeeping operations under United Nations auspices in various parts of the world.
Notably, despite Canada's usual strong support of British and American initiatives, Canada's land forces did not directly participate in the Vietnam War or the Iraq War.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Army
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)