The basis is British, as you would expect, but recently, it is the U.S. Because we don’t field a formation bigger than a Brigade, Canadian Generals get attached to US Divisions, and U.S. military culture is gradually diluting the British influence. Some of this is good, some of this is bad (the whole Hooah! thing, for instance).

Ah! Jack Granatstein! A National Treasure, and I mean that sincerely.

One of Canada’s problems is what I call “little brother” syndrome. We always feel like the little brother, and lash out in our insecurity, hence the reflexive anti-Americanism. Canada is an interesting blend of Europe and the U.S., not quite either. More U.S. like about personal freedom and a lot of cultural stuff, but more subservient to government, and retaining some European cultural attitudes. An un-easy mix.

Canadian anti-Americanism doesn’t just have its competing narratives according to need, it has its ups and downs. The Canada that existed after WW2 was experiencing many of the same forms of economic expansion and lifestyle changes as the US, and it produced a generation of ordinary Canadians more familiar with American pop culture than ever before as American TV appeared in places within range of the border. My dad was of that generation. Born 1940 in the UK, came to Canada 1952. SO not a boomer, but close.

That generation may not always have agreed politically, but even among those that didn’t there was some sympathy. For the broadly not that political majority, it was huge. The admiration for, and mourning for, JFK was a major element of Canadian life at that time. I guess that wasn’t just limited to Canada among America’s allies, but it was a moment when the similarity of language and way of life seemed to really bring sympathy home for a lot of Canadians.

I grew up pretty gung ho positive about the US in the 80s. Also, had inherited disgust for PE Trudeau. These things fit together well. OK, so I’ve tempered my views somewhat, and not for the usual Canadian reasons to dislike the US, but I still think of the US as number one ally and a producer of great people, great dreams, and pretty good stuff.

I look forward to it continuing.

I swear, it’s like “Oh, the Yanks are not on fire…? Lemme get the gasoline and set us on fire…”.

Meanwhile, the sane among those south of the border that do pay attention to Canadian affairs are left looking north and going “WTF?”. Which I’m no doubt certain most sane Canadians are doing, watching the news out of the US…

Ah, well… Neighbors. What are ya gonna do? Canada has mostly been a really good neighbor to the US, probably better than we deserve, but there are the occasional hiccups. Several of whom have been named Trudeau…

A friend’s son recently joined the Canadian Army.

I was surprised at the length of the recruitment process for a NCM, but when he went in, if I have understood correctly the narrative I was given, he in early 2018 did basic training at St Jean, which was tri-service basic, then sat around as Personnel Awaiting Training for months, then went to Infantry School which was conducted by his assigned regiment, RCR.

That sounds similar to what you described, though perhaps with variations.

He enjoyed his time in PAT- they got to be among the red teams in some major exercise. So it was not without its educational experiences.

By those standards, all western societies pre WW2 were a little militaristic.

I find this new world language confusing. Even Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t quite militaristic by European standards of his time.

Apropos of all that, two peripheral points.

1. I grew up curious about the preponderance of military schools in the US, for about a century from the civil war into the 1960s, although of course some remain. Probably started by seeing the more or less absurdist but still entertaining film Taps. If you want to see a stylized, teen heartthrob centric clash between symbolic military values and bourgeois real estate commercialism, that’s your movie. [Early roles for Sean Penn and Tom Cruise, among others. George C Scott plays the commandant, channelling Patton.]

I still find the phenomenon interesting as an exercise in having a militaristic subculture in a not very militaristic society, with a complicated relationship to other ideals like civic militarism and republicanism, and for a time, at least, having substantial public support.

2. One of my old professors, Jack Granatstein, wrote a book called Yankee, Go Home, about the history of anti-Americanism in Canada. His thesis boiled down to, anti-Americanism is a rallying cry used by Canadian elites to mobilize support, and its content changes with the values of those elites. So, in my time, anti-American Canadian ‘nationalism’ has been social democratic and economic nationalist, multicultural, increasingly leftist in general, depending on the dominant flavour of “left” in any decade. Once, it was aristocratic, militaristic, conservative, and critical of too much democracy. Not of parliamentary institutions at all. Just of too much ‘democracy’ on American lines.

A forgotten artifact of history. I just giggle at the idea of Canada as a haven of officer class military values and more ‘militaristic’ than the US. But Granatstein was right on that. It was small scale stuff befitting the size of the country’s population, but our upper classes once loved their militia uniforms and ceremony.

If initial basic was done collectively, then anything past basic was done in house at the unit. So an Infantryman (pardon me, “Infanteer”)destined for the PPCLI, goes from Basic, to what we call “Battle School”, which is conducted at the PPCLI Battle School, and so on.

Although it is weakening thru amalgamation and the general reduction in army size, the regimental system is still kicking.

Why it doesn’t take has a lot to do with the fact that there’s limited to no identification with the mission, service, or individual unit. In the US Army, the entire system of recruitment, training, and indoctrination serves to disconnect the recruit from what I’d term proper acculturation to the service. It’s all too big, too impersonal. You’re asked to identify with the institution, and what they give you to enable that feels like so much artificiality. It’s essentially inauthentic, and easily identifiable as such.

What I find baffling is that this sort of thing is well-documented, and what’s even more confusing, performed the world over in institutions like street gangs. Yet, the US Army essentially fails at it, with the majority of the recruits it draws. Marines do a better job, but in my opinion, the Corps has a bit of a problem with the fact that the people they’re attracting tend to have “issues” all their own. Marines join to be Marines; what screws things up is when the individual Marine decides that just isn’t enough to justify putting up with the BS and outright abuse they have to.

It is possible to “do it right”, the problem is that we just don’t bother to. And, a lot of that boils down to the fact that while Americans have a culture of military service, we’re not that militaristic. Well, most of us… Germans of the pre-WWII era had that fascination with militarism, just like the Japanese and Italians did. In the US, the fancy uniforms and fou-fou little daggers would have been the subject of ridicule, which goes to show you how different a really militaristic culture is from one that isn’t. You want the essence of the difference, look at that picture of Grant and Lee at the surrender: Grant, looking rumpled and “done with the BS” vs. Lee, who looked stylish and refined, even in defeat. Looking at that picture, you’d think Grant lost, while Lee won.

He has a confused and bewildered look on his face, and says something along the lines of;

“Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, yet those who DO study history are doomed to stand by helplessly as everyone else repeats it.”

I feel like that most of the time.

I was amazed by how many of my fellow officers back in the day, knew very little of our military history, and didn’t seem to want to.

The Air-force actually instituted a week long course called air-force indoc to inculcate the basics of the history of the RCAF because a lot of the officer candidates came in with technical interests for technical jobs, but had no real interest, and thanks to the dismal state of state education, no knowledge of the history, to the extent that aspiring fighter pilots didn’t know who Billy Bishop was.

It is to weep.

I did some of my route clearance and MRAP research while I was at Fort Leonard Wood, and dealt with one of the UK exchange NCOs, a fairly senior Warrant Officer, about equivalent to a hybrid US senior NCO/Warrant Officer. He made a point I’ve never forgotten, about the much-vaunted US Army Center For Army Lessons Learned, or CALL. As he put it, that was entirely the wrong name for it, because “…you can’t call it a Center for Lessons Learned, when none of the lessons are ever actually learnt… By rights, you lot ought to call the place the Center for Army Lessons Identified, and then Bloody Well Ignored…”.

It’s not the historians, or the archivists–It’s the culture and the attitudes of the people in that culture. True erudite intellectualism and spirit of intellectual curiosity are pretty much non-existent among the majority of the officers I worked for and knew something of. I never, ever met one who really struck me as being essentially interested in military affairs, and who was enthusiastic about them. The few that I did run into were never people I had the great good fortune to work for, and I can’t really appraise how well they would have done as leaders.

You may be familiar with a gentleman named T.R. Fehrenbach, who wrote This Kind of War about the Korean War. I found a lot of his insights to be both profound and provocative. Interestingly, I served in a unit where one of his sons was an officer; it was hard to really tell if he’d ever read or digested the implications of his father’s books, because while he was a decent officer, a lot of what he did was not particularly different from the rest of the run of the mill types we had. It was interesting to hear him talk, but… I never really got the feel that the Army was a vocation for him, as opposed to a career.

And, to be honest, I think that’s the biggest problem we have: Ensuring that the people running the institution have a true vocation for the mission, along with the associated interest and passion. All too many treat it as just another career path.

I often wonder what the hell it is that prevents people from doing rational things, in this regard. Entrenched sclerotic thinking, perhaps?

It is my oft-observed contention that the US Army is essentially ahistorical in nature, and entirely unable to learn anything at all, unless it’s the hard way. It is almost as if the lesson has to be driven home with a self-inflicted sledgehammer.

C.S. Lewis said it best: “Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, but you learn…”.

The US military, it seems, will have no other teacher than brutal experience.