Canada's Naval History

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Birth Of the Navy

First World War

Between the Wars

Second World War

Early Cold War

Later Cold War
- - From RCN to Maritime Command
  - A Changing Fleet

Navy Today
- - The Gulf War
  - Continuing Commitments

First World War (1914-1918)
The Home Front

The war at sea affected Canadians in a variety of ways. While extensive recruiting efforts at home sought men to become sailors in the Canadian and British navies, Canadian shipyards built warships and merchant ships to expand Allied navies and to replace vessels lost to submarine attack.

Artifact Record

Anchored Naval Mine Model

This is a design concept model for a device that prevented minesweepers from cutting loose anchored sea mines.

The inventor of this device, Eugène Bédard, offered it to the Canadian government as a means of protecting mines against the cables and cutting equipment towed by minesweepers. The minesweeper's cables would be obstructed by the two wire projections (left) shielding the mine, and would then pass over the mine without having severed its cable. Alternately, a cutter just below the mine would sever the minesweeping cable. The wire projections and the cutter rotated around the mine's anchor cable in order to provide protection from all angles.

Anchored naval mine model
CWM 19810033-002