Peacetime Padres: Canadian Protestant Military Chaplains, 1945-1995

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

I remember a conversation with a U.S. army chaplain during the Vietnam
war era. The padre remarked that he had a foot in two dying camps—the
church and the army—and, of course, it was true. There is a temptation
to see the same situation at work in Canada, but this account of
Protestant chaplains, while it recognizes growing Canadian indifference
to both God and the military, provides little basis for any such
judgment. Major Fowler, both a chaplain and a scholar, has produced a
thoroughly researched and carefully written account of how the religious
needs of the Canadian Forces were attended to in the half-century after
the end of World War II. Tiny in number, the chaplains seem to have been
as service-oriented as were any of those who protested against
integration and unification in the 1960s, and as concerned with rank and
status as any other officers. But the chaplains, like other servicemen,
did their jobs in Korea, for NATO, and on peacekeeping missions; and,
like other men in the 1980s, they adapted to new domestic realities,
carefully welcoming female padres to their ranks. This is not an
exciting story, but it is one of compassionate service to the military,
the least understood segment of Canadian society.