[John McGillivray]

There is a history of the 5th Brigade written by Terry Copp Called “The Brigade”. Here are some excerpts from this book:

“The decision to transfer the Calgary Highlanders to a Quebec brigade arose from the failure of a long, complicated attempt to establish a French-language brigade. Originally the Royal 22nd Regiment [R22R], the Fusiliers Mont Royal and the Maisonneuves were to be combined in 5 Brigade, but it was then decided that a French Canadian unit was needed in 1st Division. So the Black Watch, very much an English-speaking unit, replaced the R22R in 5 Brigade. Since there was not to be a French-language brigade there was no point in concentrating the two remaining French-language battalions, so the Fusiliers Mont Royal went to 6 Brigade while the Calgary Highlanders joined the Maisonneuves and the Black Watch in 5 Brigade.”

In the section concerning the raising of the Black Watch:

“A limit was placed on the number of French Canadians enrolled, in ‘fairness to the French units in the city.’”

The following is about the Regiment de Maisonneuve:

“The third battalion assigned to the Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade was the Regiment de Maisonneuve. The name had been selected in 1920 to designate a new militia unit which would perpetuate the honours and traditions of the 85th Regiment. The 85th had begun in 1880 as a rural unit made up of six scattered companies. Eventually the Regiment's headquarters were established at the Craig Street Armoury in old Montreal, and the 85th increasingly recruited its soldiers from among workers in the east end of the city. When war came in 1914 existing militia units were ignored by the government and, like its sister regiments, the 85th had to be content with sending its members to newly created battalions. The Regiment recruited 1,286 men of whom 524 served in France and 122 in Great Britain. Of those who served 102 were killed and 198 wounded. [47]

“The regiment's new name was selected to honour the founder of Montreal rather than the industrial suburb of Maisonneuve. [48] The cadre of officers who served with the regiment in the interwar years were drawn from the French-Canadian aristocracy and bourgeoisie of Outremont and the upper city, not the east end. A strong military tradition persisted in a number of French-Canadian families and the Maisonneuve enlistment rolls contain numerous cases of sons and grandsons following fathers into the regiment. For example, the first commandant of the 85th Battalion was Lieut.-Colonel Julien Brosseau (d. 1912). One son, Charles-Auguste, commanded the regiment from 1930 to 1934 and a second son, Paul, was to lead the battalion during its first two years in England. [49]

“Family traditions could keep the regiment alive but in the twenties and thirties the Maisonneuves did not even possess an armoury of their own. This vacabondage might have threatened the existence of the regiment were it not for organized sports. The Maisonneuves were keen participants in militia leagues, especially softball. The officers' team had won the district championship eight times since 1921. The team for NCOs and other ranks was always competitive, winning the league championship in 1938-39. When war broke out in 1939 the regiment was one of the first in Canada to fill its ranks.

“Historians have no ready explanation for the large scale enlistment of French-Canadian volunteers in 1939. Most have either pretended it did not happen or suggested that the volunteers were all, like Florentine's father in The Tin Flute [50] (Bonheur d'Occasion), made desperate by unemployment. Canada's entry into the war, we have been told, was opposed by French Canadians and only the promise of no conscription for overseas service prevented a major disruption. [51]

“This traditional view of the events of 1939 commits the cardinal error of treating French Canada as a monolith rather than as a normally complex society. The Maisonneuves, like the city's other French and English militia regiments, found that there was no shortage of officer or other rank volunteers. Nationalist opposition to Canadian participation in the war was strongly expressed in the pages of Le Devoir, L'Action Catholique and a few other journals but the mass circulation newspapers, La Presse, La Patrie and Le Canada, had kept French-speaking Montrealers abreast of events in Europe and had endorsed Canada's declaration of war. Ernest Lapointe, federal minister of justice and the leading French-Canadian political figure of his generation, insisted that Canadian neutrality was inconceivable, and proclaimed the justice of the Allied cause. He and like-minded colleagues campaigned energetically to defeat the anti-participation provincial government of Premier Maurice Duplessis, and in October 1939 the Liberals swept Duplessis from office. This is not to argue that the majority of French Canadians fully supported Canadian participation or were anxious to enlist personally, but rather that the tens of thousands who did enlist in 1939-40 did so without isolating themselves from French-Canadian society.

“When the Maisonneuves were ordered to mobilize on September 1st Lieut.-Colonel Robert Bourassa, a Great War veteran, was commanding the regiment. Bourassa was a Crown Attorney, prominent in Montreal legal circles, the third generation of his family to serve in the regiment. [52] Bourassa was not an easy man for the Canadian army to deal with. He was taking a refresher course for field officers when word came that war was imminent. Reaching Montreal on August 25th he quickly became involved in a bitter dispute over the command of guards posted in the city. The men were from the Maisonneuves but the officers were English-speaking and artillery to boot. Bourassa would not accept this injustice both to his regiment and to French Canadians, and a long battle of words ensued. [53]

“This quarrel did not interfere with recruitment. According to the War Diary more than 2,000 men presented themselves to be enlisted in the first week of September, before Canada was officially at war. Many of these were rejected because they were overage, married, or of poor physique, but a steady stream passed the medical exam and joined the ranks during September. Almost all the militia officers volunteered for active service, although most of them were too old to be employed overseas when the time came. One exception was Lieutenant Julien Bibeau, a thirty-one-year-old sales manager for Maple Leaf Milling Company. Bibeau was commissioned through the Canadian Officers “Training Corps at the University of Montreal and had joined the Maisonneuves in 1937. [54] A natural leader and instinctive soldier, Bibeau became one of the outstanding battalion commanders in the Canadian army. The Maisonneuves had no First World War veterans to draw upon for training and no one from the regular army. A young graduate of the Royal Military College, Lieutenant Jacques Ostiguy, was attached to the regiment in November. Ostiguy, who became an outstanding company commander in North-West Europe in 1944, turned his infectious enthusiasm to the task of organizing the Sports Committee of the regiment.

“The Maisonneuves trained in even worse circumstances than the Calgaries and the Black Watch. They shared the Craig Street Armoury with an artillery unit and were forced to billet many recruits in their own homes. It was not until January 1940 that a large factory building in St. Henri was obtained as a temporary barracks. In the meantime trips to the Mount Bruno firing range, and endless drill and bayonet practice were all that could be managed — except for sports. In the winter of 1939-40 boxing, gymnastics and, above all, hockey played a crucial role in the life of the regiment. [55]

“It was not easy to maintain morale that winter. Lieut.-Colonel Bourassa might have felt better if he had known that in Calgary the same problems persisted, but in Montreal the Maisonneuves appeared to be particularly hard done by. Le Devoir kept its readers aware of the continuing struggle over the use of the Craig Street Armoury, reporting in early January that the regiment was being denied space for offices and training by “un regiment de langue anglaise.” [56]

“The Maisonneuves were also having difficulties with some of their recruits. Initially the Canadian army had enlisted men without the aid of x-rays, urinalysis or other modern medical techniques. In November all recruits had to be re-examined and a large number of Maisonneuves failed their second test. Bourassa was unhappy with this procedure and on January 25, 1940 he put his views in writing:

1. Practically every day we receive orders to send some of our men for medical examinations and so forth.
2. Amongst those to be ordered to be re-examined, there are men who are very good and whom we desire to keep.
3. Since mobilization, we have been operating under the most unhealthy conditions.
4. While we were at Craig Street, the men had no boots and they had to be in the open, whatever the weather was. When they could not be on Champ de Mars, they had to be in the Drill Shed, where there was no heat. Now that we are in Rose de Lima Barracks we have to suffer the dust from cement floors which according to our Medical Officer and the Hygiene Officer is very unhealthy, endangering the men's health.
5. When the weather is unfavourable, the men are in the cellar of the building, exposed to the cement dust all day long and to the humidity of the cellar, which is not heated. As a matter of fact, the Hygiene Officer condemned the place while he was here.
6. Under the circumstances, I think it is most unfair for men to be called to a Reboard, when they have been living under such circumstances and such unfavourable conditions.
7. I think that before my men are called to Reboard, they should be allowed a period of rest under favourable conditions as it would bring them back to normal and allow them to be on the same stand as the others when they arrive for their Board. [57]

“Conditions did not improve significantly and on May 30th the regiment travelled to Valcartier to join the Black Watch, and the black flies. The Maisonneuves were not sent to Newfoundland; instead they spent the summer of 1940 at Valcartier in training exercises and guard duty for German prisoners of war arriving in Quebec. On August 24th the battalion sailed for England. The voyage was marked by extensive fog and warnings of the presence of enemy submarines. The sound of depth charges could be heard on the troopship and life-boat drill seemed far from routine. But on September 4th they reached Scotland and the next day the trains moved off to Aldershot. That evening Lieut.-Colonel Bourassa was rushed to hospital with what turned out to be a brain tumor; He would never see his regiment again. Major Paul Brosseau, the second-in-command, took over the next day. [58]

“The convoy that had brought the Maisonneuves to England had also carried other elements of the brigade, including the Fifth Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery. The gunners, like the infantry, had yet to see modern weapons, but they too were assigned to an immediate role in the defence of Great Britain. The Canadian government had done little to prepare its young men for the tasks that now faced them. Fortunately there was time to make up for years of neglect.”

I hope that this helps.