The Origins of H.M.C.S. Nonsuch
A photo of an HMCS Nonsuch sailor in downtown Edmonton among the author’s collection of Royal Canadian Navy uniforms.
Edmonton’s naval unit, H.M.C.S. Nonsuch, dates back to 1923. Founded as a half-company of the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve, the ‘Edmonton Division’ was the brainchild of Lieutenant Commander Athol Blair MacLeod, who called for “two officers, 50 men, and a permeant force officer for training.” They hoped a new unit could “maintain the record made by Canadian sailormen during the [Great] War.”
The plan drew criticism. William Duff, a respected merchant, sailor, and Liberal Member of Parliament for Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, chided the idea by sarcastically asking if “western recruits will train on prairie schooners?” But MacLeod and the Navy knew better. In their eyes, farm-boys and city-slickers “made good sailors because they knew nothing — and knew it.” These weren’t Maritimers. These were’t fishers. These weren’t sons from sailing dynasties. These men didn’t have pretensions or habits that needed unlearning. They were a blank slate and the Navy could mold them how they wanted. It seemed that they were right — prairie sailors quickly became some of the R.C.N.’s most valued. According to Captain E.R. Brock, commander of reserve divisions for the R.C.N.V.R., “all early fears and worries about what would happen with landlubbers in the navy… proved groundless.”
In the words of the Edmonton Journal, the plan “quickly became popular and in no time at all [Edmonton’s division] grew to a strength of more than 225 officers and men who at this time paraded at the Prince of Wales Armoury.” Although “numerous blackjackets on Jasper Avenue [became] a familiar sight,” their appearance was still an alien concept to most Edmontonians. As Chris Champion deftly explains, any pride that sailors may have found in their naval suits was deflated “when a child asked: ‘Gee, mister, are you a member of the Salvation Army?’”
While allotted time at sea — or more locally, Lake Wabamum — for “practical water training,” when at home Edmonton’s sailors trained in other ways. In the words of the Edmonton Bulletin, “a certain number of drills will be put in locally, but these will be more for the purpose of rifle drill, squad drill, and so on; tactics made necessary when operations call for landing parties.”
For nearly two decades, the “city’s more-or-less orphaned naval detachment” had no ‘home port’, and although they occasionally used the Army’s barracks, it wasn’t a permeant solution — one came from the Hudson’s Bay Company of all places. As Anne Hudson of the Journal explains:
“When the [Hudson’s Bay] Company converted to automobiles from horse-drawn delivery vans, it had no further use for its horse barns.
“In 1939 the building, at the foot of the 102nd Street hill near 97th Avenue, was sold to the department of national defence for one dollar to house the small naval reserve…”
By the time Canada declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939, the old stables’ conversion was complete. The “smartest naval club in Canada,” according to the Bulletin, it was “equipped with a drill and recreation rooms with full facilities for training and equipment for leisure pastimes.” A marshalling field and shooting range were included.
Given the history, and generous benefactor, of its new building, the Edmonton Division of the R.C.N.V.R. was rechristened. Taking its name from the “small 50-ton ketch that brought such valuable furs from the Hudson’s Bay area,” it became His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Nonsuch. And that’s not a mistake. Just because the Nonsuch was inland didn’t mean it wasn’t a ‘ship’ — keeping with naval tradition, the ‘stone frigate’ was still treated like a boat. As a contemporary Journal article explained, “ship terms [were still] used everywhere.” The building’s front, facing east, was the bow, for instance. To the right of that, the south-side, was starboard, west was stern, and north, port.
During the Second World War, “the reserve unit became a basic training ground for thousands of naval recruits” from around Alberta, and it trained 3,582 ratings — the rough naval equivalent to private — and 114 officers. In 1941 alone, the Nonsuch recruited 500 Edmontonians into the ranks of the R.C.N.
The ship’s motto A Campis ad Maria — “from the prairies to the sea” — was an accurate one. Many prairie sailors went “to sea in the dark days of the Second World War. To name corvettes such as Nanaimo, Chilliwack, Trail or Sherbrooke; minesweepers as Minos; or destroyers as Athabaskan, is to revive salty — and some sad — memories in many an Edmonton home.” A large number fought in the Battle of the Atlantic, the war’s longest continuous campaign. There they defended merchant convoys — ferrying vital war material, food stuffs, and lend-lease vehicles to Great Britain and the Soviet Union — from U-Boat attacks.
After the war work at the Nonsuch wound down, and it returned a modest sized force. Even still it maintained its record for excellence “and in 1960 lived up to its name by winning the national competition trophy for being the best naval division in Canada.” Temporarily disbanded after 1964, the Nonsuch was reinstated in 1975, and the stone-frigate maintains an active presence in Edmonton to this day.
Sources:
“Inland Sailors Wanted For naval Reserve,” Edmonton Bulletin, April 7, 1923.
“William Duff Humorous On Naval Reserve,” Edmonton Bulletin, May 19, 1923.
“Smartest Naval Club as New Quarters Obtained, Edmonton Bulletin, February 11, 1939.
“Bulletin Surveys City News highlights For Past Year,” Edmonton Bulletin, December 31, 1941.
“Naval Barracks H.M.C.S. Nonsuch,” Edmonton Journal, January 19, 1942.
“Canada’s Powerful Navy Draws Most Personnel From Among Native Borns,” Edmonton Bulletin, December 26, 1942.
Bill Powers, “HMCS Nonsuch Has proud Naval Record,” Edmonton Journal, May 8, 1962.
‘Old Timer’, “The Third Column: Farewell To Nonsuch,” Edmonton Journal, December 20, 1963.
Ken Preston, “Nostalgic Crew Bids Farewell As City’s Only Ship ‘Sunk’,” Edmonton Journal, January 15, 1964.
“Nonsuch Aweigh,” Edmonton Journal, February 4, 1975.
Anne Hudson, “The Name Nonsuch Has Had Nobel History in Royal Navy,” Edmonton Journal, September 29, 1975.
Dennis Person and Carin Routledge, Edmonton: Portrait of a City (Edmonton, Reidmore Books, 1981), 180.
Chris Champion, “The Curious Intrigue of Prairie Boys With The Sea,” in The War That United The Province, 51.
