The Greatest Canadian

Yesterday I spent some time tar-and-feathering ten individuals for being Canada's most dangerous citizens. Today, the opposite tack; I'm making my nomination for The Greatest Canadian, a man who ranks right up there with Sir Winston Churchill as a saviour of Western Civilization.

This individual is little known to most young adults and completely unknown to our school children. Those who have heard of him think he was either a fraudulent stock manipulator or an insufferable poseur and self-promoter who tried to lord it over his fellow countrymen. A recent biography of him won't help much, only barely touching in a couple of pages on his great achievement. An earlier biography is more or less a hatchet job on his reputation.

I'm not linking to either of these works as they completely miss the point of his life and the dramatic effect it had on all of us alive today. If ever there was a man for whom it could be said he is a prophet without honour in his own land, it is my candidate.

Indeed, he was also despised in his adopted country. Industrialists hated him for running roughshod over their cozy arrangements. Leaders of the armed service he dealt with hated him for exposing their gross incompetence during the most severe crisis in British history. Workers in his plants hated him because he set unreasonable production targets.

Yes, you know who I mean now, Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian who beat Albert Speer at his own game, aircraft production, and because he did, created the winning conditions for the Battle of Britain and the Second World War, resulting in the free world in which we now live.

Winston Churchill marshaled words to come to the aid of his country, Beaverbrook -- the Beaver -- provided the weapons that won the battle.

If you read Wikipedia on the Ministry of Aircraft Production you have to step around the invective the author has hurled at Beaverbrook to realize the size of his accomplishment. In the end, however, he has to admit Beaverbrook pulled off a miracle:

In the first four months of 1940 2,729 aircraft were produced, of which 638 were fighters, while in the following four months crucial to the Battle of Britain combat during May to August 1940, production rose to 4,578 aircraft, of which 1,875 were fighters. This production rate was two and a half times the Germany's fighter production at the time.

Did you get that? With the British army in full retreat and the RAF under growing pressure, production ROSE from 638 fighters to 1,875 fighters and continued to climb in the months ahead. In the darkest days of the Battle of Britain, when German fighters sometimes actually knocked down more British fighters than they lost, there were always fresh, airworthy fighters ready to be flown. Why? Beaverbrook, that's why.

Among other things, he did the following;

1. He forced the RAF storage units to issue aircraft to the Squadrons they had been holding back.
2. He forced the RAF maintenance depots to send unused spare parts back to the factories to be installed into new production.
3. He instituted a fly-in repair service so damaged aircraft could be flown directly to the maintenance facilities.
4. He took over a new Spitfire factory built by Lord Nuffield that had failed to deliver a single aircraft and immediately got into into production in June 1940.
5. He had special vehicles built to transport wrecked aircraft by road to repair facilities.
6. He sent teams of technicians to bases to install new, improved equipment on fighters
7. He instituted trans-Atlantic ferrying of aircraft in the face of stiff opposition from the Ministry.

And, of course, there's more.

For this, for providing the weapons that saved Britain so America and Russia could win the war, he has received little or no thanks and almost no recognition. Shame on us, because:

Beaverbrook is, by far, The Greatest Canadian.