Thread:ML4E/@comment-874475-20140301235136/@comment-130447-20140304193754

Interesting question. Turtle Fan's comments do make sense and postulate history following one direction namely that the US is an embittered but ineffectual continental power. I'm not sure that HT followed that path though.

In GotS he had the US seeking revenge by invading B.N.A. and taking various Canadian cities although being ineffective as a sea power. While this is a different timeline and story, it does illustrate a possible attitude that the US could be perceived as a potentially dangerous threat. Given the concentration of the bulk of the Canadian population being near the US / Canada border, I can see that Canadians and the British viewing the US with alarm even if they didn't take any overt actions.

In addition to the the military vessels on the Great Lakes that TF mentions, there were enough British / Canadian forces to invade Maine and Montana during the Second Mexican War. I always thought that the lancer regiment General Gordon commanded were some sort of Canadian territorial army that was formed rather than the Northwest Mounted Police. If you consider the OTL RCMP Musical Ride, that is based on cavalry tactics and manoeuvres from that time period. I concluded that a more military rather than police force was established and used then.

Who the first PM was is an open question. However, as TF points out Macdonald would be a strong possibility. Given that Turtledove has Robert Borden as PM during the Great War as he was during WW I, its likely he had Macdonald in mind as the first Canadian PM. ML4E (talk) 19:37, March 4, 2014 (UTC)