military leaders quickly realized that co-operation with their closest defence partners would allow the country to benefit from an exchange of information on the latest defence developments and doctrine. For the airborne and SOF advocates, a test facility would allow the Canadian military to stay in the game. In the end, for the sake of efficiency of manpower and resources, NDHQ directed that the parachute training and research functions reside in a single Canadian joint army/air training centre. As a result, on August 15, 1947, the Joint Air School (JAS), in Rivers, Manitoba, was established.
The JAS became the “foot in the door.” It was responsible for the retention of skills required for airborne and, with some ingenuity, special operations, for both the army and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). More important, the JAS, which was renamed the Canadian Joint Air Training Centre (CJATC) on April 1, 1949, provided the seed from which a SOF organization would eventually grow.[71]
The hidden agenda of the airborne advocates quickly took root. Once the permanent structure of the army was established in 1947, they quickly pushed to expand the airborne capability within the JAS by submitting a proposal in the spring for a Canadian special air service (SAS) company.[72] This new organization was to be an integral sub-unit of the army component of the JAS with a mandate of filling army, inter-service , and public duties such as army/air tactical research and development; demonstrations to assist with army/air training; airborne firefighting; search and rescue; and aid to the civil power.[73] Its development, however, proved to be quite different, as its name implies.
The initial proposal for the special sub-unit prescribed a clearly defined role. The army, which sponsored the establishment of the fledgling organization, portrayed the SAS Company’s inherent mobility as a definite asset to the public at large for domestic operations. A military appreciation written by its proponents argued the need for the unit in terms of its potential benefit to the public. It explained that the specially trained company would provide an “efficient life and property[-]saving organization capable of moving from its base to any point in Canada in ten to fifteen hours.”[74] Furthermore, the Canadian SAS Company was framed as critical in working in support of the RCAF air search/rescue duties required by the International Civil Aviation Organization agreement.
The proposed training plan further supported this image. The training cycle consisted of four phases broken down as follows: 1) tactical research and development (parachute related work and field[-]craft skills); 2) airborne firefighting; 3) air search and rescue; and 4) mobile aid to the civil power (crowd control, first aid, military law).[75] Conspicuously absent was any mention of commando or specialist training, which the organization’s name suggested. After all, the Canadian SAS Company was actually titled after the British wartime Special Air Service, which earned a reputation for daring commando operations behind enemy lines.
In September 1947, the request for approval for the sub-unit was forwarded to the deputy chief of the General Staff. Significantly, it now had two additional roles added to it — public service in the event of a national catastrophe; and provision of a nucleus for expansion into parachute battalions. However, the proposal also noted that the SAS Company was required to provide the manpower for the large programme of test and development that was underway by the Tactical Research and Development Wing, as well as demonstration teams for all demonstrations within and outside the CJATC.[76]
As support for the sub-unit grew, so too did its real identity. An assessment of potential benefits to the army included its ability to “keep the techniques employed by [British] SAS persons during the war alive in the peacetime army.”[77] Although this item was last in the order of priority in the list, it soon moved to the forefront.
NDHQ authorized the sub-unit with an effective date of January 9, 1948. Once this was announced, a dramatic change in focus became evident. Not only did its function as a base for the development of airborne units take precedence, but the previously subtle reference to combat fighting and war, specifically its special forces role, leapt to the foreground. The new terms of reference for the employment of the SAS Company, which were confirmed in April, outlined the following duties in a revised priority:
1 provide a tactical parachute company for airborne training. This company is to form the nucleus for expansion for the training of the three infantry battalions as parachute battalions;
2 provide a formed body of troops to participate in tactical exercises and demonstrations for courses at the CJATC and service units throughout the country;
3 preserve and advance the techniques of SAS [commando] operations developed during WW II (1939–1945);
4 provide when required parachutists to back-up the RCAF organizations as detailed in the interim plan for air search and rescue; and
5 aid civil authorities in fighting forest fires and assisting in national catastrophes when authorized by Defence headquarters.[78]
The shift was anything but subtle. The original emphasis on aid to the civil authority and public service–type functions, duties that were attractive to a war-weary and fiscally conscious government, were now re-prioritized if not totally marginalized. It did, however, also represent the army’s initial reaction to the government’s announcement in 1946, that airborne training for the Active Force Brigade Group (regular army) was contemplated and that an establishment to this end was being created.
The new organization was established at company strength — 125 personnel all ranks. It was comprised of one platoon from each of the three regular infantry regiments: the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR), the Royal 22nd Regiment (R22R) and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI). All of the carefully selected members were volunteers, most with wartime airborne experience. They were all bachelors, in superb physical condition, and possessed of initiative, self-reliance , self-discipline , mental agility, and an original approach.
If there was any doubt of the intention of the unit, it was quickly dispelled when Captain Guy D’Artois, a wartime member of the FSSF, and later the SOE, was posted to the sub-unit as its second-in -command. However, due to a difficulty in finding a qualified major, he became the acting officer commanding.[79] After all, his credentials were impeccable. D’Artois had dropped by parachute into Mont Cortevaix in France, then under German occupation, in April 1944. Prior to the sector being liberated, he had trained six hundred partisans, established the Sylla underground, developed an eight-hundred -kilometre secure telephone line; he had also attacked the occupying German troops on numerous occasions within his area of operation. Moreover, he instilled in his French allies a taste for victory. For his feats, D’Artois was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the French Croix de Guerre avec palme from General Charles de Gaulle. His service with the underground earned him the praise: “Major D’Artois is the embodiment of nobility in figure, strength, and stature, but more importantly, nobility in simplicity and kindness.”[80]
D’Artois trained his sub-unit of carefully selected paratroopers as a specialized commando force. His intractable approach and trademark persistence quickly made him the “absolute despair of the Senior Officers at Rivers [CJATC].” Veterans of the SAS Company explained that “Captain D’Artois didn’t understand ‘no.’ He carried on with his training regardless of what others said.” Another veteran recalled that “Guy answered to no one; he was his own man, who ran his own show.”[81]
But the issue was soon moot. At that point, the continued survival of the JAS and its limited airborne and SOF capability, as represented by the Canadian SAS Company, was largely due to a British and American preoccupation with airborne and air-transportable forces in the post-war period. This was based on a concept of security established on smaller standing forces with greater tactical and strategic mobility. In essence, possession of paratroopers represented the nation’s ready sword. This was critical in light of the looming 1946 Canada/U.S. Basic Security Plan (BSP), which imposed on Canada the requirement to provide one airborne/air-transportable brigade, and its necessary airlift,
