... many Canadian military firearms ....
Yes, my collection now includes good, shootable original examples of most of the primary-issue rifles and all of the primary-issue handguns used by the Canadian military since Confederation created the Dominion of Canada in 1867 through to the 1950's (with a few original - or reproduction - pre-Confederation military firearms.
Since this is my thread, I guess I will allow myself to shamelessly hijack it to showcase the gems of my collection .....
(As many of you will know, I shoot most of these firearms (and other vintage firearms in my collection which
aren't Canadian military issue ...)
First Installment - Long Guns in Canadian Military Service -
(If there is interest, I can do a second installment, showing my Canadian-issue military handguns ....)
Short Land Pattern musket (.75 cal. - "Brown Bess" - reproduction)
Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle Musket (.577 cal. - Parker-Hale reproduction)
Canadian-contract Peabody rifle (.50-60 rimfire, with center-fire conversion block, Canada Militia markings)
Model 1865 Spencer rifle (.56-50 center-fire, reproduction; originals were rimfire; of an estimated total of only about 3,000 original Model 1865 rifles manufactured, fully 2,000 came to Canada to arm the Militia, along with 2,300 Model 1865 Spencer carbines)
Snider-Enfield Rifle (.577 single shot breechloading conversion of muzzle-loading Enfield rifle.) The Snider conversion was a "stop-gap" adopted in 1866 to get the British Army armed with breechloaders, during development of the Martini-Henry rifle which was formally adopted in 1874. Canada's Militia was fully re-armed with Sniders by the end of 1867, but the design then remained Canada's primary-issue military rifle until 1896/97, when issues of Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles finally began!
Snider-Enfield Short Rifle, issued to Sergeants of Line Infantry, all Other Ranks (enlisted men) in units designated as "Rifles" and, when it was finally established in 1885, the Mounted Infantry School Corps of Canada's very small full-time "Permanent Militia". Background image is a studio portrait of members of the newly-formed Mounted Infantry unit in winter kit ....
Snider-Enfield cavalry carbine, issued to Militia cavalry units and, when if was formed in 1873, the North West Mounted Police. Background image shows a troop of Militia cavalry exercising in the winter.
Although the Snider remained Canada's primary-issue military longarm for about 30 years, the Department of Militia & Defence did acquire
some Martini-Henry rifles (.577/.450 single-shot), including 2,100 2nd Pattern Mark I rifles, which predated the final "Approved Pattern" finally adopted in mid-1874. Ordered in December of 1873, they were received in early 1874, but then were promptly squirreled away in Stores, until a few were finally issued on a very limited basis - e.g. to the Royal Military College and, even later, to the Infantry School Corps of the Permanent Militia. Otherwise, their issue was confined almost entirely to "loan" to military and civilian target-shooting teams .... who had to compete with Martini-Henry rifles in the Service Rifle Competitions so popular in the Empire. Although a British War Department directive required that all early-pattern Mark I rifles on issue with British forces be returned for conversion to the final "Approved Pattern", the 2,100 rifles in Canada remained unaltered, and it is estimated that most 2nd Pattern Mk I Martini-Henry rifles still surviving in an unaltered state - in effect, they are "trials rifles" - were part of the Canadian batch. This is one of them .... in keeping with the extensive use of these rifles mainly for shooting competitions, the background shows Canadian Militia riflemen competing at such a match -
When the 1885 North West Rebellion broke out, Canadian authorities in a great panic ordered 10,000 new Martini-Henry rifles, with ammunition .... the rifles (of the Mark III pattern then in production) were shipped very promptly but, since the Rebellion lasted only a few months, the rifles arrived too late to be issued .... so almost all of the Canadian infantry deployed during the Rebellion were armed with Sniders. Canada was permitted to return 5,000 of the rifles and half the ammunition, with the balance going into Stores and seeing quite limited use .... again, primarily for Service Rifle shooting competitions. This is one of the 1885 Mark III rifles; the background image is a rifle team of the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada -
Within a few years of the founding of the North West Mounted Police, the Force replaced their Snider cavalry carbines with a special "musket stocked" Winchester Model 1876 carbine chambered in .45-75, and a quantity of the same model was also acquired by the Department of Militia & Defence, which issued them to the sole Permanent Militia cavalry troop engaged in the 1885 Rebellion, as well as to the various un-uniformed Provisional mounted units raised in the North West. I have one of the modern reproductions of that model of Winchester carbine -
The British Army's first general-issue repeating rifle was the .303 cal. "Rifle, Magazine, Lee-Metford", adopted in 1888. (Canada acquired a relative few of these rifles carbines, and I do have a Lee-Metford rifle, albeit not illustrated here.) The .303 cartridge was always intended to be a smokeless round, but development of cordite (Britain's long-time military smokeless propellant) was not yet complete, so the first .303 cartridges were actually loaded with a highly compressed charge of black powder. When the smokeless version of the cartridge was introduced, it was soon found that the shallow, non-angular Metford-design rifling (which was excellent for minimizing the effects of black powder fouling) eroded very rapidly with the much higher-temperature gases generated by cordite. Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield was tasked with coming up with a new rifling design; when, starting in 1896, the new rifling system was substituted in rifles which were otherwise almost identical externally to the then-current Lee-Metford rifle, it was called the "Rifle, Magazine, Lee- Enfield". Canada acquired 40,000 of these rifles in 1896, and began re-arming its Militia with them, to replace the sadly obsolete Snider-Enfield rifles. Many of the earlier Lee-Metford rifles were still on issue in the British Army and with other Empire forces during the Boer War of 1899-1902, and only Canada's troop contingents were armed exclusively with the "state-of-the-art" Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle .... an amazing contrast with the state of their armament just a few years earlier! Here is my Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle, surmounting a period photo of Canadian Mounted Rifles in South Africa during the Boer War, and followed by a shot of me shooting it at a GAF Grand Muster -
As part of the hard-learned lessons of the Boer War (during which British forces came up against well-armed "European" opponents for the first time in over half a century) it was decided that having separate "long" infantry rifles and shorter carbines for other applications (cavalry, artillery, etc.) a single model of shorter rifle should be adopted for universal use. This gave rise to the famous "Rifle, Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield" (S.M.L.E.) adopted in 1903. Having experienced great difficulty in acquiring additional "Long" Lee-Enfield rifles during the Boer War (almost all production being allocated by the War Department to the British Army) and forcing the Canadian authorities to strip units remaining in Canada of their Lee-Enfield rifles, the Canadian Government resolved that it would henceforth insist that its military be armed with a rifle manufactured in Canada. You may have heard that Britain "refused" to allow establishment of a facility in Canada to produce the new S.M.L.E. rifle. That is not entirely correct - in fact, such facilities were established in Australia and pre-partition India/Pakistan. As I read things, the niggardly Canadian government wanted Britain to
pay for such a factory (and its necessary equipment ), which Britain (understandably) declined! Enter Sir Charles Ross offering his unique straight-pull bolt-action rifle design, manufacture of sporting models of which had begun in 1897, with production in Canada beginning in 1903. He convinced the authorities that this design could be readily adapted to a military rifle, chambered in .303 British, and the "rest is history", as they say. The first military configuration (Mark I) of 1903 was really just a limited-production prototype, and many alterations to correct numerous defects resulted in the Mark II Ross (1905). Various deficiencies resulted in a totally re-designed rifle, the Mark III (1910) which became Canada's standard-issue rifle that year. Canadian troops went off to War in 1914 armed with the Ross but, despite its exceptional strength and accuracy, the overly fine mechanical tolerances of the design caused it to fail miserably as a battle rifle in the horrible conditions of trench warfare. (Another design defect allowed a disassembled bolt to be re-assembled incorrectly, so that it would not lock into battery when a cartridge was chambered, although the rifle would still fire, causing a catastrophic blow-back of the bolt, but this has been hugely over-blown, and a "fix" was soon developed and applied to most rifles in service.) At any rate, the Ross was withdrawn from front-line Canadian service in 1916, and replaced by the S.M.L.E. Here is my Mark III Ross rifle -
My collection does continue into the mid-20th Century, and includes this .303 S.M.L.E. rifle (also known, generally, as the No. 1 Mark III), this WWII-production Canadian (Long Branch Arsenal in Ontario) No. 4 Mk I* Lee-Enfield, and an example of the short-lived No. 5 Lee-Enfield (often erroneously called the "Jungle Carbine") -
So .... did I bore you to sleep, or is there any interest in a handgun installment?