The Mainguy Report 70 years on - Fact versus Fiction
NAC's eminent historian Dr. Richard Gimblett, MSC, CD, takes a fresh look at a series of mutinous incidents that hit the RCN seventy years ago. The Mainguy report examined these incidents, and its findings, recommendations and conclusions remain a potent legacy.
The year 1949 is remembered as the one of crisis and reform in the Royal Canadian Navy. Dr. Gimblett argues that despite the universal truths in The Mainguy Report, the legacy is not all it is presented to be. The claims ascribed to The Mainguy Report, and by extension to the year 1949, and just about everything else we supposedly “know” of the mutinies in the RCN in that year – except for the facts of their occurrence – are mistaken.
Join us for an interesting look back into our collective past.
Dr Richard Gimblett, MSC, CD, RCN (ret’d), holds history degrees from the Royal Military College of Canada (BA 1979), Trent (MA 1981) and Laval (PhD 2000). As a surface warfare officer in the Canadian Navy (1975-2001) he served in ships of various classes on both coasts, notably as Combat Officer in HMCS Protecteur for the Gulf War of 1990-91, and held staff appointments ashore including co-authoring the official history of the Canadian Forces in the Persian Gulf War (Dundurn 1997) and responsibility for developing the Navy’s strategic plan Leadmark 2020 (DND 2001).
He recently retired as Command Historian for the Royal Canadian Navy (2006-2018), remains an Adjunct Professor of History at Queen’s University Kingston, and is President of the Canadian Nautical Research Society (www.cnrs-srcn.org).
His published works have revised interpretations of the origins of the RCN, the naval mutinies of 1949, the nature of command in the RCN, and Canadian naval operations in the Gulf region. He is a principle author of The Seabound Coast: The Official History of the RCN, Volume I, 1867-1939 (Dundurn 2010) and contributing editor of a trio of volumes for the Navy’s Centennial: The Naval Service of Canada; Citizen Sailors (with Michael Hadley); and From Empire to In(ter)dependence: The Canadian Navy and the Commonwealth Experience, 1910-2010 (The Northern Mariner XXIV: 3 & 4, Summer & Fall 2014).
