Twenty-five years later, however, on September 3, 1939, at 11 a.m., the British ultimatum to Germany expired, and the British Empire went to war again. Again the entire Empire went to war, but this time the Dominions, which included Canada, were excluded. They were free to decide for themselves. (2) And this the Dominions did. The Irish Free State decided to become neutral, whereas Australia and New Zealand entered the war immediately. The other two Dominion countries waited until their Parliaments were called, and Canada declared war on September 10. (3)
What had transpired in the twenty-five years between the two declarations was the passage of The Statute of Westminster in 1931, which was the first stage in the transformation from the British Empire to the Commonwealth of Nations. The Act removed whatever vestiges of power the UK Parliament still had over Canada. It was Canada's "Declaration of Independence."
As in the American story, however, Canada's "Declaration of Independence" did not come easily. From 1867 until 1931, each law passed by the Canadian Parliament had to be formally approved by the British Parliament, and technically, although this was rarely done, any could be vetoed. In addition, this independence only applied to select domestic policies - the British Empire retained control of all foreign and military policy pertaining to Canada. One example of this was the border dispute between Canada and the United States over the border of Alaska in the 1890s. Britain decided to grant the US almost all of what it wanted, without much heeding the concerns of Canada.
This all changed after the First World War. During the First World War, many heroic services were provided by Canadian troops, especially at the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917. At the Versailles Treaty Conference, the Canadians were separate participants, and after the war, an ambitious politician, William Mackenzie King, became Prime Minister.
One of King's major goals was virtual independence of Canada from the British Empire. His first major act in this direction was his refusal to Lloyd George's request for help during the Chanak crisis of 1922. (4) The second was the negotiating of a separate fisheries treaty with America without Britain -- a technical violation of the Dominions Act, but the British Government at the time mostly looked the other way.
Unlike America, King and the Canadians did not have to really struggle that much to get their independence after the First World War. De-facto independence had been theirs for a while; now formal independence was largely handed to them by a British Government, desperate to keep them in the Empire, if only in name. In 1926, Michael Balfour, the Colonial and Dominions Secretary in the second Baldwin Government, devised a mechanism -- the Commonwealth of Nations, that did just that. He redefined Great Britain and the Dominions as
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