There is a lot of conflicting info out there.
For example. The site wwiivehicles lists the Valentine tank as a British Design and it says that 9,500 were produced in Britain.
This is not entirely correct. The Chassis for Valentine was early Canadian Experiment in chassis design which was later given to the US who adapted it into the Stuart and Sherman Chassis. It was also the basis for many of Carden/Vickers early designs as well. The first prototypes were from Windsor Ontario in the late 1920s and ultimately formed the main chassis for the Canadian Military Pattern(CMP) Armoured Troop Carriers and Utility Carries (aka Bren Carriers).
Ultimately Canadian Manufacturers produced 12,000 Valentine tanks in various configurations. Most of them having the early pattern 75mm rifled long barrel gun. they featured 60mm of 68˚ front armour and 60mm all round, 65mm on the turret. They featured a 6 cylinder diesel engine capable of pulling the beast along at 50km/hr on roads. With a reported range of 200km. Nice tank, and certainly capable of facing down any axis tank until mid war.
However, even more interesting, is that the site makes no mention of the Valiant Tank. Another early war Canadian designed, this time based of Crusader chassis. A15. Starting in 1936 CMP designed a crusader chassis with essentially a Valentine Turret. It also featured the 75mm long rifled gun, since this was CMP by this time. Again, they replaced the gas engine with Windsor Diesel (ford) creating very similar performance to the Valentine. Canadian authorities really liked the track performance of the Valiant over the Valentine and ultimately produced 25,000 of them The vast majority being sent to British forces in North Africa up to 1943 and then the remainder were sold to Russia. Almost none saw service with Canadian troops as the 1,200 that were shipped to Britain to supply the Canadian Armour units there were left in Britain when it was Decided to replace British Armour in Italy and Sicily with the Canadian Units. However, the British equipment as already on it's way, so Canadian soldiers had to switch to British equipment.
Performance wise it was almost the same as the Valentine, 60mm armour all round, 65 on the turret and 75mm CMP gun for the 1200 and 2pdr for the British version. For the sale to Russian I believe they were sent without guns because the Russians had their own ideas.
by 1945 there were 1.3 million Canadian soldiers in Europe, not 730,000. That's from the Canadian War Museum when I visited some years ago and should be very easy to check. In Europe, Canada committed the 3rd largest army in the conflict, behind only Russian and Germany. The US contributed more soldiers, but at no point did the US have as many soldiers in the field as did Canada. Over 250,000 Canadians served with US Units in Europe, and nearly as many in the Pacific Theatre. Many of the Canadian soldiers, some 300,000 left Canada in 1932 and did not return home until 1948.
There were many other Canadian tanks, including the Archer, the first self propelled Artillery gun. Perhaps one of the most interesting contributions to armour during the war was the incredible and bizarre range of scout vehicles. I think the most interesting one is the two man ferret, developed rather late in the war, this was a tiny little scout car, about the size of an Austin mini, featuring four HUGE tires and a raised cupola instead of a turret. It had only a single bow mounted machine gun and just enough room instead for a mark 19 radio and 2 men, a driver and a commander. The commander could pop his hatch and use his binoculars to survey, then pop back in quickly to radio in, or move. The early ferret evolved from the earlier lynx and evolved into the post war Ferret design that was sold to the British and produced under license in Canada, in Winnipeg this time.
www.canadiansoldiers.com has a lot of good info on Canadian Variations and vehicles and equipment. Not complete and not thorough but pretty accurate.
Unfortunately the Canadian Armoury Site LongBranch.ca has been taken down and is moving to the Canadian War Museum. Though from my talks with them, they are NOT going to put up the ballistic data or the complete lists of weapons and specs that Long Branch used to have before the Devil took power here. May he burn in hell.
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