Australia imported vast quantities of 37 Pattern webbing during World War II from Canada and many of these items remained in inventory for decades afterwards, supplementing locally produced items. Some of these items were modified based on operational experience and today we are looking at a Canadian made water bottle carrier that was updated in the post war period:

From the front the change is not visible, turn it round however and it can be seen that a webbing square with C-hooks has been sewn onto the back:

The change to the carrier was clearly influenced by the Australian made carriers that had been introduced late in the war that we covered many years ago in this post. The c-hooks allowed the bottle to be carried on a belt, without the rest of the webbing set. Whilst the Australian examples had been purpose made with the belt hooks on a wider central band of webbing, the post war modifications to the Canadian examples had a square panel of webbing sewn on where the two straps crossed over:

One interesting feature of the original Canadian carrier is that the metal tip to the securing strap is secured with a black open rivet, rather than the usual brass:

The carrier has two sets of stamps, the original Canadian stamp:

And a stamp in a rectangle showing where it had been updated:

These carriers were used for many years, even after the introduction of M56 webbing, for training battalions and cadet units. It is very hard to spot these carriers in photographs though, because they were often worn in the usual manner from the brace ends rather than on the belt and so look just like the standard carriers. Here they can be seen being worn during a training exercise in Australia during the 1960s: