First World War

When on 4 August 1914 Britain's ultimatum to Germany expired, Canada found itself at war with Germany. Newspapers had told Canadians of the crisis, and the country appeared unusually united. From the opposition, Sir Wilfrid Laurier spoke for all: in Britain's hour of danger, Canada's loyal answer was ‘Ready, Aye Ready’. Everywhere, men lined up to enlist.

Canadians were better prepared than they knew. Defence spending had grown sixfold since 1897 , and 60,000 militiamen had drilled in 1913 . Pre-war plans safeguarded ports, canals, and bridges from surprise attack. Urged by an opposition member to ‘omit no power that the Government may need’, an emergency session of Parliament adopted a War Measures Act that met the test. The minister of militia, Col Sam Hughes , scrapped an existing mobilization plan, summoned volunteers to Valcartier, near Quebec City, and appeared in full uniform to sort out the confusion. Canadians marvelled when a convoy left for England on 2 October with 32,000 volunteers.

Most expected a voluntary effort for a short war. A Canadian Patriotic Fund collected donations for soldiers' families. A Military Hospitals Commission created facilities for sick and wounded veterans. By 1917 , militia regiments and patriotic civilians had recruited half a million volunteers. Churches, the Red Cross, and women's organizations ‘did their bit’, from buying machineguns to distributing white feathers to civilian men. Patriots ended the teaching of German in schools and universities, pressed the city of Berlin, Ontario, to rename itself Kitchener, and forced Ottawa to intern 7,000 mostly harmless ‘enemy aliens’.

The war proved longer and harsher than anyone anticipated. In 1915 , Hughes's department swallowed up more than the entire government spent in 1913 . To keep the bankrupt Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern railways operating, secret subsidies matched military costs. Sir Thomas White , the finance minister, broke tradition and borrowed in New York. In desperation, he asked Canadians for $50 million. They loaned $100 million; additional loans were also oversubscribed. In 1917 , humbler citizens produced $400 million in Victory Loans, $600 million in 1918 . Federal revenue grew from $126 million in 1914 to $233.7 million in 1918 but the national debt soared from $434 million to $2.5 billion. The war to end all wars would be financed by posterity.

Wartime exports of wheat, timber, and Canadian-made munitions helped lift a pre-war depression. A Canadian shell committee won $170 million in orders. Slow delivery persuaded the British to create an Imperial Munitions Board in Canada. Its manager, Joseph Flavelle , made the IMB Canada's biggest business, with 250,000 workers (40,000 of them women) and turnover of $2 million a day. IMB factories and contractors produced ships, aircraft, chemicals, and explosives as well as shells. Food production was just as important. Ideal conditions produced an unprecedented 15 million bushels of wheat in 1915 . Yields fell in later years, but prices soared.

Too late, farmers, industrialists, and governments recognized that manpower was a critical resource in wartime. By 1915 the prime minister, Sir Robert Borden , had approved a Canadian Expeditionary Force of 50,000 men. By summer, his target was 150,000. A transatlantic visit shocked Borden with the casual nature of British wartime leadership. To set an example of earnestness, he ignored both his military adviser, Maj.-Gen. W. G. Gwatkin , and Quebec nationalist Henri Bourassa and raised Canada's commitment to 250,000 men. On January 1, 1916, he again doubled it.

Initially, recruiting seemed easy. When peacetime militia regiments were exhausted, businessmen and politicians raised battalions. Civic pride, sporting links, and Highland regalia drew recruits. Clergy preached patriotism. Women wore badges inviting men to ‘Knit or Fight’. British ancestry, social pressure, and traditional schooling in duty and patriotism persuaded almost a quarter of all Canadian men to enlist. Half of them were rejected as unfit. In Quebec, recruiting pressures were feeble. Militia traditions were weak and France's Third Republic repelled devout Catholics. Borden's nationaliste colleagues loyally backed the war, but they had won in 1911 by passionately opposing imperial adventures. Ontario refused to end its assault on French-language schools, and nativists persuaded western provinces to end minority education rights. French Canada's real enemies, claimed Bourassa, were not Germans, but their fellow Canadians. Only in 1917 did Ottawa organize Quebec recruiting, under Dr Arthur Mignault , a patent medicine manufacturer.

Sam Hughes's recruiting methods sent hundreds of battalions to Britain only to be broken up to maintain the 48 infantry battalions ultimately needed for the Canadian Corps. He also encouraged three rival Canadian officers to claim the minister's full authority. Chaos in England led, in September 1916 , to creation of a ministry in London to manage Canada's overseas forces, a statement that the CEF was part of a Canadian army, and dismissal of Sir Sam Hughes.

Canadian soldiers learned their job in the trenches and in battles made more dangerous by untrained officers and a faulty rifle. The German gas attack at Ypres in April 1915 cost 6,035 dead, wounded, and captured. At St-Eloi, Mont-Sorrel, and in the Somme offensives Canadian divisions suffered from inexperience and poor tactics. Survivors learned that precise staff work, careful preparation, and discipline won battles and saved lives. The proof came at Easter 1917 . After weeks of stockpiling, tunnelling, improved tactics, and rehearsals, Sir Julian Byng sent the four divisions of the Canadian Corps to capture Vimy Ridge. Five days of fighting brought the Allies their first unequivocal victory on the Western Front.

Byng was British but his winning ways were inherited weeks later by his Canadian successor. Sir Arthur Currie was a pear-shaped, pre-war Victoria real estate speculator. He had evolved into a cool, methodical soldier, open to innovation. That summer, instead of the attack on Lens demanded by his British superiors, Currie captured nearby Hill 70. When the Germans tried to retake the position, Currie's artillery destroyed them. Canadian control of its overseas forces added to Currie's authority. By 1918 , the British retained little more than tactical authority over Canadian units in France. In practical terms, the war transformed Canada from a colony into a junior ally.

Pre-war Conservative opposition to a Canadian navy had left the infant service with hired trawlers barely able to protect the coasts against German U-boats. Borden also resisted forming a Canadian air force until the last days of the war, but many Canadians joined the British services. By war's end, a quarter of the Royal Air Force's pilots were Canadians. Two Canadians, Maj. William Avery Bishop and Maj. Raymond Collishaw , ranked third and fifth among wartime air aces.

Capturing Vimy Ridge cost Canada 10,604 dead and wounded. Completing the British offensive at Passchendaele in October 1917 cost 15,654 more. Keeping each of four Canadian divisions in action absorbed 20,000 new soldiers a year. Recruiting leagues warned that only conscription would produce them. English Canadians blamed Quebec. The government attempted voluntary national registration to identify potential recruits. Almost no eligible registrant volunteered. At the end of 1916 , David Lloyd George took power in Britain and summoned the dominion premiers. ‘We want more men from them’, he explained. The price was consultation. In London, Borden learned that Russia was collapsing, France's army was close to mutiny, and U-boats threatened Britain with starvation. Americans had joined the war but needed years to build an army. Meanwhile, wounded men had to return to the trenches and losses at Vimy might force Canada to cut its field army.

Borden knew that conscription was unpopular. He also saw no alternative that kept faith with Canada's soldiers and allies. On 18 May 1917 , he announced selective conscription for service overseas. The conscription crisis would become one of the most bitterly divisive episodes in Canadian history. Once exemptions were cancelled, the Military Service Act found close to the 100,000 single men, 20 to 24, needed to sustain Canada's war-fighting capacity into 1919 . A Union government, created by Borden to support conscription, adopted measures made possible by wartime mobilization: railway nationalization, civil service reform, votes for women, and national prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

The last year of the war was bitter. Strains from conscription were aggravated by soaring inflation, food and fuel shortages, municipal strikes, anti-foreign riots, and the tragic aftermath of the Halifax Explosion. Government responded with new regulations, a mild but potentially significant Income War Tax and an Anti-Loafing Law intended to force all to make themselves useful. A second National Registration included women. For the first time, the government ordered its police forces to hunt for sedition.

In France, German armies, released by Russia's collapse, attacked on 8 March . Britain's Fifth Army collapsed. More offensives followed, forcing Allied armies back. Defeat seemed possible, though Canada's army corps was untouched. At their second conference, dominion premiers predicted a war lasting into 1920 . Then, quite suddenly, the war rushed to a conclusion. On 8 August 1918 Canadian and Australian divisions broke the German line near Amiens. Tanks, aircraft, and infantry worked together. On the 11th, Currie insisted on switching fronts. A month later, Canadians broke the Drocourt-Quéant line and on 26 September the Corps crossed the Canal du Nord, taking Cambrai on 11 October . The cost was 30,802 dead and wounded. On 1 November Canadians captured Valenciennes, a key point of a new German line. By 11 November Canadians had reached Mons. There, at 11 A.M., the war ended.

The war cost Canada 60,661 dead; many more returned mutilated in mind or body. Canadians had become a deeply divided people who had inherited a staggering debt, but they had changed from colonials to allies.

Desmond Morton