PROFESSOR WILLIAM WICKEN War broke out in early August, 1914.
There was a rush on the armories in order for men to join and enlist.
25,000 men joined across the country very instantly.
PROFESSOR MARCEL MARTEL The attitude was "Good! Let's go and fight!"
Everybody believed that it would be
short war and basically as soon as they reached Britain,
let's say by November, well probably the war would be over and then it will be time to come back.
PROFESSOR WILLIAM WICKEN This was a sort of a profound moment
in Canadian history where you have just an on-rush of enthusiasm among
individuals
to join this Canadian Expeditionary Force and so, as a result, many men are
turned away.
Initially, that expeditionary force which was about 30,000 men.
They're first deployed in England, they're trained there by British officers, they're
under British command but they're not deployed into France until
1915 and they don't actively come into combat
until the second battle of Ypres in April of 1915.
The first use of mustard gas, poisonous gas by the German
military - 6,000 out of about 30,000 men are
casualties. It becomes clear to the
Canadian public as well as Canadian politicians as well as Canadian
military officers how dreadful, how horrific,
how long, this war will be. This is not the normal
type of war which men had been conducted in the past and at that point it becomes
necessary to enlist
more men to volunteer for the war.
PROFESSOR JENNIFER STEPHEN
One of the first things started to happen was that the enlistment standards
were lowered
and in August of 1914 you had to be five-foot-eight
to get into the CEF and by November of 1914
the height requirement was lowered to five-foot-three and
the enlistment standards will continue to lower. They'd taking
older men, less fit men and so on - anything to see the the gaping maw
of the war machine. PROFESSOR WILLIAM JENKINS
Toronto was a very
British city when war broke out on that was a general interest amongst
young, eligible men in the city to enlist. The Orange Order
were at the forefront of promoting enlistment. The Orange Order were
originally born in Ireland. They were
a pan-Protestant fraternity.
They believed
in the Crown; they believed in the Empire; they believed in the monarch;
they believed in a vision of an English-speaking Dominion.
An early issue out the Order's newspaper The Sentinel, for instance, had
emblazoned upon it "Orangemen! Enlist!" and if you
examine reports in the Sentinel newspaper for the weeks and months after
August 1914 you'll see that they ranks of these are largely being depleted because
more and more of their members were signing up.
PROFESSOR WILLIAM WICKEN You have to understand the context, the time
of 1914. Life in the military offered a secure
employment as well as the pay was very good - a dollar
and 10 cents per day. That was the pay, but also just the sense of adventure.
The opportunity to go to England, the opportunity to go to France
and to maintain and to defend
this idea of the British liberal democratic institutions.
PROFESSOR CRAIG HERON Large numbers of workers didn't want to sign up.
Out in the countryside farmers were more skeptical. They didn't want to lose their
sons
and they were quite concerned about the fact that there was a new demand for
their products but who was going to actually bring the crops in
and, in effect, their sons were taken away from them. This would be a problem
that had to be negotiated with the legislation came in. But there were also
radicals in Canada who thought that this whole war effort was completely wrong
and that when you actually started to conscript people, you were moving along
towards a
very authoritarian model that was completely inappropriate.
And the left in Canada really opposed conscription,
particularly in British Columbia. One of the loudest and most critical leaders
was a socialist by the name of
Ginger Goodwin and he decided to escape conscription
and was chased and shot and killed and the reaction was huge.
Workers in Vancouver shut down for a day in protest against this and there was a
great wave...an enormous funeral was held for him - The Great Wave of Protests
that ran through the province.
PROFESSOR MARCEL MARTEL When you compare to number French Canadians who enlisted with
other Canadians it's true that French Canadians
were quite reluctant to enlist but there are a series of reasons for that.
The army as an institution did not do much in terms of helping French Canadians to
feel like it
was their war. The army was still an English-speaking institution
and this is quite, you know, quite insulting when you're being told
well, you're supposed to fight you for the king, you're supposed to fight for,
you know,
for your ancestors... Well, guess what? My ancestors when they came here,
they spoke a language called French. These were aspects that
made it quite difficult for some. And what we know now
is among all the Canadians who enlisted
the vast majority were recent immigrants.
The great majority the first people signed up had British accents.
60 per cent of the men who went to the first contingent were
born in either Britain or Ireland. Those regardless of their language - French or English -
those who had been in this country for more than a generation
they were reluctant to enlist because, well, the Empire did not have the same
meaning. Many French Canadians said "I prefer to work in a factory because, well,
working in a factory it's as valuable as fighting for country".
PROFESSOR JENNIFER STEPHEN
During the war on the home front there was growing concern
about young women who seemed to be cavorting far too much with the young men
in uniform
and also, more seriously, with the rising rates of venereal disease infection.
When men were diagnosed with venereal disease infection,
he was required to identify the woman who had transmitted the disease to him.
She then became the target subject to compulsory medical examination and if
found to be infected with the venereal disease
was subject to incarceration,
compulsory treatment and detention for an indeterminate period of time.