Read Online Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 by Gwynne Dyer - Free Book Online
Authors: Gwynne Dyer
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the way the mothers and the wives tried to clasp their hands as they went, as the train drew out very slowly, and this lament going on in the background: “Will ye no’ come back again?”
Naomi Radford, Edmonton
The most extreme case was Alberta, which had been settled almost entirely during the preceding fifteen years. In the first year of the war Alberta contributed 22,325 men to the Canadian army (in addition to 5,600 British, French and Belgian reservists who went back to fight for the Old Country in its own army), out of a total population of less than half a million. From the Edmonton city area alone, seven thousand men enlisted, and the little town of Strathmore, east of Calgary, gained the distinction of being the most patriotic town in Canada. There,
every
eligible man joined the army in the fall of 1914, except one—and he went as soon as the harvest was over. But then Strathmore had only been settled nine years before, and most of the settlers were from Britain.
I remember the start of it. I remember when they assassinated the Archduke. And I remember all the boys around, you know, joining up—the older ones.
There were an awful lot of people from the town went.… My people were all very patriotic about the whole thing, and that. But I don’t think anyone expected it to go on as long as it did. I think, you know, in those days people thought the British Empire was pretty well invincible.
Serres Sadler, Strathmore, Alberta (too young for the First World War, so he went next time)
There was, in fact, a fairly consistent pattern in the rate of volunteering in Canada, a curve sloping down from west to east. The longer a region had been settled, the more aware people were of their own separate identity and interests as Canadians, and the less they tended to see Britain’s war as their own (however many flags they waved). The split between immigrants and native-born was very noticeable in a town like Paris, Ontario, where just about half the population was Canadian-born, while the remainder were English immigrants attracted by the booming textile industry there. By mid-1915 the English-born in the town were openly accusing the Canadian-born of being “slackers.” One person wrote to the local paper:
In the present great war for the freedom of our beloved Empire, it behooves us in Canada to spring up from this drowsy slumbering attitude that the Canadian born are assuming towards our Motherland.… What is our little town of Paris doing in its share to win from the uncivilized, barbarous Hun? They, if we are beaten in this war, would come over from the United States and Germany in their millions, to take everything over from a pin to our federal government.
If the Germans are victorious, the very first thing they would do would be to take over Canada.… They would fill every city,town and village, and hold drunken, debauching orgies, in celebrating their victory, and our women and children would be the victims of these drunken, barbarous wretches.
Every minister of the church, every woman and girl, should do all they can to encourage all young men who have any grit in them to put on the King’s uniform.…
At the Forks of the Grand
, vol. 2
The clergymen of the Paris Ministerial Association did their best, organizing a great public rally as part of an approach that became known as “coercive recruiting”: coercion by public opinion. The drums banged, the buglers played, and the speech makers orated, but only twenty-eight more recruits marched up to the platform “as though at a revival meeting,” to be sent off with the usual “crisp 10-dollar bill” and a parcel of comforts from the Ladies’ Patriotic League.
Further east in the Maritimes, where there were virtually no recent English immigrants, recruiting was even harder.
Must we say hereafter with bated breath that this is the city and Province of the Loyalist? Must we say at this momentous period, fraught with the gravest
Naomi Radford, Edmonton
The most extreme case was Alberta, which had been settled almost entirely during the preceding fifteen years. In the first year of the war Alberta contributed 22,325 men to the Canadian army (in addition to 5,600 British, French and Belgian reservists who went back to fight for the Old Country in its own army), out of a total population of less than half a million. From the Edmonton city area alone, seven thousand men enlisted, and the little town of Strathmore, east of Calgary, gained the distinction of being the most patriotic town in Canada. There,
every
eligible man joined the army in the fall of 1914, except one—and he went as soon as the harvest was over. But then Strathmore had only been settled nine years before, and most of the settlers were from Britain.
I remember the start of it. I remember when they assassinated the Archduke. And I remember all the boys around, you know, joining up—the older ones.
There were an awful lot of people from the town went.… My people were all very patriotic about the whole thing, and that. But I don’t think anyone expected it to go on as long as it did. I think, you know, in those days people thought the British Empire was pretty well invincible.
Serres Sadler, Strathmore, Alberta (too young for the First World War, so he went next time)
There was, in fact, a fairly consistent pattern in the rate of volunteering in Canada, a curve sloping down from west to east. The longer a region had been settled, the more aware people were of their own separate identity and interests as Canadians, and the less they tended to see Britain’s war as their own (however many flags they waved). The split between immigrants and native-born was very noticeable in a town like Paris, Ontario, where just about half the population was Canadian-born, while the remainder were English immigrants attracted by the booming textile industry there. By mid-1915 the English-born in the town were openly accusing the Canadian-born of being “slackers.” One person wrote to the local paper:
In the present great war for the freedom of our beloved Empire, it behooves us in Canada to spring up from this drowsy slumbering attitude that the Canadian born are assuming towards our Motherland.… What is our little town of Paris doing in its share to win from the uncivilized, barbarous Hun? They, if we are beaten in this war, would come over from the United States and Germany in their millions, to take everything over from a pin to our federal government.
If the Germans are victorious, the very first thing they would do would be to take over Canada.… They would fill every city,town and village, and hold drunken, debauching orgies, in celebrating their victory, and our women and children would be the victims of these drunken, barbarous wretches.
Every minister of the church, every woman and girl, should do all they can to encourage all young men who have any grit in them to put on the King’s uniform.…
At the Forks of the Grand
, vol. 2
The clergymen of the Paris Ministerial Association did their best, organizing a great public rally as part of an approach that became known as “coercive recruiting”: coercion by public opinion. The drums banged, the buglers played, and the speech makers orated, but only twenty-eight more recruits marched up to the platform “as though at a revival meeting,” to be sent off with the usual “crisp 10-dollar bill” and a parcel of comforts from the Ladies’ Patriotic League.
Further east in the Maritimes, where there were virtually no recent English immigrants, recruiting was even harder.
Must we say hereafter with bated breath that this is the city and Province of the Loyalist? Must we say at this momentous period, fraught with the gravest
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