Canada's Great War, 1914-1918

by Brian Douglas Tennyson

  It was the same in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, as crowds besieged newspaper offices looking for information all afternoon on the 4th. Their numbers grew in the early evening when people were liberated from their jobs for the day. The crowds became so large that the police gave up trying to direct traffic and turned to crowd control. In Winnipeg, where the Knights of Pythias had gathered for an international convention, local citizens similarly displayed their patriotic enthusiasm, presumably making a keen impression on the American delegates.

  That patriotic enthusiasm was undoubtedly enhanced in Vancouver when Talbot Papineau, a Montreal lawyer and descendent of Louis-Joseph Papineau, the leader of the 1837 uprising in Quebec, assured those attending a meeting of the Associated Canadian Clubs “that there would be as many French Canadians as English Canadians to take up arms in defense of the Empire in this crisis.”[20] Papineau was highly regarded, at least in English Canada, and was often mentioned as a likely future prime minister because he seemed the ideal Québécois: he had an English-speaking (American) mother, had had a largely English-speaking upbringing, was Protestant, had attended McGill University, and went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. This was the kind of French-Canadian leader that English Canadians liked, as opposed to his troublesome cousin, the French Catholic nationalist Henri Bourassa.[21]

  Were Canadians really exhilarated at the prospect of going to war? Appearances can be deceiving. The press reports of excited crowds in the streets were, inevitably, describing events in the larger urban centers, which was not where most Canadians lived. No careful analysis of this phenomenon has been done, but Adrian Gregory, who has examined the situation in Britain, argues that the evidence for “mass enthusiasm” there “is surprisingly weak.” Similarly, Jeffrey Verhey argues that the crowds in German cities were only—for the most part—displaying excitement, “a depth of emotion, an intensity of feeling,” not enthusiasm for war.[22] While the outbreak of war undoubtedly did generate an outpouring of patriotism and excitement at the prospect of great adventure among many Canadians, what evidence we have suggests that this was truer in the larger urban areas than among farmers, fishermen, and other segments of the rural population.

  It was also truer of English Canadians than French Canadians. Although it was true that crowds in Montreal, the country’s largest French city, roamed the streets singing “La Marseillaise” and “Rule Britannia,” these crowds gathered in English areas of the city, not in the French areas, which remained quiet.[23] The reality was that while some French Canadians enthusiastically supported participation in the war, the majority regarded it as a British war requiring Canadian participation at a certain level but certainly not a war that directly involved Canadian interests.

  Similarly, there was little display of enthusiasm among the recently arrived European immigrants, especially those from Germany or Austria-Hungary. There were about 400,000 German-born immigrants in Canada in 1914 and another 125,000 from Austria-Hungary, a significant number in a population of less than 8 million. A few foreign-language newspapers in western Canada were bold enough to express support for their homelands, provoking the Toronto Globe to call for the registration of enemy aliens and rigid curfews, recommending that anyone who disobeyed such regulations should be “court-martialled and shot as a spy.”[24]

  Within days militia colonels were wiring Ottawa offering their units for overseas service. Among these militia regiments was the 79th Cameron Highlanders of Winnipeg, of which the Rev. Charles Gordon was chaplain. Many years later, he frankly reflected on August 1914’s impact on men like him who had long been active in the militia:

  I was proud of my battalion, the smartest and most gorgeously arrayed in all western Canada. I had loved the splendid, historic, romantic glory of the kilted Highlanders, but . . . I was no fighting man, I was a chaplain. Besides, I was within six years of being sixty years of age. For the first time in my life, in spite of the great wars that had shaken the world during my time, I looked the thing in the face.[25]

  That was an honest statement of the reality of 1914 for some men. Gordon’s decision was essentially made for him: when some 300 of the officers and men of his beloved Highlanders who were also members of his congregation volunteered for overseas service, he knew he had to go with them.[26]

  The British government asked Canada to contribute a division—approximately 20,000 men—and the government promptly called for 25,000 volunteers. It did so without seeking the approval of parliament because it was not in session. When it returned on August 18, it met in a special “war session” to approve the government’s actions and to give members the opportunity to declare their full support for the war effort.

  Despite the fact that most Canadians went to war with no realization of the horrors that lay ahead and in the naïve belief that the war would be over by Christmas, this certainly was not the way that Borden presented the situation. This would, he warned, be “the greatest war the world has ever known” and “peril confronts us such as this Empire has not faced for a hundred years.” Canada would, he declared, “stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and the other Dominions in this quarrel,”

  not for love of battle, not for lust of conquest, not for greed of possessions, but for the cause of honor, to maintain solemn pledges, to uphold the principles of liberty, to withstand forces that would convert the world into an armed camp; yes, in the very name of the peace that we sought at any cost save that of dishonor, we have entered into this war.[27]

  Wilfrid Laurier, the seventy-two-year-old former prime minister and, since 1911, leader of the opposition in parliament, despite being appalled that such a disaster should have befallen the civilized world and fearing its divisive impact on Canada, repeated the declaration he had made in 1910 when proposing to build the Canadian navy: “when Britain is at war, Canada is at war, there is no distinction. . . . When the call comes, our answer goes at once, and it goes in the classical language of the British answer to the call of duty, ‘Ready, aye, ready!’”[28] More significantly, Henri Bourassa, the leading spokesman for Quebec’s nationalists, endorsed Canada’s participation in the war on condition that troops would only be raised on a voluntary basis, an assurance that Borden had already made.

  There was no difficulty in recruiting 25,000 men. Men who had been very active in the militia, such as Colonel J. A. Currie, who commanded the 48th Highlanders in Toronto, were usually anxious to go, as were men who had past experience in the Canadian or British armies. Most of them lived in cities or towns or were farmers working land close to population centers because they were the best informed on the situation by the newspapers. But the news quickly filtered out into the remoter districts, and engineers, surveyors, fur trappers, and cowboys headed for the nearest regimental headquarters, hoping they weren’t too late.

  This might seem surprising a century later, but many men had many reasons for wanting to participate in the war. Some, especially recent British immigrants, felt it was their patriotic duty, and they made up two-thirds of the first contingent. Harold Baldwin, for example, who had emigrated from England around 1907 and was farming in Saskatchewan, went “straight from the harvest, a journey of eighty miles on horseback and train, without a coat, with well ventilated overalls, equally well-worn shoes and an unshaven chin,” to enlist in Saskatoon. “Like the rest of the Englishmen in Canada who had answered the call,” he said, “I was determined, if it was humanly possible, to go overseas with the first contingent.”[29]

  Others were not motivated by patriotism exactly but by a belief that if ever there was a just war this was it, because of Germany’s brazen invasion of neutral Belgium and the reports being received—some true, some not—of the atrocities they were committing there. Some saw it as a great adventure and a rare opportunity to escape the boredom of life on a farm or in a small town or just in a tedious job, and not a few joined because they needed a job. When William Lyon Mackenzie King, a former Liberal Cabinet minister, observed the first volunteers m
arching to the train station through downtown Ottawa, he thought that most of them looked “as though they were unemployed and who [sic] had taken the work as an act of despair. They were poor in physique” and “I should think 80% East Londoners or old country failures. . . It was a humiliating spectacle, nothing Canadian about them.”[30] King was prejudiced, of course; he was at heart a pacifist with a profound distrust of jingoism and the military which he retained through his subsequent brilliant career as Canada’s longest-serving prime minister.

  In fact, the physical standards for acceptance in August 1914 were high. Thousands of men were rejected because they were too short or too tall, not healthy enough, or had flat feet or weak eyesight. Harold Baldwin was rejected because he was only 5’4” tall, but he persuaded the doctor examining volunteers to approve him “by telling him, without winking an eye, that I had served with the First Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment in England for four years, which was a battalion of the regular army, and that as they had thought sufficiently well of my stature to sign me up, a Canadian volunteer battalion could not in reason be any more particular than one of the Imperial Army.” It was a lie, as he readily acknowledged, but “I’m not in the least ashamed of it.”[31]

  The government also accepted the offer of Montreal millionaire Hamilton Gault to pay the cost of raising and equipping a battalion. Gault’s family had made its fortune in the textile industry, but his passion was the military. He had long been active in the militia and served with the Canadian Mounted Rifles in the South African War. Now, despite his age (forty-seven) and the fact that he had lost the sight in one eye, he was desperately keen to go to war again.

  Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment, the last privately raised regiment in the British Empire, was recruited almost entirely from British veterans living in Canada and was named in honor of Princess Patricia of Connaught, the daughter of the governor general and granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who was very popular in Ottawa society. Princess Patricia was named colonel-in-chief in 1918 and personally designed the regiment’s badge and colors. Francis Farquhar, an experienced British army officer who was the governor general’s military secretary, was its first commander.

  Not all of the men who volunteered, either in 1914 or later, were men. Some were mere boys who lied about their age because they were so keen to be part of the great adventure. It has been estimated that as many as 20,000 underage soldiers made it to Europe and thousands more tried but never got out of Canada.[32] William Bouchard, Harold Wilson, and Harold Wyld were only three of many “men” who enlisted at the age of sixteen. Underage soldiers were dismissed if identified in Canada. Thus, Arthur Phillips, who was only fifteen when he enlisted, was discharged before going overseas. If they got to England, official policy was to keep them there, working in the Forestry Corps or other units, until they reached eighteen, when they could be transferred into a combat unit. Thus, Wilson and Wyld spent the war in England. So did Harry Scott of Morden, Manitoba, who enlisted at the age of sixteen. Clearly, however, many underage soldiers were not identified, for whatever reason, and saw action. Bouchard served overseas in the 21st Battalion and was killed at Courcelette. Similarly, Edward Forrest, who was seventeen when he enlisted, served in the 78th Battalion and was wounded three times before the end of the war.

  Remarkably, some boys as young as fourteen managed to enlist. One was John Mason of Montreal, who enlisted in the 13th (Black Watch) Battalion and actually served in France and Belgium for thirteen months before being sent home. Clement Taylor, a fifteen-year-old student in Regina, was in action for a week with the 5th Battalion before being wounded, after which he was returned to England and kept there for the duration of the war.

  And not all those who volunteered were even male. The Canadian Army Nursing Corps, part of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, which had only five members in 1914, quickly recruited ninety-five additional trained nurses, who went overseas with the first contingent. By the end of the war more than 3,100 women had served, 2,504 of them overseas. Another 1,200 Canadian women, who were not trained nurses, served as Voluntary Aid Detachment volunteers.

  The man in direct charge of organizing and managing Canada’s military effort was Sam Hughes, the Minister of Militia and Defence. A bombastic, megalomaniacal Anglo-Saxon Protestant imperialist who had been active in the militia all of his adult life and had seen some action in South Africa, Hughes welcomed the outbreak of war in August 1914 as a dream come true. Born in Darlington, Ontario, in 1852, he had become the owner/editor of a small-town newspaper and got himself elected to parliament. When the Conservatives won the 1911 election, he was appointed Minister of Militia and Defense.

  Harold Hartney, who served in the 28th Battalion and the Royal Flying Corps, described Hughes as “the first dictator with whom I ever came in contact. And he was a corker.”[33] “Dictator” is too strong a word, but it is certainly true that Hughes was very much a hands-on minister in control of his department. Possessed of vast energy, he was firm in his opinions, and highly emotional. He was, in fact, unstable—to the point that many thought him actually mad. For years he nursed an obsessive grievance because he was convinced that he deserved the Victoria Cross—the highest honor for exceptional bravery in the British army—for his brief service as a transport officer in South Africa. Indeed, not being a modest man, he thought he merited two of them and spent years badgering the prime minister and governor general on the subject.

  Perhaps as dangerous as his egotism and instability was the fact that Hughes felt only contempt for the permanent force staff, and, presumably because he had not received the VC, he had no use for the senior staff of the British army either. Indeed, even though he was an ardent imperialist, he doesn’t seem to have had much use for the British generally. On August 3, for example, after Germany had invaded Belgium but before the British issued their ultimatum, Hughes jumped to the conclusion that they were trying to find a way out of going to war. He became so infuriated that he ordered the Union Jack that flew over Militia Headquarters in Ottawa to be lowered to half-mast. “By God,” he reputedly bellowed—Hughes frequently bellowed—“England is going to skunk it. Oh, what a shameful state of things. I don’t want to be a Britisher under such conditions.”[34] It took two hours to persuade him that he was being premature and should allow the flag to be raised again.

  When war was declared on the 4th, Hughes was ecstatic and as excited as anyone else in the country. Actually, he was probably more excited than anyone else because he would be in charge of the Canadian army.

  1. Ethel Chadwick diary, August 2, 1914, quoted in Sandra Gwyn, Tapestry of War: A Private View of Canadians in the Great War (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1992), 18.

  2. Stephen Leacock, Canada: The Foundations of its Future (Montreal, 1951), 222.

  3. Charles W. Gordon, Postscript to Adventure: The Autobiography of Ralph Connor (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1938), 202–03.

  4. Quoted in Mark Zuehlke, Brave Battalion: The Remarkable Saga of the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) in the First World War (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons Canada, 2008), 1.

  5. Stephen Leacock, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (New York: John Lane Company, 1912), xii.

  6. Bridgewater Bulletin, June 30, 1914.

  7. Leacock, Canada, 222.

  8. Gordon, 202–03.

  9. He was in fact the last British governor general of Canada. He was succeeded in 1951 by Vincent Massey, a member of the wealthy family that manufactured agricultural equipment. Those who objected to this severance of one more British connection could perhaps take some solace in the knowledge that Massey had the reputation of being more cultured and British in his lifestyle and manners than even the most eminent British aristocrats.

  10. Tim Cook, Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918 (Toronto: Viking, 2008), 23.

  11. Quoted in Ralph Allen, Ordeal by Fire: Canada 1910–1945 (Toronto, 1961), 64.

  12. Gwyn, 9.

 
13. For a brilliant and challenging new interpretation of Russia’s role in the outbreak of the war and its war aims, see Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011.

  14. Quoted in Jonathan F. Vance, Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain, and Two World Wars (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2012), 39.

  15. Quoted in Vance, Maple Leaf, 39.

  16. Montreal Daily Star, August 4, 1914, quoted in Zuehlke, 3.

  17. Quoted in Robert Craig Brown, Robert Laird Borden: A Biography. Vol. 1 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975), 261.

  18. Quoted in Brown, 262.

  19. C. P. Stacey, Canada and the Age of Conflict. Vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 175.

  20. Quoted in Desmond Morton and J. L. Granatstein. Marching to Armageddon: Canadians and the Great War, 1914–1919 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989), 6.

  21. It was not to be. Papineau was killed on October 30, 1917, at Passchendaele in the Battle of the Somme.