At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the guns on the Western Front fell silent under the armistice. Canadians celebrated in the streets, but the peace that followed was anything but calm. A deadly flu was already sweeping the country. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were coming home looking for jobs in an economy shifting away from war production, while prices kept rising. Workers, many of them veterans, demanded better wages and the right to bargain together; governments and business leaders, frightened by the Russian Revolution of 1917, saw revolution behind every strike. Meanwhile, in Paris, Canada's prime minister was fighting for a seat at the peace table. The years 1918 and 1919 show how a war can change a country long after the shooting stops.
Canada at the Paris Peace Conference
The Paris Peace Conference opened in January 1919. Britain at first expected to speak for the whole Empire, but Robert Borden insisted that Canada had earned its own voice through the sacrifice of its soldiers. Canada and the other dominions won separate seats (while also taking part in the British Empire delegation), and on June 28, 1919, Canadian ministers Charles Doherty and Arthur Sifton signed the Treaty of Versailles on Canada's behalf. Their names appeared indented under the British Empire, a sign that Canada's status was still in between colony and independent country. Parliament then debated and approved the treaty, another first.
| Part of the peace settlement | What it did | Meaning for Canada |
|---|---|---|
| Treaty of Versailles terms | Germany accepted responsibility for the war (the "war guilt" clause), lost territory and all its colonies, had its army limited to 100,000 men, and was to pay reparations | Canada had a voice but little influence on the terms; the treaty's harshness later fed German resentment (see the next unit's lesson on the road to the Second World War) |
| Separate signing | Canada's own delegates signed the treaty | An important early step on the path to control over foreign policy |
| League of Nations | An international organization, begun in January 1920, meant to settle disputes peacefully through collective security | Canada joined as a founding member in its own right, but Canadian delegates tried to weaken Article 10, which could have committed members to defend one another by force |
The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic
The so-called Spanish flu reached Canada in 1918, carried in part by returning soldiers and spread by troop trains and crowded cities. It came in waves, and the second wave, in the fall of 1918, was the deadliest. Unusually, it killed many healthy young adults between about 20 and 40. Provinces and cities closed schools, theatres and churches, banned public gatherings and, in some places, required masks. About 55,000 Canadians died between 1918 and 1920 (estimates usually range from 50,000 to 55,000), close to the number killed in the war itself. The disaster helped convince Ottawa to create a federal Department of Health in 1919.
Veterans, prices and labour unrest
- Veterans returned to find few jobs, small pensions and rising prices. The Great War Veterans' Association (founded in 1917) lobbied for better treatment, and the Soldier Settlement Board lent veterans money for farms, often on poor land and sometimes on land taken from First Nations reserves.
- Prices: the cost of living had risen by well over half since the start of the war (estimates range from about 50 to 75 per cent) while many wages lagged, so workers who had accepted sacrifices during the war now wanted a fair share.
- Unions grew quickly. In March 1919 western labour leaders meeting in Calgary called for a single industrial union of all workers, leading to the One Big Union.
- Fear of revolution: after the Russian Revolution, many business owners and politicians saw union demands as the first step toward a Bolshevik takeover, a fear often aimed at immigrant workers.
The Winnipeg General Strike, May 15–June 26, 1919
When Winnipeg's building and metal trades employers refused to bargain with their workers' unions over wages, the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council called a general strike. On May 15, 1919, more than 30,000 workers, union and non-union alike, walked off the job: factory workers, telephone operators, streetcar crews, firefighters, postal workers and more. The city police voted to support the strike but stayed on duty at the Strike Committee's request, and were later fired. The Strike Committee allowed essential services such as milk and bread delivery to continue. Opponents formed the Citizens' Committee of One Thousand, which claimed the strike was a revolutionary plot. The federal government, fearing the strike would spread (sympathy strikes broke out from Vancouver to Amherst, Nova Scotia), changed the Immigration Act so that even British-born immigrants could be deported for sedition. On June 17, strike leaders were arrested.
On Saturday, June 21, strikers and supporters gathered for a silent parade in protest. Royal North-West Mounted Police charged the crowd, firing into it; two men were killed and about 30 people were injured, and soldiers patrolled the streets. This became known as Bloody Saturday. The strike committee called off the strike on June 25, and workers went back on June 26. Several leaders were convicted, and Parliament added Section 98 to the Criminal Code, which made it a crime to belong to an organization deemed to advocate force to bring about change.
- Workers won neither union recognition nor collective bargaining.
- Leaders were jailed; some strikers lost their jobs.
- Tough new laws (Section 98, deportation powers) were aimed at radicals and immigrants.
- Workers turned to politics: several strike leaders were elected to the Manitoba legislature in 1920, and J. S. Woodsworth, briefly arrested during the strike, was elected to Parliament in 1921.
- Woodsworth later helped found the CCF (see the next unit), a forerunner of today's NDP.
- The right to collective bargaining was finally recognized nationally in 1944.