The war was fought in Europe, but it reshaped daily life in every Canadian town. Factories that had made farm machinery turned out artillery shells. Women took jobs that had been closed to them. Families bought Victory Bonds, saved fuel and food, and waited for casualty lists in the newspaper. At the same time, the war brought fear and division: thousands of immigrants were locked in internment camps, the government took powers no peacetime government had held, and conscription pitted English Canada against French Canada so bitterly that the scars lasted for generations. This is total war: a conflict in which a whole society, not just its army, is mobilized.
A war economy
After a slump in 1913–1914, war orders created a boom. The Imperial Munitions Board, set up in 1915 under Toronto businessman Joseph Flavelle, ran hundreds of factories making shells, ships and airplanes for Britain. Farmers expanded wheat acreage to feed the Allies, and prices for wheat soared. But prices of food, fuel and rent rose much faster than most wages, and stories of profiteering (companies making huge profits from war contracts) angered workers and soldiers' families.
| How the war was paid for | What it was | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| Borrowing from Canadians | Victory Bonds (Victory Loans) from 1917: citizens lent money to the government in return for interest | Raised huge sums and gave ordinary people a stake in the war effort |
| Business Profits War Tax (1916) | A tax on business profits above a set level | Responded to anger about profiteering |
| Income War Tax Act (September 20, 1917) | Canada's first federal income tax, presented as a temporary wartime measure: 4 per cent on incomes above 1,500 dollars for single people and 3,000 dollars for families | Few workers earned enough to pay at first, but the tax was never removed and became a permanent part of Canadian life |
- Women at work: an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 women worked in munitions factories, often in dangerous conditions, and thousands more took jobs in offices, banks, transportation and on farms. They were usually paid less than men and most were expected to leave when men returned.
- Volunteers at home: women's groups and families knitted socks, packed parcels, raised money for the Red Cross and the Canadian Patriotic Fund, and supported soldiers' families.
- Conservation: the government urged Canadians to save food and fuel (meatless and wheatless days, "war gardens") so more could be shipped overseas; in 1918 federal wartime orders banned making, importing and moving liquor between provinces, on top of provincial prohibition laws.
The War Measures Act and internment
The War Measures Act (August 1914) let the federal cabinet govern by order, without votes in Parliament, on anything it judged necessary for the war, including censorship, arrest and detention. It was used against people who had immigrated from enemy countries, labelled "enemy aliens". About 80,000 people had to register and report regularly to police. From 1914 to 1920, 8,579 people, most of them men, were held in 24 internment camps and work sites, such as Castle Mountain in Banff National Park, Kapuskasing in northern Ontario and Spirit Lake in Quebec. Many were Ukrainians who had come from regions ruled by Austria-Hungary; others were Germans, Hungarians, Turks and Bulgarians. Most were civilians, not soldiers, and many were simply poor and unemployed. Internees built roads and cleared land, their property was often confiscated, and more than 100 died in the camps.
The conscription crisis of 1917
By 1917, losses at the Somme and Vimy were outrunning voluntary enlistment. Prime Minister Robert Borden, who had pledged 500,000 soldiers, returned from Britain convinced that the Corps could only be kept up to strength by conscription (compulsory military service). The Military Service Act received royal assent on August 29, 1917. To win an election on the issue, Borden's government passed the Military Voters Act (giving the vote to all soldiers, including the nursing sisters) and the Wartime Elections Act (September 20, 1917), which gave the vote to the wives, widows, mothers and sisters of soldiers and took it away from conscientious objectors and from immigrants from enemy countries naturalized after March 31, 1902. Borden then formed a Union Government of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals in October 1917. Laurier and most Liberals, especially in Quebec, refused to join.
| Group | Usual position on conscription | Main reasons |
|---|---|---|
| Many English Canadians | Supported | Strong British ties; belief that Canada must not abandon its soldiers; anger that Quebec had enlisted less |
| Most French Canadians | Opposed | Weak ties to Britain; few French-language units; resentment of Regulation 17, which restricted French schooling in Ontario; leaders such as Henri Bourassa argued Canada had already given enough |
| Many farmers | Opposed | Needed their sons for farm labour; angry when the farmers' sons exemption was cancelled in April 1918 |
| Organized labour | Many opposed | Called for the "conscription of wealth" before the conscription of men |
| Many First Nations | Opposed | Argued that treaty promises and their lack of citizenship rights exempted them; an order-in-council of January 17, 1918, exempted status Indians from combat service |
In the election of December 17, 1917, the Unionists won 153 seats and Laurier's Liberals 82, 62 of them in Quebec: the country had split almost exactly along language lines. In Quebec City, from March 28 to April 1, 1918, crowds attacked the conscription registry office after police arrested a man without exemption papers; on Easter Monday soldiers fired into a crowd, and four civilians were killed. In the end, of about 404,000 men who were liable for service, roughly 385,000 applied for exemptions; about 125,000 were conscripted, and about 24,000 reached units in France before the war ended. Conscription added relatively few soldiers but left deep distrust of the federal government in Quebec, which shaped the next conscription debate in the Second World War (see the next unit's home-front lesson).
The Halifax Explosion. On the morning of December 6, 1917, the French cargo ship Mont-Blanc, loaded with explosives for the war, collided with the Norwegian relief ship Imo in the narrows of Halifax Harbour. Fire spread on the Mont-Blanc, and at about 9:05 a.m. it exploded in one of the largest human-made explosions before the atomic bomb. Nearly 2,000 people were killed and about 9,000 injured. The Richmond district in Halifax's North End was flattened; across the harbour, the Mi'kmaw settlement at Turtle Grove was destroyed, and the Black community of Africville was also damaged. A blizzard the next day hampered rescue. Help poured in, especially from Boston, which Nova Scotia still thanks each year with the gift of a Christmas tree.