Robert Borden, the new Prime Minister, was a marked contrast to Sir Wilfrid Laurier. A successful Halifax lawyer, he never seemed entirely comfortable in the rough and tumble of politics. He was formal, even stuffy, in manner, and though he could deliver an effective speech, his style was more suited to the courtroom than the hustings. His ten years as Leader of the Opposition had been difficult ones, characterized by defeat and internal party intrigue. But he had hung on, and in doing so he had provided his party with an electoral platform that called for modernization of the civil service.
Canadian Troops at the Front. The bleakness of the combat zone is captured in this post-impressionist painting of soldiers moving up under air cover—a new feature of modern warfare. James Wilson Morrice—one of the first Canadian artists to gain an international reputation—was commissioned to paint this oil by the Canadian War Memorials Fund in 1917.
Increased state guidance of economic and social development, and an imperial policy that stressed Canada’s right to a voice in the making of foreign policy.
His greatest weakness was Quebec. His French was elementary, and he had difficulty understanding the French-Canadian viewpoint. That problem was not eased by the rather motley collection of Quebec politicians who called themselves Conservatives. But he had to make a Cabinet out of the material at hand. Bourassa, who had not run in the 1911 election, was not available, so Borden was forced to rely on lesser men. The turbulent events of the next few years revealed how far Borden was from solving his party’s weaknesses in Quebec.
From the outset Borden discovered, like Laurier before him, that governing was a delicate balancing act. But his problem was greater than that of his predecessor, for his party was an uneasy alliance of enthusiasts for Empire and anti-imperial French-Canadian nationalists. On some matters the potential division was unimportant.
Civil-service reform could be begun and patronage reduced. New immigrants continued to arrive, and an investigation into the failure to attract French-speaking immigrants was established. Efforts were also made to assist western farmers smarting over the defeat of freer trade. A Board of Grain Commissioners was established to supervise the grain trade, and new terminal elevators were erected to provide increased grain storage at the head of the Great Lakes. These and other measures such as extended rural mail delivery, additional financial assistance for railway construction, and subsidies for highway construction revealed the moderately progressive thrust of the new administration. But the most divisive problem remained to be resolved. What could be done about imperial defence—to meet the “crisis” the Conservatives insisted threatened the Empire?
After close consultation with the British Admiralty, Borden hit upon a plan which he believed would meet the needs of the Empire and ensure the unity of his party. The 1913 Naval Aid Bill, described as a temporary measure designed to meet a pressing crisis, provided for a $35 million contribution to Britain for the construction of three dreadnoughts. In addition, Borden insisted that no permanent policy would be decided upon until a method of allowing the dominions a voice in the making of imperial policy was devised. This compromise, if such it was, failed to preserve the unity of the party. English-Canadian Conservatives welcomed the new policy; in Quebec it was rejected. The bill passed the House of Commons after a bitter, partisan debate, only to be rejected by the Liberal-dominated Senate. As the last days of peace faded into the first days of war, Canadian defence policy remained in stalemate. The navy consisted of two aged light cruisers. Rainbow and Niobe, one of which saw action in 1914, preventing a shipload of Sikh immigrants from landing at Vancouver. It was hardly a famous victory.
The emergency about which so much had been said, and so little done, finally erupted into a European war in August 1914. It soon spread to virtually every part of the world, since the overseas empires of the European powers were both causes and prospective prizes of the conflict. Canada entered the war automatically as part of the British Empire. Though Canadians were free to determine the extent of their contribution to the war effort, few in English-speaking Canada doubted that it should be unstinting. It was natural. Sir Wilfrid Laurier said, for Canada to respond to the Empire’s need with the firm resolve, “Ready, Aye, Ready.” Even Henri Bourassa, stern critic of imperialism, agreed, though he thought there should be limits to Canada’s contribution. Trade unions, whose leaders had spoken bravely about opposing war
On the morning of April 9, 1917, four divisions of the Canadian Corps stormed the ridge at Vimy, France, capturing a previously impregnable German position. In this remarkable photograph by William Ryder-Ryder, the Canadians are slogging across no man’s land under cover of a massive artillery barrage, while Germans overrun in the initial advance leave their dugouts and rush forward to surrender. The French called the victory “an Easter gift from Canada to France.” The cost: 7,004 wounded and 3,598 dead.
The Vimy site was given to Canada by France, and is now a 250-acre memorial park marked by Walter Allward’s towering monument, begun in 1926 and unveiled by Edward viii ten years later.
With a general strike, were now swept along by the new patriotic fervour. The handful of farm leaders and assorted radicals who had previously warned of the threat of “militarism” were either mute or drowned out by the clatter of mobilization and recruitment.
Backed by a country that was at least superficially one in its determination to defeat Germany and the Central Powers, in what was widely expected to be a short war, the Borden government set about organizing the Canadian contribution. Sam Hughes, the Minister of the Militia, took charge of recruitment. More than 30,000 volunteers were assembled at Valcartier ready to set off for Britain by the beginning of October, only two months after the war’s beginning. “Soldiers!” Hughes told them. “The world regards you as a marvel!” Perhaps so, but the troops were poorly equipped and inadequately trained, representing more enthusiasm than foresight. That weakness would characterize much of the war effort, especially the part directed by Hughes, and would lead in three years to a major manpower crisis.
Canadian troops, once in England, were given further training and sent to the front where they quickly proved their mettle. Unemployment at home, and a large body of recent British immigrants of military age, kept recruitment figures high throughout 1914-15, and soon two divisions at the front formed the Canadian Corps. Despite equipment problems—Hughes stuck obstinately with the faulty Ross rifle—the men fought gallantly. By 1916, with the short war moving into its third year, the casualty rates mounted. They fought at St-Eloi, Courcelette, and on into the bloody Somme, with a cost close to 35,000 men. Heavy shelling, miles of mud, and, eventually, deadly poison gas awaited the Canadians as they moved to Ypres and Vimy. Those latter victories led to the appointment of Brigadier-General Arthur Currie to command the Canadian Corps, which until then had fought under a British commander.
By the beginning of 1916 the government had committed Canada to a force of
500,000, all to be recruited, not conscripted. The commitment was to prove greater than the method could achieve. As the heavy casualties continued—15,464 Canadians lost at Passchendaele—the need for reinforcements became pressing. At home voluntary recruitment was falling off drastically as domestic employment absorbed every available man and woman. And now there were some Canadians, especially French Canadians, who had begun to think that Canada had done its share.
The war on the home front was fought energetically, though it sometimes seemed as difficult and chaotic as that on the military front. Certainly it required an unprecedented degree of government intervention in the lives of Canadians. Enemy aliens were required to register and were harassed by super-patriots. Indeed, as the war dragged on and the casualty lists lengthened, hostility to “foreigners” intensified, providing the right atmosphere for the politically opportune decision to strip them of the vote in 1917.
Much more demanding than internal security were the economic requirements of the war effort. At home and abroad, it had to be financed. Large amounts of new money—Dominion notes—were printed, new loans floated first in London and then in New York, and tariffs increased, the latter continuing to produce most of the government’s revenue. In 1915, the government turned to Canadian investors, large and small, and launched the first of several successful campaigns for Victory Loans. In 1916, the Minister of finance moved into the politically sensitive area of direct taxation, levying a modest business-profits tax and, the next year, income tax. The latter, it was stressed, was a temporary war tax, an example of the “conscription of wealth.”
The demands of the war had an almost immediate inflationary impact on an economy that had been in the doldrums since 1913. Manufacturing, especially of shells and armaments, expanded rapidly. The War Purchasing Committee and the Shell Committee supervised the buying of supplies, though neither was entirely successful in preventing favouritism and corruption. The Imperial Munitions Board, under the chairmanship of the energetic meatpacker Joseph W. flavelle, proved more effective. These organizations were only the first of several government interventions into the marketplace. Equally significant was the establishment in 1917 of the Board of Grain Supervisors, an action taken in response to the upward spiral of Canadian grain prices. Prices had to be stabilized and distribution supervised. Both were done in a manner that convinced many farmers that a wheat board organized to keep prices down in times of inflation might keep them up at other times. To these measures were added controls over fuel and food designed to promote careful use and conservation.
While hardly a new problem, the financial difficulties of the over-expanded railway system reached critical proportions during the war. Never, perhaps, were the railways more important for without them the transportation of men and equipment so crucial to the war effort was impossible. While this traffic increased revenues, costs also rose, especially expenditures on new rolling stock. By late 1915, the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific were literally faced with bankruptcy. This put the Borden government to a severe test, for the Conservatives had Long been critics of these “Liberal” railways. Moreover, the government knew that the powerful Canadian Pacific Railway was strongly opposed to assistance being given its rivals. But the companies could not be allowed to collapse, for that would jeopardize such related institutions as the Bank of Commerce. Temporary financing and a commission of enquiry were put in place in 1916. But the problem was no nearer solution, and, faced with another crisis, the government moved towards public ownership, bringing the Grand Trunk Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the National Transcontinental under a government-appointed board of trustees. Later that year government ownership became a fact, with shareholders receiving what many thought excessive compensation for property already heavily subsidized by taxpayers’ money. While this was hardly the end of the country’s perennial railway problems, it did lay the foundation for the Canadian National Railways system. The war had made this action necessary, though it was not welcomed by everyone and earned the Borden government more criticism than credit. The Montreal business community would not soon forget what could be represented as favouritism towards Toronto financial interests.
As the armed forces absorbed growing numbers of men, women were drawn into the workforce to fill the gap. Many found jobs in factories, but others, like these volunteers for the Ontario National Service, became farm harvest hands.
The wartime stimulation of the economy increased employment opportunities, though serious unemployment continued through the winter of 1914-15. But that had changed hy the autumn of 1915, and wage rates began to rise, though the cost of living did too. As pressure on the labour force intensified, more and more women moved into industrial work—including thousands who worked in munitions factories in the later years of the war. Farms, offices, transportation, and many other industries found that women made effective substitutes for the scarce men who had dominated most industrial occupations before the war. The government only haltingly developed a manpower policy. Some effort was made to establish a fair-wages standard in government-funded contracts, though Flavelle resisted its application to those let out by the Imperial Munitions Board. Compulsory registration of the labour force was established, and in the summer of 1918 the right to organize and to bargain collectively was recognized, but strikes and lock-outs were banned. While working people benefited from the sellers’ market created by the war, most of their gains were offset by inflation. The restrictions on strikes, added to the evidence that many employers were reaping huge profits from war contracts, created a restiveness among workers that would disturb many urban centres at the end of the war.
World History
