The war years had proved Sir Robert Borden, knighted in 1914, an effective leader. His government had conducted a successful war effort, considering the magnitude of the war and the inexperience of Canadians in such matters. His Union government implemented a number of reforms long advocated, especially by English Canadians: prohibition, votes for women, and civil-service reforms. But Borden’s major achievements were on the international front. Throughout the war years he had consistently pressed Britain to recognize the role played by Canada and the other dominions by allowing them to be included in wartime decision-making. At first the British stonewalled. But when Lloyd George became British Prime Minister in 1916, he had his own reasons for calling the dominions to London. There, in 1917, the Imperial War Cabinet met, including the dominion prime ministers. At the Imperial Conference of the same year a resolution drafted by Borden and Jan Christiaan Smuts of South Africa promised a post-war formula that would provide for “continuous consultation” in the formulation of imperial policies. Though vague, the resolution was a step towards an increased role for Canada in foreign policy-making. Another step was taken when Borden joined the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and Canada signed the Versailles Treaty which ended the war with Germany. Membership in the new League of Nations followed logically, though no one quite knew how the unity of the Empire, “continuous consultation,” and separate dominion representation could be reconciled.
Borden’s long absence at the Peace Conference and his evidently declining interest in domestic politics meant that his colleagues had to devise plans for demobilization and post-war reconstruction. They had also to attempt to rebuild the Conservative party. The problems were awesome. Land-grant schemes for returning soldiers were implemented, pensions were established, and the soldiers gradually returned to private life, often displacing the women who had moved into industrial and other work during the war. The presence of these demobilized soldiers, often at loose ends, added to the widespread social unrest that touched many parts of the country in the months immediately after the Armistice.
Unrest and discontent were particularly notable among working people who, having heard the wartime rhetoric about the conflict leading to a better Canada, were now impatient for the fulfilment of the promise. Many workers believed that despite wartime wage increases their lot had hardly improved in an inflationary economy.
The idealism of the war years—“making the world safe for democracy”—ended in the bitterness of the Winnipeg general strike in May-June 1919. North Main Street was the scene of several clashes between the strikers and the police, and “Bloody Saturday,” June 21, resulted in thirty casualties, including one death, and the effective end of the strike.
Others remembered the harshness of pre-war unemployment. Many resented the wartime ban on strikes. And workers, too, wanted to contribute to that brave new world which had been so much talked about by reformers of all stripes. Whatever the motives, and they were usually no more complicated than a desire for better wages and working conditions, workers across the country were determined to make their voices heard in the spring of 1919.
Though there were strikes from Vancouver to Halifax, and much radical talk about general strikes and even revolution in several centres, it was in Winnipeg between May 15 and June 25 that the most spectacular demonstration of workers’ solidarity took place. There, virtually the whole labour force responded to the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council’s appeal for a general strike to support metal-trades workers whose employers refused to recognize their union and denied them a wage increase. With Winnipeg employers and their middle-class supporters organized behind the Citizens’ Committee, and the workers led by the Strike Committee, the level of emotion and rhetoric reached a high pitch. The Russian Revolution provided a backdrop for strike leaders who spoke loosely of “revolution,” and their
Opponents who muttered darkly about “Soviets and Bolsheviks,” “bohunks,” and foreign agitators. The drama worked itself slowly towards a brutal denouement.
Federal, provincial, and municipal governments agreed that the strike represented a threat to the established order. To end that threat police and troops were used to enforce the Riot Act and to disperse peaceful demonstrations. Inevitably, there were casualties, arrests, and a few “foreigners” deported. The strike collapsed. Though several strike leaders, including such active social reformers as k S. Woodsworth and A. A. Heaps, spent time in jail, attempts to convict them of seditious and revolutionary activity failed. Even though the strike produced no concrete results, it did convince working people in Winnipeg of the need for political action, and in subsequent provincial and federal elections they sent their own representatives to Parliament. Their presence there testified to the profoundly altered shape of Canadian politics.
World History
