1. Canadian Government During WWI

2. Background of Canadians
How do you think the information shown on the chart relates to Canadians’ enthusiasm for the war effort?

3. Challenges of Governing - Graffiti Activity
Divide into six even groups
Each group will get three minute to read the question, brainstorm and record ideas about how the government should respond to each question.
Record group names beside responses
Rotate to the next station, and record alternative responses, or questions to previous responses

4. Questions
Should Canada help Britain as much as possible? Or should Canada try not to become too deeply involved in what was, after all, a European War?
How should the war be financed?
Should Canada force men to enlist or wait for them to volunteer?
Should some people’s rights be restricted in wartime?

5. Questions
Should all Canadians be treated equally? Or should some people be regarded as more loyal than others?
How much should soldiers be helped when they returned home after the war?

6. What are some things the Canadian government would need to do to get ready for war?
Recruiting and Training an Army
Raising Money
Building Support for the War Effort

7. Recruiting an Army
Canadians marched and sang in the streets at the declaration of war in early August 1914.
Those who opposed the war largely stayed silent. Even in Quebec, where pro-British sentiment was traditionally low, there was little apparent hostility to a voluntary war effort.

8. Recruiting an Army
Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden and his Cabinet quickly agreed to meet Britain’s request for a Canadian contingent of 25,000 troops.
The government also passed the War Measures Act, giving it the authority to do whatever it thought necessary for the “security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada.”

9. Recruiting an Army Canadians enlisted from across the country.
Thousands showed up at their local recruiting stations eager to “do their bit,” many of them with strong emotional ties to Great Britain.
The first contingent was 70 percent British-born, although many had lived in Canada for years and considered themselves Canadian.
The percentage of native-born Canadians would increase throughout the war until, by 1918, more than half of the Canadian Expeditionary Force would be Canadian-born.

10. Recruiting an Army
Germany’s brutal invasion of Belgium had shocked many Canadians.
Others had been influenced by school texts and poems depicting war as a romantic adventure.
Questions of honour and glory also contributed to the war enthusiasm, and many saw the prospect of action as a temporary escape from the monotony of work and civilian routine.
Some sought to escape the economic recession that plagued Canada, but many gave up good jobs in order to serve.

11. Recruiting an Army Not all potential recruits were welcomed.
In 1914, strict medical exams required a potential soldier to be at least 5 feet 3 inches tall, and between 18 and 45 years old.
Good eyesight, arched feet, and healthy teeth were essential.
Because of the initial surge of recruits, many eager volunteers were turned down

12. Recruiting an Army
Early in the war, recruiters also rejected most visible minorities for military service.
While many units embraced First Peoples for their skills, real or imagined, as snipers and scouts, they denied the applications of most black and Asian Canadian volunteers.
Racist feelings ran deep, and the war effort overseas would be carried out largely by white Canadians.

13. Training Once people signed up for the army, they required training,
Sam Hughes, the minister of militia and defence in Robert Borden’s government, quickly oversaw the building of a huge training camp at Valcartier, Quebec.
As tens of thousands of recruits poured into the camp, problems arose.
Camp life was disorganized, especially at first, Equipment didn’t arrive on time and when it did, it was sometimes faulty.
Despite the problems, more than soldiers were trained in just three months -and were ready to be sent overseas. z

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Training
At Salisbury, England, the Canadians trained for four months, most of it in terrible mud, as England experienced one of its wettest winters in decades.
While most of the troops stood up well to the awful conditions, Canadian equipment did not.
Much of it was soon discarded in favour of British types.
The Canadians learned basic soldiering in England after a hasty mobilization and a difficult, uncomfortable winter. Their real training would come at the front.

15. Raising Money
Canadians expected the war to be short, victorious, and relatively inexpensive
Ottawa sought money to pay the war’s modest early expenses by borrowing from Britain and then the US, and then everyday Canadians
Canadians’ willingness to loan money to their own government by buying war bonds exceeded all expectations.
No bond issue in Canadian history had raised more than $5 million, but Ottawa’s first “victory bond” drive brought in $100 million, twice the initial estimate.

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Financing the War
Total domestic bond purchases during the war exceeded $2 billion, ten times the amount of money raised abroad.
Canada had financed the war by incurring more than $2 billion in debt, thereby passing the war’s costs to future generations

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Financing the War
As the war continued, political pressure grew on Ottawa to ensure that businesses and the wealthy paid their fair share of the financial burden.
Periodic charges of war profiteering by corrupt officials or unscrupulous entrepreneurs made for sensational headlines and undermined the government’s propaganda message that all Canadians should “do their bit.”

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Financing the War
New federal taxes on business profits in 1916 and personal incomes in 1917 – the latter a ‘temporary’ wartime measure – set important precedents, but the war ended before either had produced substantial results.
In 1919, personal and corporate taxes combined accounted for only 3.4 percent of total federal revenues.
Most Canadians paid no tax at all, and those who did pay, paid very little.

19. Censorship and Propaganda
The control of sensitive military information was a wartime necessity, but the government’s role in information management extended far beyond the surveillance and editing of soldiers’ letters from the front.
An official censor in Canada monitored newspapers and other publications for material that might harm the war effort, while federal officials threatened editors and publishers with jail time if they failed to comply with warning notices.

20. Censorship and Propaganda
Large-scale propaganda campaigns became a part of everyday life.
Television didn’t exist yet, and few people had radios. As a result, the main forms of communication were newspapers, posters, and billboards
Posters urged enlistment and other forms of war support, and asked citizens to contribute to charitable campaigns, buy Victory Bonds, or ration scarce items such as meat or fuel.

21. Censorship and Propaganda
Their imagery relied on patriotic symbols, recognizable icons, and historical figures to identify the war with popular and worthy causes.
Public parades, rallies, and charitable events encouraged voluntary contributions and the shaming or embarrassment of those who were not “doing their bit.”