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Canada's contribution to the first world war (WWI) was significant. 66,000+ Canadians lay down their lives for the cause of Freedom.
- 5 min
- 70.7K
- legionlegacies
- First World War, 1914–18
- Recruitment and Conscription
- Soldiers' Experience
- Home Front
- Veterans and The Interwar Period
- Legacy and Growing Recognition
During the First World War, the story of the First Nations, particularly Status Indians, is the best known. By contrast, little is known of Métis military service because a person’s ethnicity was not listed on enlistment papers, and no government department oversaw Métis populations to provide a paper trail. Similarly, only a few Inuit served, most...
The story of the recruiting and conscription of Indigenous men during the First World War is complex and still debated by historians. Between August 1914 and December 1915, relatively few First Nations men volunteered, as the army was hesitant about recruiting them for fear the “Germans might refuse to extend to them the privileges of civilized war...
Some regiments boasted large numbers of Indigenous soldiers, including the 114th Battalion ("Brock's Rangers") and the 107th “Timber Wolf” Battalion. However, Indigenous soldiers were mostly integrated into regular military units, rather than serving in segregated “all-Indian” units. This meant that Indigenous and non-Indigenous soldiers interacted...
Across Canada, Inuit, Métis and First Nations experiences on the home front varied greatly. On most reservesacross southern Canada, the conflict was a prominent factor in peoples’ lives. Many engaged vigorously in the war, with high enlistments, generous contributions to charitable and patriotic causes (almost $45,000 from band funds alone), and pu...
When the war ended in 1918, Indigenous soldiers returned alongside their comrades to what they hoped would be a better world, but these hopes would be disappointed. The marginal political, legal, economic and social position of Indigenous peoples was unaltered by the war or their contributions. First Nations veterans — because they were already gov...
Despite their contributions to the national war effort, Indigenous veterans were largely forgotten in the decades after 1918, until they began to organize and campaign for recognition of their sacrifices and restitution for grievances over veterans benefits from the 1970s to the 2000s. Perseverance paid off, with a consensus report accepted by both...
The resulting post-war debt of some $2 billion was owed mostly to other Canadians, a fact which fundamentally altered the nature of the post-war economy. Politically, the war was also a watershed. Borden’s efforts to win the 1917 election and carry the nation to victory succeeded in the short term, but fractured the country along regional, cultural, linguistic, and class lines.
Last Edited November 30, 2023. The First World War of 1914–1918 was the bloodiest conflict in Canadian history, taking the lives of nearly 61,000 Canadians. It erased romantic notions of war, introducing slaughter on a massive scale, and instilled a fear of foreign military involvement that would last until the Second World War.
J.L. Granatstein. The Great War, lasting from August 1914 to November 1918, had a huge effect on Canada. In the hothouse atmosphere created by the conflict, attitudes changed faster, tensions ...
