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and-english-canada.
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we-owe-them-houses-cheer-united-war-work-campaign-ywca.
The legacy of Canada's WWI conscription crisis
GIUSEPPE VALIANTE, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Published on April 18, 2017

Canad ian mythology suggests th e country earn ed i ts soverei gn ty f rom th e

B ri tis h Crown in the Fi rst World War, af ter l egions of sold i ers from
Vi ctori a to Ch arl otteto wn gal lan tly stormed German d efen ces al on g th e
Wes tern Fron t an d w ere instru men tal in th e Alli ed cause.
But as Canadians were fighting the Germans, back home the country was at war with itself. For
the first time since Confederation, Quebec politicians were explicitly suggesting French-
Canadians might be better off alone.

“One can say 1917 was a turning point,” said University of Ottawa historian Pierre Anctil. “It
instilled a sense of suspicion and distance. And I think it did irreparable damage.”

Before the two independence referendums of the ’80s and ’90s that nearly tore the country apart,
there was the 1917-18 conscription crisis.

Historians warn against drawing direct lines between that time and Quebec’s independence
movement, which began in the ’60s and still affects Canadian politics. But historians also say
these 100-year-old events made many Quebecers collectively recognize they would always be a
minority within Canada — and, as such, alone in defending their cultural and linguistic rights.

Quebecers at the time were also regularly subjected to hostility and outright hatred in the
Canadian media.

“They were cowards, traitors — probably German agents,” McGill University military historian
Desmond Morton said, referring to English Canada’s view of francophone Quebecers, who were
largely against sending their young men to die in Europe for the empire.

“In the eyes of Anglo Montreal and the rest of Canada, (French-Canadians) were worthless and
evil.”

When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, Canada was automatically at war, as a
dominion of the British Crown.

Thousands of young Canadians — many of them born in the UK — volunteered to fight.

The opposite was true in Quebec, where French-Canadians had no loyalty to the British and saw
themselves as living in a sovereign country that wasn’t necessarily subservient to London.

Volunteer conscripts had success in the early years of the war, but the victories were costly.

Canada suffered more than 10,000 casualties at Vimy in 1917, and 24,700 Canadians and
Newfoundlanders died or were wounded in the Somme.

“In 1917, the war was far from won,” said military historian Carl Pepin. “And the front was
atrocious.”

These losses were not sustainable — especially with a volunteer war effort back home and
dwindling enlistment.

In May that year, prime minister Robert Borden returned to Canada from Europe and decided the
country couldn’t replenish the depleted battle lines without conscription. By late summer the
Military Service Act was law and all men between 20 and 45 were called to arms.

Borden’s decision would unleash one of the biggest crises in Canadian history, which would end
with four men shot dead in the streets of Quebec City.

Regul ation 17 and th e Fran coeu r moti on

Just like so many conflicts in Canada, the conscription crisis has its roots in a language dispute.

In 1912, the Ontario government decided to restrict the teaching of French in the first two years
of school. The government cited a report claiming the bilingual schools in the province were
performing poorly.

Quebecers — and their leaders — saw this as a direct assault on all French-Canadians, who were
a growing minority in the anglophone province at the time.

“In the largest and the wealthiest province there was no tolerance for a French minority,” said
Anctil. “And if there was no tolerance for a French minority in Ontario, where would there be?
“It was something the French-Canadians observed and internalized. And they developed, in large
part, to count only on the forces of Quebec for their own survival. Out of this, much later, in the
’60s and ’70s, came the sovereignist movement.”

A major reason the desire to fight was less than tepid in Quebec can be traced back to Regulation
17, according to historians.
Public intellectuals in Quebec at the time, such as Henri Bourassa, came out strongly against the
Ontario government in the schools battle.

Pepin said Bourassa had written in 1915, “Why go and get killed by Prussians in Europe when
we are being persecuted right here by the Prussians in Ontario?”

While the concept of Quebec independence didn’t exist in 1917, historians still see the
beginnings of a burgeoning movement to defend the rights of francophones against an indifferent
and sometimes hostile English Canada.

Shortly after the 1917 federal election, a member of the Quebec legislature, Joseph-Napoleon
Francoeur, introduced a controversial motion.

“That this chamber is of the opinion that the province of Quebec should accept the rupture of the
federal pact of 1867 if, in the other provinces, it is believed that Quebec is an obstacle to the
union, to progress, and to the development of Canada.”
University of Ottawa historian Serge Durflinger says the Francoeur motion “is a symbol of a
sentiment that existed more widely than we might expect.”

“For someone to say that in the legislature, it’s because there is an underlying and deep-rooted
animosity that clearly indicates Confederation will always be the majority imposing its will
against the minority,” he said.

The motion was eventually rescinded, but the point was made, and historians say that was likely
the first time the issue of Quebec separation was formally and explicitly brought up by
politicians.

Retrieved from: http://montrealgazette.com/feature/the-legacy-of-canadas-wwi-conscription-

crisis-quebec-nationalism.