Canada since 1914

Germany attacked Belgium and France in 1914, Britain declared war, and Ottawa raised the Canadian Expeditionary Force, later known as the Canadian Corps. More than 600,000 Canadians served, most of them volunteers, out of a total population of eight million. Between 1914 and 1920 Ottawa also interned over 8,000 former Austro-Hungarian subjects, mainly Ukrainian men, as enemy aliens in 24 labour camps.

In April 1917 the Canadian Corps captured Vimy Ridge, a fortified height that had held out against earlier Allied attacks. Ten thousand Canadians were killed or wounded there, and the victory secured their reputation for valour as the shock troops of the British Empire. April 9 is celebrated as Vimy Day. In 1918, under General Sir Arthur Currie, the Canadian Corps advanced alongside French and British Empire troops at Amiens on August 8. The Germans called that day the black day of the German Army. The Corps pushed on at Arras, Canal du Nord, Cambrai and Mons. Germany and Austria surrendered on November 11, 1918. In total 60,000 Canadians were killed and 170,000 wounded.

That is why November 11 is Remembrance Day. Canadians wear the red poppy and keep a moment of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The poppy comes from a poem written in 1915 by a Canadian medical officer, Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, In Flanders Fields. Over a million Canadian men and women have served in uniform, and 110,000 have given their lives.

At Confederation the vote belonged to property-owning adult white males. Dr. Emily Stowe founded the women’s suffrage movement in Canada and was the first Canadian woman to practise medicine here, which gives you some idea of how heavy the door was. The first victory came in the West. In 1916 Manitoba became the first province to grant voting rights to women.

The war moved Ottawa. In 1917 the federal government of Sir Robert Borden gave the federal vote first to nurses at the battle front, then to women related to men in active wartime service. In 1918 most Canadian female citizens aged 21 and over were granted the right to vote in federal elections. Three years later, in 1921, Agnes Macphail, a farmer and teacher, became the first woman elected to Parliament. Quebec took longer, and granted women the provincial vote in 1940, thanks in large part to the work of Thérèse Casgrain.

Two more groups were still waiting. During the Second World War, Canadians of Japanese origin were forcibly relocated and their property was sold without compensation. Yet the military and the RCMP had said they posed little danger. The Government of Canada apologized and compensated the victims in 1988. Japanese-Canadians were given the right to vote in 1948, and Aboriginal people in 1960. Today every citizen over 18 may vote.

The Roaring Twenties were boom times, and then the stock market crash of 1929 ended them. The Great Depression that followed is remembered in Canada as the Dirty Thirties. Unemployment reached 27 per cent in 1933, and farmers in Western Canada were hit hardest of all by low grain prices and drought. Canadians began demanding a social safety net: minimum wages, a standard work week, unemployment insurance. One lasting answer came in 1934, when the Bank of Canada was created as a central bank to manage the money supply and bring stability to the financial system.

The Second World War began in 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. More than one million Canadians and Newfoundlanders served, out of a population of 11.5 million, and 44,000 were killed. The early news was bad: heavy losses in the unsuccessful defence of Hong Kong in 1941 and in the failed raid on Dieppe in 1942. In the air, the Royal Canadian Air Force fought in the Battle of Britain. Canada contributed more to the Allied air effort than any other Commonwealth country, and over 130,000 Allied air crew trained in Canada under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. At sea the Royal Canadian Navy fought the long Battle of the Atlantic, while Canada’s Merchant Navy kept Britain fed, clothed and resupplied. By the end of the war Canada had the third-largest navy in the world.

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 15,000 Canadian troops stormed and captured Juno Beach from the German Army. About one in ten Allied soldiers who landed that day was Canadian. The Canadian Army went on to liberate the Netherlands in 1944 and 1945 and helped force the German surrender on May 8, 1945. Japan surrendered on August 14 of that year.

The country that came home from the war got rich. Oil was discovered in Alberta in 1947. By 1951 a majority of Canadians could afford adequate food, shelter and clothing, and between 1945 and 1970 Canada enjoyed one of the strongest economies among industrialized nations.

Some of that wealth went into the programs Canadians now take for granted. Unemployment insurance, today called employment insurance, was introduced by the federal government in 1940. Old Age Security was devised as early as 1927, and the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans came in 1965. The Canada Health Act ensures common elements and a basic standard of coverage across the country, and publicly funded education is provided by the provinces and territories.

Abroad, the Cold War set the terms. Eastern Europe became part of a Communist bloc controlled by the Soviet Union under the dictator Josef Stalin. Canada helped form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and joined the United States in the North American Aerospace Defence Command. It joined the United Nations as well, and it took part in the UN operation defending South Korea in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, where 500 Canadians died and 1,000 were wounded. Canadians also served on UN peacekeeping missions in Egypt, Cyprus and Haiti, and in operations in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. The same conflict sent people here. About 37,000 escaped Soviet tyranny in Hungary in 1956, and over 50,000 sought refuge in Canada after the Communist victory in Vietnam in 1975.

Quebec went through an era of rapid change in the 1960s known as the Quiet Revolution, and many Quebecers began to seek separation from Canada. Ottawa answered by looking hard at the country’s two languages. Parliament established the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963. Its work led to the Official Languages Act of 1969, which guarantees French and English services from the federal government everywhere in Canada. In 1970 Canada helped found La Francophonie, the international association of French-speaking countries.

The question went to the voters of Quebec twice. They defeated sovereignty in a referendum in 1980. In 1982 the Constitution was amended without the agreement of Quebec. A second referendum, in 1995, defeated sovereignty again. Quebec stayed in Canada, and the argument is still part of Canadian political life.

Canadian art found its own subject in the north woods. The Group of Seven, founded in 1920, developed a new style of painting for the rivers, rock and forest of northern Ontario. In Quebec, Les Automatistes pioneered modern abstract art in the 1950s.

Sport gave the country some of its best-known moments. Basketball was invented by a Canadian, James Naismith, in 1891. The Grey Cup was donated by Lord Grey, the Governor General, in 1909 and is still the prize in Canadian football. In 1972 Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the Canada-Soviet Summit Series, a goal older Canadians can still describe from memory. In 1980 Terry Fox, who had lost a leg to cancer, began his Marathon of Hope, and in 1985 Rick Hansen circled the globe in a wheelchair. Wayne Gretzky played for the Edmonton Oilers from 1979 to 1988, Donovan Bailey became a world record sprinter and double Olympic gold medallist in 1996, and Catriona Le May Doan won speed skating gold in 2002.

Canadians have also had a remarkable run as inventors. Sir Frederick Banting of Toronto and Charles Best discovered insulin, which has saved 16 million lives worldwide. Alexander Graham Bell hit on the idea of the telephone at his summer house in Canada. Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile, Sir Sandford Fleming the world system of standard time zones. Mathew Evans and Henry Woodward invented the first electric light bulb and sold the patent to Thomas Edison. Reginald Fessenden contributed to the invention of radio and sent the first wireless voice message in the world. Dr. Wilder Penfield, a pioneering brain surgeon at McGill University, was called the greatest living Canadian. Dr. John A. Hopps invented the first cardiac pacemaker. SPAR Aerospace and the National Research Council invented the Canadarm, and Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie of Research In Motion gave the world the BlackBerry.