Armies dissolve as soon as they are formed. Thousands of the Canadian volunteers sent to Valcartier in 1914 came home, some because they lacked their wife’s permission to enlist. Two hundred thousand more—sick, wounded or otherwise unsuitable for service—followed during the war, leaving about 450,000 soldiers for the postwar demobilization.
Canada was a country with everything to learn about waging war or about winding down a war machine. Its military pension rules dated from 1885 and really from the War of 1812. In the 1917 election, politicians promised soldiers “full re-establishment.” What did they mean? How could a deeply divided and virtually bankrupt Canada support war widows and orphans or 70,000 veterans permanently disabled in mind or body? How could the economy re-absorb half a million impatient young men, unskilled in any but the crafts of war? Could any government resist the demands of organized veterans and their allies for a share of the benefits stay-at-home civilians had too obviously enjoyed in wartime?
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Desmond Morton
Professor of History at McGill University