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Supplement
Centenary of the End of World War I Canada and the First World War
Conscription Conscription Opposition to Conscription in Canada and Quebec
In August 1914, Britain declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Canada, as a dominion of the British Empire, was automatically bound to take part. Robert Laird Borden, then Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, was eager to participate in the war. By Sunday, August 9, 1914, the basic orders-in-council had been proclaimed, and a war session of parliament opened just two weeks after the conflict began. Legislation was quickly passed to secure the country's financial institutions and raise tariff duties on some high-demand consumer items. The War Measures Act 1914, giving the government extraordinary powers of coercion over Canadians, was rushed through three readings.[1] Businessman William Price (of Price Brothers and
Company
-- predecessor of Resolute Forest Products) was mandated to
create a training camp at Valcartier, near Quebec City. Some 126
farms were expropriated to expand the camp's area to 12,428 acres
(50 square km). "From the start of the conflict, a range of 1,500
targets was built, including shelters, firing positions and
signs, making it the largest and most successful shooting range
in the world on August 22, 1914. The camp housed 33,644 men in
1914."[2] At the time
Valcartier was the largest military base in Canada. Early in the war, Prime Minister Borden had
promised
not to conscript Canadians into military service.[3] However, by the
summer of 1917, Canada had been at war for nearly three years.
More than 130,000 Canadians belonging to the Canadian
Expeditionary Force had been killed or maimed.[4]
The number of volunteers continuously declined with the growing refusal
to serve as cannon fodder for imperialist powers and as a result of the
profound impact of the war efforts on the country's economy. There was
pressure on all the commonwealth countries and British colonies to
continue providing troops for the British imperial war effort, yet the
government was not able to provide a convincing argument for working
people to agree to sacrifice their lives for the British Empire.
Borden also decided that the best way to bring about conscription was through a wartime coalition government. He offered the Liberals equal seats at the Cabinet table in exchange for their support for conscription. After months of political manoeuvring, he announced a Union Government in October, made up of loyal Conservatives, plus a handful of pro-conscription Liberals and independent members of Parliament. Borden was in his sixth year of his first term. In the months just prior to the election he engineered two pieces of legislation, stacking the Unionist side. Under previous laws, soldiers were excluded from voting in wartime. The new Military Voters Act allowed all 400,000 Canadian men in uniform, including those who were under age or were British-born, to vote in the coming election. The second piece of
legislation, the Wartime
Elections Act, gave women
the right
to vote for the first time in a federal election -- but only
women who were the relatives of Canadian soldiers overseas. With
these two laws, a vast new constituency of voters, the majority
of whom supported the war effort and conscription, were suddenly
enfranchised in time for the election. Borden's Unionists won
that election with a majority of 153 seats, only three
of which were from Quebec.
Conscription
Conscription went into effect January 1, 1918. Exemption
boards were set up all over the country, before which a high percentage
of men appealed their call-up for service. Besides Quebeckers, who as a
whole opposed conscription, many Canadians across the country were also
opposed, including anti-imperialists, farmers, unionized workers, the
unemployed, religious groups and peace activists. By February 1918,
52,000 draftees had sought exemption across the country. The lack of
support for the war was reiterated by the fact that of more than
400,000 men called up for service, 380,510 appealed through the various
options for exemption and appeal in the Military Service Act. Ultimately, some 125,000 Canadians -- just over a
quarter of
those eligible to be drafted were conscripted into the
military. Of these, just over 24,000 were sent to Europe before the
war's end. Many Canadian men simply did not show up when they were
called to report and join the army. Winnipeg was second only to
Montreal in the percentage of men who did not report or defaulted --
almost 20 per cent of those conscripted compared to
around 25 percent in Montreal, according to reports published in
the Winnipeg Telegram at the time. These men were pursued
by the police and could receive heavy jail sentences if caught
and tried. Opposition to the War and Conscription in Quebec
On October 15, 1914, the 22nd Regiment was officially created to bolster French Canadian involvement. As the only combatant unit in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) whose official language was French, the 22nd (French Canadian) Infantry Battalion, commonly referred to as the "Van Doos" (from vingt-deux, meaning twenty-two in French), was subject to more scrutiny than most Canadian units in the First World War. After months of training in Canada and England, the battalion finally arrived in France on September 15, 1915.[5] In April 1916, the Van Doos participated in one of the unit's most dangerous assignments of the entire war, the Battle of St. Eloi Craters. St. Eloi was fought on a very narrow Belgian battlefield. A fierce battle ensued with heavy casualties. Following St. Eloi, the battalion prepared to take the French village of Courcelette in the Somme sector of France. The battalion suffered hundreds of casualties. To many it showed just how violent war could really be. In the months following the Somme operations, the battalion began suffering from desertion and absence without leave. According to battalion officers, the months following Courcelette witnessed a complete breakdown in troop morale. In the next 10 months, 70 soldiers were brought before a court-martial (48 for illegal absences) and several were executed by firing squad.[6] Despite the establishment of the Van Doos, the people of
Quebec, expressing their anti-war
sentiment, were at the forefront of the opposition to
conscription. The Canadian establishment at the time blamed
Quebeckers for the "the lack of French-Canadian participation in
the war."[7] In Quebec, of the 3,458 individuals from the City of Hull called-up by military authorities who had not been granted an exemption, 1,902 men did not report and were never apprehended, for a total conscription evasion rate of 55 per cent. This was the highest evasion rate of all Canadian registration districts, followed closely by Quebec City at 46.6 per cent, and Montreal at 35.2 per cent. Further, 99 per cent of those called up by the City of Hull applied for an exemption, the highest application rate in all of Canada.[8]
War Measures Act Invoked Quebeckers organized militant protests against attempts
by the Canadian government to use its police powers to impose
conscription on the working people and youth of Canada and Quebec. The
Borden government responded by invoking the War Measures Act to quell this
opposition. The government proclaimed martial law and deployed over
6,000 soldiers to Quebec City between March 28 and April 1, 1918. On the evening of March 28, 1918, federal police raided a bowling alley and arrested the youth there. Faced with the arbitrariness and violence of the police, 3,000 people besieged the police station and continued their demonstration in the streets during the night.
The next day, a crowd of nearly 10,000 gathered in front of the Place Montcalm auditorium (currently called Capitole de Quebec), where the conscripts' files were administered. The military, with bayonets and cannons, were called in and shortly after the Riot Act was read, giving them permission to fire. Within the conditions of the day, the ruling elite in Canada found a wall of resistance among the working people of Quebec to being forcibly sent to war. The aspirations of the Québécois for nationhood had been put down prior to Confederation through force of British arms. Along with the subjugation of the Indigenous peoples and the settlers in Upper Canada, the basis was laid for the establishment of an Anglo-Canadian state and Confederation. It is not hard to imagine that the Quebec working class would not look favourably on being mowed down on the battlefields of Europe in the service of the British Empire.
Notes1. "Sir Robert Laird Borden," greatwaralbum.ca. 2. "Les débuts du camp de Valcartier et d'une armée improvisée de toutes piéces," Pierre Vennat, Le Québec et les guerres mondiales, December 17, 2011. 3. Richard Foot, Election
of
1917,
August 12, 2015, Canadian Encyclopedia. 4. Ibid. 5. Maxime Dagenais, The
"Van
Doos"
and
the
Great
War, November 5, 2018, Canadian Encyclopedia. 6. Ibid. 7. "The First World War," Sean Mills (under the direction of Brian Young, McGill University), McCord Museum website. 8. Claude Harb, Le Droit et l'Outaouais pendant la Premi re Guerre mondiale, Bulletin de l'Institut Pierre Renouvin, 2017/1 (N 45), éditeur: UMR Sirice.
The Case of Ginger Goodwin
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The lack of enthusiasm for the war
was such that the
Borden government imposed conscription through the 
Thousands of demonstrators march to Place Montcalm
on March 29,
1918.
Many First Nations, which
were the main source of
Indigenous
recruits along with a much smaller number of Métis and Inuit,
protested against the attempt to recruit them into the Canadian
colonial army and opposed the arrival of recruitment officers and
the Indian Agent on their reserves. Other First Nations refused
to participate unless they were accorded equal status as
sovereign nations and dealt with on a nation-to-nation basis by the
British Crown with which they had signed their treaties.|
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The neglect of Indigenous veterans and other abuses of Indigenous peoples by the Canadian state, led Haudenosaunee veteran Frederick Loft, a Mohawk from Six Nations on the Grand River who had served as a lieutenant overseas in the Forestry Corps, to form the League of Indians of Canada in 1919. Before his return to Canada, Loft had met with the King and Privy Council in London to express his concerns about the way Indigenous peoples in Canada were being treated. Under his leadership, the League of Indians fought to protect the lands and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples.
In particular, the League fought to preserve Indigenous
rights and led the battle against the "involuntary
enfranchisement" changes to the Indian Act, orchestrated
by Duncan Campbell Scott and passed in 1920, aimed at
extinguishing Indigenous title by giving "Status Indians" the
vote, while at the same time working to undermine and sabotage
the work of the League of Indians and isolating and criminalizing
Loft. The League also mounted legal challenges to establish
Indigenous claims to hunting, fishing and trapping rights among
other things.
The League of Indians was the first attempt by Canadian Indigenous peoples to form a national organization to resist the Canadian colonial state's assault on their rights and claims and subsequently inspired the formation of other Indigenous political organizations to battle the colonial Canadian state and its racist policies.
(With files from Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Canadian Encyclopedia, Veterans Affairs Canada and Library and Archives Canada.)
Black Construction Battalion
While Blacks were used by the British colonialists as cannon fodder to suppress the struggles for rights of others, their own legitimate rights and claims were marginalized and denied.
When the First World War
broke out, Blacks in Nova
Scotia and
other places tried to enlist but faced racist obstacles and
justifications to keep them out. The Chief of the General Staff
of the Canadian Army at the time asked in a memo: "Would Canadian
Negroes make good fighting men? I do not think so." When a group
of about 50 Black Canadians from Sydney, Nova Scotia, tried to
enlist they were advised, "[T]his is not for you fellows. This is
a white man's war."
In the face of repeated opposition to this state racism and discrimination, the Canadian government permitted the formation of No. 2 Construction Battalion (also known as the Black Battalion), based in Pictou, Nova Scotia. It was a segregated battalion that never saw military action because they were not permitted to carry weapons. Five hundred Black soldiers volunteered from Nova Scotia alone, representing 56 per cent of the Black Battalion. It was the only Black battalion in Canadian military history.
The Battalion was sent to eastern France armed with picks and shovels to dig ditches and construct trenches at the front, putting themselves in grave danger. They also worked on road and rail construction. Following the end of the War in 1918, the members of the Battalion were repatriated and the unit was disbanded in 1920.
According to Veterans Affairs Canada, another some 2,000 Black Canadians served in the front lines of World War I through other units, some with the armies of other countries.
Once returned, the Black veterans of the No. 2
Construction
Battalion, and other returning Black veterans found that nothing
had changed at home and that not only were their contributions to
the war effort ignored, they continued to face racism and
discrimination in employment, veterans' benefits, and other
social services.[1]
Note
1. The Canadian state likes to portray the participation of Blacks in the Canadian military in the most self-serving manner. Veterans Affairs Canada notes "The tradition of military service by Black Canadians goes back long before Confederation. Indeed, many Black Canadians can trace their family roots to Loyalists who emigrated North in the 1780s after the American Revolutionary War. American slaves had been offered freedom and land if they agreed to fight in the British cause and thousands seized this opportunity to build a new life in British North America."
A rosy picture, but far from reality. The slaves that sided with the British colonialists during the U.S. War of Independence, numbering some 30,000, escaped to the British side and served as soldiers, labourers and cooks. When the British were defeated, the British evacuated some 2,000 of these "Black Loyalists" to Nova Scotia with the promise of a better life and opportunities as free people. Others were thrown to the four winds landing in the Caribbean Islands, Quebec, Ontario, England and even Germany and Belgium. Those the British outright abandoned in the U.S. were recaptured as slaves.
Many of the Black Loyalists landed at Shelburne, in southeastern Nova Scotia, and later created their own community nearby in Birchtown, the largest Black settlement outside Africa at the time. Other Black Loyalists settled in various places around Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Far from finding freedom, and new opportunities, most of the Black Loyalists never received the land or provisions that they were promised and were forced to make their living as cheap labour -- as farm hands, day labourers in the towns or as domestics. In 1791, in order to solve the "Black problem," the British Colonial authorities repatriated about half of these Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to Sierra Leone, Africa.
Those Blacks who remained were used by the British colonial state in the War of 1812 to fight the Americans. Blacks in Ontario and also from other places were part of a colonial militia called in to suppress the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837.
(With files from Veterans Affairs, CBC and the Canadian Encyclopedia.)
Internment
The War Measures Act and Internment of Canadians
Internment camp in Banff, Alberta.
Upon Great Britain's declaration of war on Germany, the Borden Conservative government enacted the War Measures Act, in August 1914. The law's sweeping powers allowed the government to suspend or limit civil liberties and provided it the right to incarcerate "enemy aliens."
The term "enemy alien" referred to the citizens of states legally at war with Canada living in Canada during the war.
From 1914 to 1920, Canada interned 8,579 persons as so-called enemy aliens across the country in 24 receiving stations and internment camps. Of that number, 3,138 were classified as prisoners of war, while the others were civilians. The majority of those detained were of Ukrainian descent, targeted because Ukraine was then split between Russia (an ally) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an enemy of the British Empire. Some of the internees were Canadian-born and others were naturalized British subjects, although most were recent immigrants.
Most internees were young unemployed single men
apprehended while
trying to cross the
border into the U.S. to look for jobs -- attempting to leave Canada was
illegal. Eighty-one women and
156 children were interned as they had decided to follow their menfolk
into the only two
camps that accepted families, in Vernon, BC (mainly Germans) and in
Spirit Lake near Amos
Quebec (mainly Ukrainians).
Internment camp in Fernie, BC.
Besides those placed in internment camps, another 80,000 "enemy aliens," mostly Ukrainians, were forced to carry identity papers and to report regularly to local police offices. They were treated by the government as social pariahs, and many lost their jobs.
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The internment camps were often located in remote rural areas, including in Banff, Jasper, Mount Revelstoke and Yoho national parks in Western Canada. Internees had much of their wealth confiscated. Many of them were used as forced labour on large projects, including the development of Banff National Park and numerous mining and logging operations. They constructed roads, cleared land and built bridges.
Between 1916-17, during a severe shortage of farm labour, nearly all internees were paroled and placed in the custody of local farmers and paid at current wages. Other parolees were sent as paid workers to railway gangs and mines. Parolees were still required to report regularly to police authorities.
Federal and provincial governments and private concerns benefited from their labour and from the confiscation of what little wealth they had, a portion of which was left in the Bank of Canada at the end of the internment operations on June 20, 1920.
A small number of internees, including men considered to be "dangerous foreigners," labour radicals, or particularly troublesome internees, were deported to their countries of origin after the war, largely from the Kapuskasing camp in Ontario, which was the last to be shut down.
Of those interned, 109 died of various diseases and
injuries sustained
in the camp, six were
killed while trying to escape, and some -- according to a military
report -- went insane or
committed suicide as a result of their confinement.
Internment camp in Petawawa, Ontario.
(Canadian War Museum, Calgary Herald, Wikipedia.)
Independent Labour Politics
Registration, Conscription, and Independent
Labour Politics, 1916-1917
[...]
Before Canada experienced the full impact of the war, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada [T.L.C.] contented itself with passing resolutions declaring that wars were fought purely in the interests of the capitalists and that since the capitalists waged wars, it was their duty to do the fighting. A resolution was passed as early as 1911 at the Calgary convention supporting a general strike to prevent the outbreak of war, "so that the workers may see the pitiful exhibition of fighting of those capitalists who seem so fond of it." A year later the Congress reiterated its opposition to war: "the only result that a war between Germany and Great Britain would achieve would be the degradation of the toilers."
[...]When the Congress met in Vancouver in 1915, [...] The recommendation of the executive committee calling for "unchangeable opposition to all that savours of conscription either here or in the empire" was unanimously endorsed. The anti-conscription resolution was reaffirmed the following year.
[...]
[Under] increasing pressure for National Service within the T.L.C. President Watters sent out a circular on April 29, 1916 asking the various affiliated central trades councils and unions whether they were willing to endorse the Vancouver resolution calling for "unchangeable opposition to all that savours of conscription." Watters also sounded [out] the unions on the advisability of calling a general strike: "To prevent anything that savours of 'conscription' . . . are you prepared if every other means should fail, to use the most effective and almost the only weapon within your reach . . . Or should occasion require it, are you prepared to simply register a protest?"
In August 1916, the government passed an Order-in-Council authorizing the appointment of a National Service Board with general power of supervision over security and labour selection. A Director-General of National Service was appointed, charged with the duty of directing and coordinating the work of the directors of National Service to be appointed in each military district. R.B. Bennett, the newly appointed Director-General met with his directors in November and devised plans for an inventory of Canadian manpower. Bennett and his colleagues decided to distribute a series of registration cards to be filled out by workers throughout the dominion in order to gather basic information as to manpower location and distribution.
[...] The industrial element of Canada was deeply affected by this call for service, yet organized labour was granted no representation on the National Service Board. [...] Labour leaders feared that employers would use the registration movement for the purpose of interfering with union labour and establishing an open shop. It was strongly felt too that behind registration was an intention on the part of the government to bring in conscription.
[...] Borden and Bennett toured the country from Montreal to Vancouver in December 1916. [...] Watters suggested that the British Columbia labour men interview the Prime Minister when he came to the coast and a meeting was arranged in Vancouver. [...] The delegation sought an assurance from Borden and Bennett that conscription would not be instituted. No assurance was forthcoming. Following the interview, a joint meeting of the coast officials of the Federation and the executive committees of the trades councils of Victoria and Vancouver was held, at which the delegates presented their unanimous opposition to the registration proposal.
Following the tour, Borden and Bennett met with the leading Congress officials in Ottawa. The Congress executive asked for an assurance that under no circumstances would conscription be undertaken or carried out. Borden again declined. [...] Despite Borden's failure to disavow manpower conscription, or support the conscription of wealth, the Congress executive issued circulars to all labour unions following the meeting urging their cooperation in making National Service Week a success.
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The executive recommendation met with agreement in the east, and a storm of protest throughout the west. [...] The trades councils of Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Guelph, Saint John, Peterborough and St. Catherines supported the executive recommendation. But western labour leaders bitterly opposed both the registration measure and the recommendation of the Congress executive. On December 21, 1916, the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council took the lead and appointed a committee to oppose registration. President Harry Veitch openly declared he would not sign the National Service cards. [...] An anti-registration committee was formed by the central bodies in Winnipeg and Transcona. The Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council recommended that the cards not be signed.
The New Westminster, Victoria and Vancouver central councils also served notice to the Congress executive of their opposition to the registration scheme, considering it a step towards conscription. At a meeting on January 4, the Vancouver council emphatically expressed its opposition to the National Service scheme and reiterated the demand that wealth be conscripted and basic industries nationalized. The central councils of Victoria, Regina and Saskatoon reaffirmed their opposition and the Calgary council called for a special Trades and Labour Congress convention to consider the matter. At the Revelstoke Convention of the British Columbia Federation of Labour in January, the delegates went on record against registration and conscription and censured the executive of the T.L.C. for violation of the expressed opinion of the last convention. It further demanded that conscription not be put into effect before the matter had been submitted to a referendum and that electoral reforms be introduced to widen the franchise. [...]
When Sir Robert Borden announced on May 18, 1917 that conscription was imperative, [...] The Alberta Federation of Labour, which claimed the affiliation of 70 local unions and represented 7,000 workers, adopted a resolution protesting the conscription of manpower until the wealth of the nation had first been conscripted. At a special meeting of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council on May 30, the delegates voted by a 90 per cent majority to resist "by any means" in their power the passage of a conscription law and instructed the executive of the British Columbia Federation of Labour to take an immediate referendum regarding the calling of a general strike in the province in the event of the passage of a conscription law. Mass protest meetings, addressed by members of the Socialist Party of Canada, were held throughout the province and on June 13 a meeting was held in the Empress Theatre in Vancouver under the joint auspices of the Socialist Party of Canada and the Trades and Labour Council. The executive committee of the British Columbia Federation of Labour submitted a proposal to the membership throughout the province to down tools in the event of conscription, and in August voted unanimously to call a special convention of the provincial body to consider the results of the general strike referendum and to plan the future course of action. The convention met on September 1 when it was announced that the referendum had passed by a large 5 to 1 majority. The delegates voted, however, to keep the down tools policy in abeyance. The executive was given full power to call a general strike should it deem the course imperative. A strong recommendation for political action passed by a large majority.
The Trades and Labour Councils of Victoria, Trail and New Westminster reacted the same way as the Vancouver council and the provincial federation and passed heated resolutions against conscription as did the Prince Rupert council which declared for the conscription of wealth production before the conscription of manpower. The Lethbridge, Winnipeg and Medicine Hat councils all entered emphatic protests. The Calgary council joined in the opposition [...] The Winnipeg council adopted a resolution on May 31 against conscription and demanded that the question be submitted to the people as a referendum. A vote of the affiliated unions on the question of a general strike, provided similar action was adopted in all other cities, was later taken, and out of 54 unions supplied with ballots returns were received from 23, the result being 1,787 in favour and 736 against.
Ontario labour leaders were equally adamant. They had supported the Congress executive's recommendation not to oppose registration, but now stood strongly opposed to the conscription of manpower without the conscription of wealth. Soon after Borden's announcement of the conscription measure, the Toronto Trades and Labour Council passed a resolution in favour of the conscription of wealth with manpower. The Ottawa, Kitchener, Guelph and South Waterloo councils urged the conscription of all sources of wealth while the London council demanded the "nationalization of all the resources of the Dominion." The central councils in Niagara Falls, Brantford and Sault Ste Marie also opposed conscription. At a meeting on May 25 of the Ontario Labour Educational Association, the only province-wide federation of trade unions and central labour councils in Ontario, resolutions were passed favouring the nationalization of "the industries in the country which are necessary to the successful carrying out of the War -- the wages and conditions of the workers to be guaranteed by the government" and nationalization of the banks of Canada.
The strong opposition to the proposed conscription measure met with the support of the Congress executive. [...] The executive council of the T.L.C. shortly thereafter summoned a meeting of 80 international trade unions including the Railway Brotherhoods and the Federation of Letter Carriers. The convention met June 1 to 4 and demanded drastic changes in the conduct of the war.
[...] Representatives of the machinists, carpenters, plumbers and steamfitters, sheet metal workers, and many other organizations declared that the wages and conditions of labour on the work under the control of the Imperial Munitions Board were a scandal and a disgrace. [...] The delegates declared themselves emphatically opposed to the proposed conscription measure and urged the workers to oppose "by every means in their power the enactment of such legislation." [...] The joint committee composed of the Congress executive and representatives of the Railway Brotherhoods reported an intense feeling that "the time of petitioning the government is about passed, and action throughout the country by organized labour is necessary and that now is the time to decide what to do."
[...]
The question of a national general strike was considered
at the Trades and Labour Congress
convention in September. Conscription was already the law of the land
and the Wartime
Elections Act had passed the House of Commons in preparation for
the
approaching federal
election.
[...]
Resuming where the congress left off in 1906, the
executive recommended and the delegates
endorsed the formation of a national labour party to contest the
approaching federal election
and express labour's opposition to the war policy of the Borden
régime.
[...]
The new emphasis was on the cooperation and recognition of "organizations having similar objectives as those affiliated with the British Labour Party." Socialists, trade unionists, farmers and other progressives were invited to sink their differences in a new partnership. The "dominating political organization" in each province was urged to call a conference of "the respective organizations entitled to partnership in such a Labour Party and proceed to cooperate for political action."
The main support for direct action came from the
Winnipeg and Pacific Coast unions. The
initiative for political action came from Ontario. Western radicals
were not opposed to
political action. The leading coast unions had supported it at the
special convention of the
British Columbia Federation of Labour in September. But, like the
Winnipeg unionists, they
were equally determined to play with the general strike idea. Both
political action and direct
action were endorsed at the British Columbia provincial convention as
protest weapons against
conscription, although the latter was to be kept in abeyance until the
former had been tried.
Ontario unions were uniformly opposed to a general strike protest and
were optimistic about
the possibilities of independent political action. By 1917, the centre
of gravity of independent
labour and socialist politics had shifted from British Columbia, where
it flourished preceding
the war, to Ontario.
[...]
Political unity in Toronto was achieved on November 13, 1916, when representative of the various labour groups in Toronto met and formed the Greater Toronto Labour party. [...]
The founding convention of the Ontario Independent Labour party on July 2, 1917, was attended by 16 branch locals [...]. When the Greater Toronto Labour party was formed in November, 1916, only two other similar organizations [existed] in the province -- in London and Hamilton. By mid-June there were 13 local parties with seven more in the process of formation. [...] The constitution provided for direct membership. Although no member of the party could be a member of any other political organization, the convention endorsed cooperation with "other bona fide parties which are clearly not capitalist organizations." [...] The object of the new party was "to promote the political, economical and social interests of people who live by their labour, mental or manual, as distinguished from those who live by profit upon the labour of others." The organization would act "in cooperation as far as possible with independent political organizations of the farmers and the producing class for the purpose of electing men or women who will stand by the democratic principle of a working class movement with all that the term implies."
[...]
The political activists in British Columbia decided to continue the policy announced at the special convention of the British Columbia Federation of Labour in September. The provincial federal assumed the functions of a political party and nominated, sponsored and financed independent candidates. [...] The election manifesto issued by the executive of the federation included the repeal of the Military Service Act, extension of the franchise to all adult citizens irrespective of sex, state care and increased benefits for soldiers and their dependents, and the abolition of the "root cause of all wars, the capitalist system."
None of the Labour Party candidates was returned in the
election. Strong showings were made
in Hamilton and Temiskaming, where labour candidates gained
approximately 30 and 40 per
cent respectively, of the vote. But labour candidates were unable to
poll more than 20 per cent
of the vote in the 27 constituencies contested in English speaking
Canada
[...] Articulate protest against the war policies of the union government emanated from the organized section of the working class but this group comprised only 2 per cent of the Canadian population in 1916.
Martin Robin is a
Professor Emeritus from Simon Fraser University.
(Martin Robin, Registration, Conscription, and Independent Labour Politics, 1916-1917, The Canadian Historical Review, University of Toronto Press, Volume 47, Issue 2, June 1966, pp. 101-118.)
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca