No. 45
November 11, 2025
Remembrance Day 2025
• The Time Has Come for Human Beings to Make History
• The Day the
Armistice Was Signed to End World War I
• War Measures
Act of 1914 and Internment of Canadians
as "Enemy Aliens"
• Opposition to Conscription in Canada and Quebec
• Recruitment of Indigenous Peoples
• Black Construction Battalion
• Appeal to the Soldiers of All the Belligerent Countries
Remembrance Day 2025
The Time Has Come for Human
Beings
to Make History
November 11 marks the day in 1918,
107 years ago, when on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th
month, the armistice treaty which ended World War I was signed.
More than 65 million soldiers were mobilized from the countries which confronted one another during the war, including the large numbers mobilized by Britain and France from their colonies, which included Canada. The average mortality rate of all deployed soldiers in the war was around 14 percent. Taking both military and civilian figures combined, the total number of deaths is estimated to be between 15 and 22 million (8.5 to 11 million military deaths and 6 to 13 million civilian deaths). When the 21 million wounded are included, the total number is estimated to be about 40 million people.
The phrase Lest we forget is commonly used in remembrance services and on commemorative occasions in countries which make up the British Commonwealth. These are the countries which were connected to the British Empire, including Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The phrase is originally found in the Bible, in Deuteronomy (4:7-9), where we read:
7For what nation is there so great,
who hath God so nigh unto them,
as the Lord our God is in all things
that we call upon him for?
8And what nation is there so great,
that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law,
which I set before you this day?
9Only take heed to thyself,
and keep thy soul diligently,
lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen,
and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life:
but teach them thy sons, and thy son's sons [...]
The phrase is subsequently taken up by the champion of everything colonial, Rudyard Kipling, in his 1897 poem Recessional, composed on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The main theme of Recessional – if a nation forgets the true source of its success (the "Lord God of Hosts" and His "ancient sacrifice" of "a humble and contrite heart"), its military or material possessions will be insufficient in times of war.
With the passage of time, the plea of the rulers to not forget past sacrifices has become linked with preparations for war today. But when the peoples say it, they have in mind the phrase Never Again, used by liberated prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp at the end of World War II to denounce fascism.
These two meanings clash once again
this year, more than ever, as the U.S. imperialists and members
of NATO and the G7, including Canada, step up the militarization
of their economies and war preparations along with use of police
powers to stifle dissent. Canada alone increased military
spending in its November 4 war budget by $60 billion over the
next three years, expanding it to $81.8 billion in five years.
As the rulers once again prepare to defend the values of empire, the war hysteria they are generating is palpable. They are using Remembrance Day to shed crocodile tears in the biblical spirit of defending the "Lord God of Hosts" who wields the supreme power and sacrificed his only son to protect his chosen people who now owe him allegiance. The spirit is that expressed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade: "Theirs is but to do and die." The poem was written about an infamous event during the Crimean War (1853-1856) fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain, and Sardinia. The phrase brings attention to soldiers' unfortunate duty to obey orders without question, rather than reasoning why they were given the orders. It is a fundamental negation of individual conscience and responsibility and the modern duty of all human beings to be accountable for individual and collective actions and to uphold the general interests of society as determined and implemented by the peoples themselves.
The negation of individual and collective responsibility is the rules-based system of law and values of the warmongers today whose countries are members of the Genocide 7 and NATO. Once again they are increasing the militarization of their economies and all of life and stepping up war preparations, signing unacceptable treaties and engaging in secret deals to assure their hegemony over the peoples of the entire world.
Rather than solve the problems facing the natural world and the societies inhabited by human beings, the U.S. imperialists and NATO countries, including Canada, and all reactionaries try to imbue the polity with hysteria for war. They blame their adversaries – especially Russia – for their own failure to deliver the peace, freedom and democracy promised after World War I – dubbed the war to end all wars, a phrase coined by British author H.G. Wells in his 1914 book, The War That Will End War. But in the absence of overthrowing the imperialist world order, the danger of war persists and the peoples must do everything in their power to make sure the mobilization of the people for war fails.
How to do this was established in 1917 when the Russian people, exhausted by the war, refused to fight for the Czar. They answered the call of the communists under the leadership of V.I. Lenin and launched the Great October Revolution. The new order under the leadership of V.I. Lenin took Russia out of the war, cancelled all unequal and secret imperialist treaties and embarked on establishing anti-war governments for Soviet Russia and then for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Today, the reactionaries are so desperate that they use the occasion of remembrance marking the end of World War I to blame Russia as an avowed enemy and to present the U.S. and NATO as the champions of peace. But given all the evidence of what the so-called rules-based world order of the U.S., Canada and other G7 and NATO countries stands for, they will have a very hard time this year presenting the U.S. as the champion of freedom, democracy and peace, or Canada as the new saviour of humankind as the Carney government says of itself.
Attempts to mobilize Canada's young people to join the military will also fail, despite the attendance of what are referred to as "Representatives of the Youth of Canada" on the list of special invited guests at the official Ottawa remembrance ceremony.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) joins the
peoples from coast to coast to coast to commemorate all those
who fell victim to the slaughter of World War I and subsequent
wars but it resolutely opposes all attempts to militarize
wreath-laying ceremonies which honour Canadians and Quebeckers
who were sacrificed as cannon fodder in World War I.
Through sleight of hand, the federal government and the NATO Association of Canada conflate those whose lives were sacrificed in World War I, an inter-imperialist war for the redivision of the world, with those who fought Nazi Fascism in World War II which became an anti-fascist war. They conflate anti-fascist resistance struggles and national liberation wars with the crimes NATO has committed since World War II and the U.S./NATO wars of destruction, regime change, and brutal war crimes they are committing today against the Palestinian and other peoples. Wars of destruction, assassinations, torture, mass killings and now massive destruction, displacement and genocide in Gaza and crimes in Lebanon, Sudan and other countries, are all justified in the name of upholding Canadian values.
This is said at a time today when the U.S. democracy and the democracy of its Genocide Cartel, the G7 which includes Canada, and their claims to stand for peace, freedom and democracy, are condemned on the world scale. The U.S. is consolidating its government of police powers and impunity, creating a profound existentialist crisis. In Canada and Quebec, as is the case in the U.S. and all the countries of the G7 and NATO members, the heightened hysteria about immigrants and refugees translates into more state-organized violence and assaults on women, children, seniors, workers, Indigenous Peoples, Inuit and Métis. The declaration that Canada can be saved by walking in lockstep with the U.S. has no takers.
On this occasion, the people of
Canada and Quebec salute all those who have waged and continue
to wage courageous resistance in our country. This includes the
workers from all sectors of the economy, the self-sacrificing
health care personnel, teachers and education workers, and
peoples in the towns and villages giving their all to stop the
privatization and sellout of our resources. Importantly, it
includes the youth and all those speaking in their own names to
support the Resistance movements in Palestine, Lebanon, Haiti,
Cuba, India and all countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America,
the Caribbean, Oceania, Europe and the United States.
The peoples are on the cusp of making great headway in humanity's fight to turn things around in their own favour but these are trying times which contain great dangers. We must strengthen ourselves by taking up the program of organizing the people on a new basis.
As we commemorate all the lives lost in World War I, the Duty of Memory leads us to draw the conclusion that we must all work hard to strengthen the mass movements for peace, freedom and democracy. We must strengthen the work to build a mass communist revolutionary party which trains its members in mass democratic methods of work and decision-making. Such a party must be capable of creating transitional forms of organization within all spheres of endeavour. These must also be based on mass democratic ideological and political mobilization which empowers the working class and people to take the decisions on all matters which affect their lives.
(Statistics from Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War)
The Day the Armistice Was
Signed
to End World War I
On November 11, 1918, the Armistice
which brought World War I to an end was signed. A slaughterhouse
of unprecedented proportions, World War I was referred to as the
"war to end all wars." Afterward, the Treaty of Versailles was
finally signed by Germany and the Allied Nations on June 28,
1919, formally ending World War I.
World War I was an inter-imperialist war, a war in which working men were sent to be slaughtered as empires clashed to re-divide the world. World War I left 9 million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded. In addition, at least 5 million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure. The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world's population was attacked by this deadly virus.
The war also marked a turning point in history. In 1917, the Russian working class and people organized the Great October Socialist Revolution and took Russia out of the war.
When Soviet power was established, Winston Churchill called for the crushing of the baby "in the cradle." In the aftermath of the war, 14 foreign powers, including Canada, militarily intervened in order to foment civil war, seize Soviet Russia's assets for themselves and put an end to the revolution and Soviet power. But Soviet power prevailed and they were defeated. Far from being crushed, the Great October Socialist Revolution led to the advance of society, to its vigorous development and the unprecedented release of human initiative.
Drastic political, cultural, economic, and social change occurred in Europe, Asia and Africa, even in areas outside those directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war -- the Russian Czarist Empire in 1917 and then the Ottoman Empire, the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. Old countries were abolished, new ones were formed and boundaries were redrawn in favor of the imperialist powers. The League of Nations was established in 1919, under the Treaty of Versailles "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security."
The high ideals of a "War to End All Wars," of duty to King and Country, and to empire, were shown to be a cover, a false justification, for the horrendous clash of the imperialist warmongers which took place during World War I. Yet these same values are promoted at this time under the rubric "Lest we forget."
Demonstration against conscription in
Victoria Square, Montreal, May 17, 1917. Working people in
Quebec could find no convincing reason to sacrifice their lives
for the glory of the British Empire. The Canadian government
imposed conscription in August 1917.
Bourgeois historiography refers to Canada's "coming of age" as a result of its role in World War I where it allegedly proved itself worthy of making decisions over its own foreign policy. The sacrifice of Canadian youth as cannon fodder in the trenches of Europe is said to have provided proof that Canada could be entrusted with the conduct of its own foreign policy and break ties with the British Imperial Parliament in this regard. This disinformation seeks to imbue Canadians with a chauvinist outlook that portrays Canada as a major Entente Power fit to sit at the table that divides the spoils of war. In fact, it made Canada a yes-man at the service of the understandings between Britain and France to keep Germany out, while they sympathized with all the new organizations hostile to Soviet Russia.
Today, Canada's warmongering is
presented as a foundational Canadian value. But the sacrifice of
Canadians contradicts official accounts. Their sacrifice was
made not for freedom but on behalf of empire. Canada's
independence was not secured by sending Canada's youth to
participate in the charnel house of imperialist slaughter that
was World War I, a war of division between the empires of the
day to secure sources of raw materials, cheap labour, zones for
the export of capital and strategic influence. On the contrary,
Canada's ruling elite secured a place for itself as a yes-man of
first the British and then the U.S. imperialists, while the
movement of the people persists for a genuine nation-building
project in which the natural and human resources and
decision-making power serve the people, not the rich.
Today, more than 100 years after the end of World War I, Canada has been integrated into the U.S. imperialist war machine while the U.S. and NATO and their allies expand their interference and aggression and threaten war against countries that will not submit to their dictate. At the same time, the Canadian government, in the service of this agenda, is setting the stage to use its police powers to deem opposition to war and aggressive alliances such as NATO as threats to national security.
Today, Canadians and Quebeckers stand second to none amongst the peoples of the world opposing genocide and imperialist aggression and war. They have done so by arguing out their convictions in the face of an onslaught of disinformation that the brutal crimes carried out by U.S. imperialism, NATO and Zionism represent enlightenment, defence of human rights, peace, democracy and freedom. The peoples' ongoing work to oppose these crimes and end Canadian complicity is part and parcel of the important work to bring about new arrangements that will Make Canada a Zone for Peace.
Montreal action stands with Palestine and condemns Canada's
complicity with U.S./Israeli genocide, September 11, 2025.
War Measures Act of 1914 and Internment of Canadians as "Enemy Aliens"
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. Hardial Bains Resource Centre Archives.)
Opposition to Conscription in Canada and Quebec
When in August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, 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 all 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 kilometres). "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.
The lack of enthusiasm for the war was such that the Borden government imposed conscription through the Military Service Act, August 29, 1917. It stipulated that "All the male inhabitants of Canada, of the age of eighteen years and upwards, and under sixty, not exempt or disqualified by law, and being British subjects, shall be liable to service in the Militia: Provided that the Governor General may require all the male inhabitants of Canada, capable of bearing arms, to serve in the case of a levée en masse." The law was in force through the end of the war.
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.
Posters to mobilize women for imperialist war. Poster on left
calls on women eligible to vote under Wartime Elections Act to vote for the Union
government.
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 because they had no intention of fighting for their colonial master, the British Empire, 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 per cent 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
Posters aimed at getting
Quebeckers to join the British Army in World War I.
Among the Canadian state's clumsy chauvinist Anglo-Canadian
attempts to recruit Quebeckers to its unjust cause of
imperialist war, were those which exhorted them to enlist on the
basis of loyalty to their former colonial power, France. There
were also calls to oppose tyranny by supporting the new colonial
power, Britain; and for the people to protect themselves from
foreign invasion.
On October 15, 1914, the 22nd Regiment was officially created to bolster the involvement of Quebeckers. 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 22 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. The fierce battle resulted in 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
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.
Thousands of demonstrators march to Place
Montcalm on March 29, 1918.
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.
Notes
1. "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" by 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, Spring 2017 (No. 45), publisher: UMR Sirice.
(Hardial Bains Resource Centre Archives.)
Recruitment of Indigenous Peoples
When the First World War broke out on July 28, 1914, Canada had no official policy on the recruitment of Indigenous Peoples into the army because they did not have status as citizens. However, in 1915, as the casualties began to mount, the British government directed the Dominions to begin recruiting Indigenous people for the war effort. Australia and New Zealand, along with Canada, recruited Indigenous soldiers to fight on the side of British imperialism in the war. It is estimated that 4,000 Indigenous men and women served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the First World War out of a total of some 600,000 troops from Canada. It is estimated that a third of "Status Indian" men between the ages of 18 and 45 served in the War. There are no known statistics for Métis and Inuit because the Canadian government only recognized "Status Indians" in the records.
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.
Some Indigenous leaders and elders also reminded the government that they had received reassurances at the time of the signing of the numbered treaties with the Crown that their youth would not be serving in any wars, specially those abroad.
As well, many Indigenous women wrote to the Department of Indian Affairs demanding that the Canadian government keep its hands off their sons and husbands and that they were needed at home.
Many reasons are given for the participation of Indigenous people in the First World War. One of the reasons was the promise of a regular paycheque, another was the argument that within the First Nations, warrior societies should play their role in assisting the Crown as their relations were with the Crown, not Canada. Another argument was that after making their contributions, Indigenous relations with the Canadian state would improve when they returned.
Indigenous soldiers took part in all the major battles that the Canadian army participated in and distinguished themselves as scouts, snipers, trackers and as front line fighters winning the admiration and respect of their non-Indigenous comrades and officers. At least 50 Indigenous soldiers were decorated for bravery and heroism. In the course of the war, some 300 lost their lives and many more were wounded and others died after returning home from the effects of mustard gas poisoning, wounds that they suffered, and diseases they had contracted in Europe such as tuberculosis and influenza.
The Military Service Act passed by the the Borden Conservative government in 1917 introduced conscription including for "Status Indians." Conscription was not only broadly opposed in Quebec, but also by Indigenous Peoples who denounced this manoeuvre by the government to disregard their status as Indigenous Peoples. In response to this opposition, the government was forced to grant Indigenous Peoples an exemption from serving overseas.
Other injustices were also imposed on Indigenous Peoples. In 1917, Arthur Meighen, Minister of the Interior as well as head of Indian Affairs, launched the "Greater Production Effort," a program intended to increase agricultural production. As part of this scheme, reserve lands that were considered "idle" were taken over by the federal government and handed over to non-Indigenous farmers for "proper use." After both non-Indigenous and First Nations protested that this was a violation of the Indian Act, the government amended the Indian Act in 1918 to make these illegal actions legal.
Post-War Brutality Against Indigenous Veterans
At the end of the war, returning soldiers, including Indigenous veterans, held high hopes that their contributions to the war effort would translate into a better future for themselves and their communities. Indigenous veterans thought that their status as "wards" of the state would be over and that they would be treated as equals. Instead they found that nothing had changed and the racism and colonial attitudes of the Canadian government remained intact.
Many Indigenous veterans returned with illnesses such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and influenza which they had contracted overseas. Those who had suffered poison gas attacks returned with weakened lungs and became more prone to tuberculosis and other respiratory illnesses. Like their non-Indigenous fellow soldiers, Indigenous veterans suffered from the trauma of the war -- which in today's terms would be called post-traumatic stress disorder -- and other illnesses such as alcoholism, which wrecked their lives and caused many problems for their families and communities. In fact, the overall standard of living in Indigenous communities declined in the years following the war as returning veterans found it extremely difficult to keep regular work and to return to their pre-war lives. In the face of these complex problems, Canada provided little support to Indigenous veterans.
Benefits and support for veterans from the Canadian government through the Soldiers Settlement Acts of 1917 and 1919, such as land and loans to encourage farming, did not extend to Indigenous veterans. To add insult to injury, through the Acts the federal government confiscated an additional 85,844 acres from reserves to provide farmland for non-Indigenous veterans.
The racist Canadian colonial state's aim of exterminating Indigenous Peoples by assimilating them was alive and well. This was expressed by the notorious Duncan Campbell Scott, architect of the Residential School System in Canada and Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, who wrote in a 1919 essay:
These men who have been broadened by contact with the outside world and its affairs, who have mingled with the men of other races, and who have witnessed the many wonders and advantages of civilization, will not be content to return to their old Indian mode of life. Each one of them will be a missionary of the spirit of progress... Thus the war will have hastened that day,... when all the quaint old customs, the weird and picturesque ceremonies... shall be as obsolete as the buffalo and the tomahawk, and the last tepee of the Northern wilds give place to a model farmhouse.
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Haudenosaunee veteran
Frederick Loft founded League of Indians in 1919.
The neglect of Indigenous veterans and other abuses of Indigenous Peoples by the Canadian state, led Haudenosaunee veteran Frederick Loft, 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 of Indians 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 Indigenous Peoples in Canada to form a national organization to resist the Canadian colonial state's assault on their rights and claims. It 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. Hardial Bains Resource Centre Archives.)
Black Construction Battalion
While Black people 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, Black men in
Nova Scotia and other places who tried to enlist 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 on 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 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 Black people 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 enslaved people that ended up on the side of the British colonialists during the U.S. War of Independence, numbering some 30,000, 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 on the Caribbean Islands, in 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 where the British wanted to found a colony and used the Black Loyalists to face the dangers, many of them dying in the process.
Those Black people who remained were used by the British colonial state in the War of 1812 to fight the Americans. Black people 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. Hardial Bains Resource Centre Archives.)
Case of Ginger Goodwin
Twenty-four
hour Vancouver General Strike was held to coincide with Ginger
Goodwin's funeral,
August 2, 1918.
Ginger (Albert) Goodwin was a coal miner from England who immigrated to Canada in the early 20th century. He worked in coal mines in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and Michel, British Columbia before settling in Cumberland on Vancouver Island in 1910 or early 1911. He worked in the Dunsmuir coal mine in Cumberland and participated in the strike of 1912 to 1914. He was active in the United Mine Workers of America and in 1914 became an organizer for the Socialist Party.
In 1916 he moved to
Trail in the interior of BC where he worked for some months as a
smelterman for the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of
Canada Limited. He was the Socialist Party of Canada's candidate
in Trail in the provincial election of 1916, coming in third,
and in December of that year was elected full-time secretary of
the Trail Mill and Smeltermen's Union, a local of the
International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW).
The following year he was elected as vice-president of the BC
Federation of Labour, president of IUMMSW's District 6 and
president of the Trail Trades and Labour Council. He was
proposed by the union as deputy minister of BC's newly founded
Department of Labour, but not selected. This was a proposal
supported by the trades and labour councils of both Victoria and
Vancouver.
Ginger Goodwin opposed World War I for political reasons on the grounds that workers should not kill each other in economic wars. "War is simply part of the process of Capitalism. Big financial interests are playing the game. They'll reap the victory, no matter how the war ends," he said. Nonetheless, he registered for conscription as the law required and was classified as unfit. However, not two weeks following the start of a strike in Trail for the eight-hour day, which Goodwin led, he was ordered to undergo a medical re-examination and this time was classified as fit to serve.
His appeal against conscription was rejected in April 1918. Ordered to report to army barracks he refused to compromise his conscience and hid out with others resisting conscription in the hills near Cumberland where people from the town ensured they had food and supplies.
Goodwin was shot and killed on July 27, 1918 by Constable Dan Campbell of the Dominion Police, one of three members of a team that was hunting men who were evading the Military Service Act. The anger of the people of Cumberland and workers throughout the province was such that on August 2, 1918 there was a mile-long funeral procession in Cumberland, and BC's first general strike the same day in Vancouver.
Ginger Goodwin's funeral, Cumberland BC,
August 2, 1918.
On June 24, 2018 in honour of Ginger Goodwin, labour
martyr and war resister, and the 100th anniversary of his death,
July 27, 1918, the Cumberland Museum along with the BC
Federation of Labour and local unions, artists, musicians and
actors, re-enacted the funeral procession as part of the annual
Miner's Memorial events held from June 22 to 24. On July 23,
2018, also marking the occasion of the 100th anniversary of
Goodwin's death, the BC government erected a monument at nearby
Union Bay, the coal port that served the Cumberland mines, in
honour of Ginger Goodwin for his fight for workers' rights and
his opposition to conscription. A section of highway near
Cumberland was named "Ginger Goodwin Way" in 1996 in his honour.
(Hardial Bains Resource Centre Archives.)
Appeal to the Soldiers of All
the
Belligerent Countries
Brothers, soldiers!
We are all worn out by this frightful war, which has cost millions of lives, crippled millions of people and caused untold misery, ruin, and starvation.
And more and more people are beginning to ask themselves: What started this war, what is it being waged for?
Every day it is becoming clearer to us, the workers and peasants, who bear the brunt of the war, that it was started and is being waged by the capitalists of all countries for the sake of the capitalists' interests, for the sake of world supremacy, for the sake of markets for the manufacturers, factory owners and bankers, for the sake of plundering the weak nationalities. They are carving up colonies and seizing territories in the Balkans and in Turkey -- and for this the European peoples must be ruined, for this we must die, for this we must witness the ruin, starvation and death of our families.
The capitalist class in all countries is deriving colossal, staggering, scandalously high profits from contracts and war supplies, from concessions in annexed countries, and from the rising price of goods. The capitalist class has imposed contribution on all the nations for decades ahead in the shape of high interest on the billions lent in war loans. And we, the workers and peasants, must die, suffer ruin, and starve, must patiently bear all this and strengthen our oppressors, the capitalists, by having the workers of the different countries exterminate each other and feel hatred for each other.
Are we going to continue submissively to bear our yoke, to put up with the war between the capitalist classes? Are we going to let this war drag on by taking the side of our own national governments, our own national bourgeoisies, our own national capitalists, and thereby destroying the international unity of the workers of all countries, of the whole world?
No, brother soldiers, it is time we opened our eyes, it is time we took our fate into our own hands. In all countries popular wrath against the capitalist class, which has drawn the people into the war, is growing, spreading, and gaining strength. Not only in Germany, but even in Britain, which before the war had the reputation of being one of the freest countries, hundreds and hundreds of true friends and representatives of the working class are languishing in prison for having spoken the honest truth against the war and against the capitalists. The [February] revolution in Russia is only the first step of the first revolution; it should be followed and will be followed by others.
The new government in Russia -- which has overthrown Nicholas II, who was as bad a crowned brigand as Wilhelm II -- is a government of the capitalists. It is waging just as predatory and imperialist a war as the capitalists of Germany, Britain, and other countries. It has endorsed the predatory secret treaties concluded by Nicholas II with the capitalists of Britain, France, and other countries; it is not publishing these treaties for the world to know, just as the German Government is not publishing its secret and equally predatory treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, and so on.
On April 20 the Russian Provisional Government published a Note re-endorsing the old predatory treaties concluded by the tsar and declaring its readiness to fight the war to a victorious finish, thereby arousing the indignation even of those who have hitherto trusted and supported it.
But, in addition to the capitalist government, the Russian revolution has given rise to spontaneous revolutionary organisations representing the vast majority of the workers and peasants, namely, the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in Petrograd and in the majority of Russia's cities. Most of the soldiers and some of the workers in Russia -- like very many workers and soldiers in Germany -- still preserve an unreasoning trust in the government of the capitalists and in their empty and lying talk of a peace without annexations, a war of defence, and so on.
But, unlike the capitalists, the workers and poor peasants have no interest in annexations or in protecting the profits of the capitalists. And, therefore, every day, every step taken by the capitalist government, both in Russia and in Germany, will expose the deceit of the capitalists, will expose the fact that as long as capitalist rule lasts there can be no really democratic, non-coercive peace based on a real renunciation of all annexations, i.e., on the liberation of all colonies without exception, of all oppressed, forcibly annexed or underprivileged nationalities without exception, and the war will in all likelihood become still more acute and protracted.
Only if state power in both the, at present, hostile countries, for example, in both Russia and Germany, passes wholly and exclusively into the hands of the revolutionary Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which are really capable of rending the whole mesh of capitalist relations and interests, will the workers of both the belligerent countries acquire confidence in each other and be able to put a speedy end to the war on the basis of a really democratic peace that will really liberate all the nations and nationalities of the world.
Brothers, soldiers!
Let us do everything we can to hasten this, to achieve this aim. Let us not fear sacrifices -- any sacrifice for the workers' revolution will be less painful than the sacrifices of war. Every victorious step of the revolution will save hundreds of thousands and millions of people from death, ruin, and starvation.
Peace to the hovels, war on the palaces! Peace to the workers of all countries! Long live the fraternal unity of the revolutionary workers of all countries! Long live socialism!
Central Committee of the R.S.D.L P. Petrograd Committee of
the R.S.D.L.P.
Editorial Board of Pravda
(Lenin Collected Works, Volume 24)
(To access articles individually click on the black headline.)
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca