Canada's Great War, 1914-1918 Read online

  The hard reality was that the Canadian-American border was undefended because Americans rightly saw that Canada posed no threat and Canadians knew that they lacked the manpower and resources to defend themselves against an American invasion. The best Canadian defense was to ensure that Canadian-American relations never deteriorated to the point that war became a possibility.

  Canadian governments after Confederation moved quickly to take over the vast northwestern territories, and British Columbia was brought into the union. A National Policy was adopted which included protective tariffs to stimulate and support Canadian industrial development, and railways were built linking central Canada with the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. At the same time, though, the National Policy always allowed for lower tariffs on natural products and raw materials if the United States was ever willing to extend reciprocal treatment.

  The National Policy was not just an effort to develop the economy, but a declaration of economic independence—not from Britain, but from the United States. In other words, it represented the belief that if Canada was going to survive as a separate nation, it needed to have a strong economy with an industrial base and a transportation/communications system linking its vast regions. Indeed, the National Policy was a response to American tariff policy, which since the termination of the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866 had erected a high protective wall around the United States. Leonard Tilley, the Canadian Minister of Finance in 1879, actually brought in an American consultant to advise him on drawing up the National Policy tariff schedule.[17]

  Paradoxically, however, the National Policy played a major role in encouraging the economic integration of the Canadian and American economies because the protective tariff, by discriminating against foreign (American) manufactured goods, encouraged American companies to establish branch plants in Canada. Within a decade, sixty-five branch manufacturing plants had been established in Canada by such major companies as the Singer Manufacturing Company, International Harvester, National Cash Register, and Westinghouse. In time, large American corporations such as Standard Oil began acquiring Canadian companies and merging them into single entities that could dominate the Canadian market as they dominated the American market.

  By 1900, U.S. investments in Canada constituted 14% of total foreign investment, a figure that rose to 23% by 1914, representing a quarter of all U.S. foreign investments.[18] Meanwhile, other large corporations like Western Union, American Bell Telephone, and insurance companies also moved into Canada, although the tariff was not an issue for them. They came because they saw a significant market and the advantages of being registered as a Canadian (i.e., British) company, and by 1913 there were 451 American-owned businesses in Canada. If encouraging American investment in Canada seems inconsistent with a nationalistic economic policy, the inconsistency was not apparent to Canadian politicians and businessmen. A company incorporated in Canada was considered Canadian, regardless of who owned it.

  The influx of American capital inevitably brought with it American trade unions, which organized local branches as well. The Knights of Labor came in the 1880s and the American Federation of Labor soon followed. As Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, once said, “we are more than neighbors; we are kin . . . our labor problem with all its ideals, aspirations, and ambitions is alike for both of us.”[19] By 1902 the AFL dominated the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, and by 1919 American unions represented 90% of the organized workers of Canada.

  Meanwhile, the flood of Canadians moving to the United States continued as young people sought jobs in the cities or farms in the west. The belief that the United States was more prosperous, offered greater opportunities, and enjoyed a lower cost of living—a belief that persists to this day—understandably stimulated some Canadians to support the idea of annexation. The 1890 U.S. census reported that nearly a million Americans had been born in Canada.

  Some Canadians thought that Canada should do the inevitable and join the United States. Thus began the debate, which endured for most of the next century, over the “price” of being Canadian. While outright annexationists were a relatively small, albeit highly vocal, minority, the issues they raised did have a political impact. The Canadian elections of 1887 and 1891 were fought largely over the question of whether Canada should join an economic union or negotiate a complete free trade agreement with the United States. John A. Macdonald, author of the National Policy in 1879, won both elections, albeit with reduced majorities, and when the Liberals finally did get into office in 1896 under the leadership of Wilfrid Laurier, they did so only after finally embracing the National Policy.

  At the same time, however, they offered a tariff reduction to any country that would reciprocate. This was, of course, aimed at the United States which did not respond, but in a brilliant display of sleight of hand, Laurier granted the reduced rate to Britain without compensation because it had no tariffs to reduce and promoted this innovation as a new policy of “imperial preference.” Accordingly, most Canadians regarded it as a positive step in strengthening the imperial connection and a rebuff to the United States.

  It had no practical effect. The British share of Canadian imports declined from a third to a fifth over the next decade, while the American share rose from one-half to two-thirds. At the same time, Canadian exports to the United States doubled while exports to Britain rose only about a third. In other words, the United States was rapidly becoming Canada’s most important trading partner.

  The growing American influence was not just in trade and investment. Canada was increasingly being influenced by American popular culture, to the point that it seemed, as Andrew Macphail wrote, that “the American spirit” was “at war for the possession of Canada’s soul.”[20] This could be seen in the growing popularity of American consumer goods, whether automobiles or corn flakes, whose advertising became omnipresent in newspapers, books, and magazines. American films, the latest entertainment technology, quickly spread into Canada where they received a warm reception. Indeed, some of the earliest American movie stars were actually Canadians, most famously Gladys Smith, who was born in Toronto in 1893 and went on to become the most popular actress of the silent film era as Mary Pickford, often referred to as “America’s Sweetheart.”

  In sports, while cricket remained popular, baseball was growing in popularity as well. The earliest recorded baseball game took place in Beachville, Ontario, in 1838, and the London Tecumsehs were charter members of the International Association of Professional Base Ball Players, defeating the Pittsburgh Alleghenies to win its first championship in 1877. When Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run, it was in Toronto on September 5, 1914, in a game between the Providence Grays and the Toronto Maple Leafs in the International League.[21]

  Even so, three-quarters of the one million immigrants who came to Canada in the first two decades of the century were British, far more than the number who moved up from the United States. Between 1901 and 1921, 752,000 immigrants came to Canada from Britain, three times as many as from the United States. By 1911 there were 497,249 American-born people living in Canada, however, representing about 7% of the total population. Most of them were western farmers seeking land in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

  Both the British and Canadian governments were anxious at the turn of the century to improve their relations with the United States. The biggest issue was the boundary between Canada and Alaska, which was in dispute. This might not have been terribly important except for the fact that gold had been discovered in Yukon and the Alaskan panhandle affected ocean access to the territory. After a good deal of squabbling, the two sides agreed to submit the issue to a quasi-judicial tribunal. The British representatives were two Canadian lawyers and the British Lord Chief Justice. President Theodore Roosevelt made clear that the decision would be political rather than quasi-judicial when he appointed Elihu Root, his Secretary of War, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the prominent anglophobe who had played a key role in pushing the United States into the Spanish-American war,
and George Turner, a former senator from Washington State who had already publicly denounced the Canadian position.[22] Not surprisingly, the commission endorsed the American position, the two Canadians supported the Canadian position, and Lord Alverstone sided with the Americans, as he undoubtedly had been instructed to do by British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.

  Canadians were outraged, but the reality was that the Canadian claim was a weak one and Roosevelt had warned, both publicly and privately, that if the tribunal did not give him what he wanted he would send in the U.S. army to occupy the disputed territory. For their part, the British were determined not to alienate the United States at this critical point in international affairs. And as Canadian historian C. P. Stacey has pointed out, resolving the Alaskan boundary dispute was “an essential part of a general Anglo-American rapprochement by which Canada, in the long run, was the greatest gainer” even if, in the short-term, it was disagreeable.[23]

  British leaders were well aware that their nation was less secure than it had been only a few years earlier, a point brought home by the response of European nations, notably Germany, to the South African War. As well as resolving the Alaskan boundary issue, they signed a treaty with the United States in 1901, abandoning British claims in Central America, which cleared the way for the United States to build the Panama Canal. This act alone “committed Great Britain to naval inferiority in American waters and therefore to friendship with the United States.”[24] A year later Britain signed a defensive alliance with Japan.

  As it happened, the British were not the only ones anxious to improve Anglo-American relations. Prominent Americans, notably Elihu Root, were as well. Sensibly, Laurier was agreeable too, and over the next decade, eight treaties and agreements were signed, resolving all the main issues. More impressively, they formed the International Joint Commission, the purpose of which was—and still is—to resolve issues relating to lakes and rivers shared by the two countries. Thus, “well before the outbreak of the First World War . . . no serious controversy remained unsettled between Canada and the United States.”[25]

  This was reflected in the fact that, political posturing aside, the Canadian militia and the U.S. National Guard developed a friendly relationship in the later years of the nineteenth century. Recreational fraternal visits became an annual event for several regiments on both sides of the border, with Americans participating in the celebration of Queen Victoria’s birthday and Canadians joining in 4th of July celebrations.[26]

  But just as relations were improving and the after-dinner speeches extolling the cooperative sharing of the continent were becoming more frequent, the bombshell of reciprocity was dropped. In 1910 the Taft administration unexpectedly proposed a new trade agreement that would essentially replicate the 1854 reciprocity agreement, establishing free trade in natural products and raw materials. Every Canadian government since 1865 had sought this seemingly unattainable goal, and so the Laurier government quickly agreed. The timing was fortuitous because the government was facing re-election in 1911 and this, it was thought, would guarantee success.

  But times had changed, as the Conservative party quickly realized. Financial and business interests were violently opposed to the agreement, fearing that it would harm the east-west transportation system that had been built up and would inevitably be extended to manufactured goods as well. While the backlash against the government on this issue did reflect, to some extent, the always latent Canadian suspicion of American intentions, it also reflected the longstanding belief by many English-Canadian Protestants that Laurier’s patriotism was suspect. When combined with the raging controversy over Laurier’s proposal to build a Canadian navy (which will be discussed later), the conclusion seemed clear: this government was weak on the British connection and leaned toward economic and possibly even political integration with the United States.

  In the end, after one of the uglier election campaigns in Canadian history, Laurier went down in defeat and the Conservatives returned to office, led by Robert Borden, a lawyer from Nova Scotia. The change in government inevitably implied a change in Canadian relations with Britain and the United States because Laurier’s political strength was based in Quebec and rural Canada, while Borden’s support was almost entirely based in English Canada, especially Ontario and the Maritimes, with virtually no strength in Quebec, except among the English-speaking minority.

  While Borden and Laurier were both nationalists, Laurier was also fundamentally an isolationist and pacifist who resisted those in Britain and Canada who sought to centralize or institutionalize the empire. Borden represented the readiness of many English Canadians to see Canada play an active part in world politics through contributing to imperial foreign and defense policies in return for a voice in the formation of those policies. When Laurier had said in 1900 that “if you want us to help you, call us to your councils,” he was speaking hypothetically because he didn’t want to participate in imperial councils. Borden did, and as luck would have it, his was the government that would take Canada into the First World War.

  1. The Times, 22 May 22, 1915, quoted in Vance, Maple Leaf, 65.

  2. Borden diary, February 5, 1916, quoted in Cook, Warlords, 124.

  3. 5.7% of the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles, for example, Carman Miller, Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War, 1899–1902 (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 417.

  4. Fred Gaffen, Cross-Border Warriors (Toronto: Dundurn, 1995), 20.

  5. Joseph S. Smith, Other There and Back in Three Uniforms, 11–12.

  6. Alexander McClintock, Best o’ Luck: How a Fighting Kentuckian Won the Thanks of Britain’s King (Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1917), 13. McClintock was either a naval student at Kentucky State University or a student at the Virginia Military Institute when he went to Montreal in October 1915 and enlisted in the 87th (Canadian Grenadier Guards) Battalion. He said both things at different times. He was badly wounded at the Somme in November 1916, suffering twenty-two shrapnel wounds to his legs, but survived. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, was invalided home and discharged. He then joined the U.S. army reserve as a lieutenant but did not go overseas. “Unable to find solace in sleep, and tormented by what the Western Front had done to him,” he committed suicide in June 1918. Tim Cook, At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1914–1916 (Toronto: Viking, 2007), 519.

  7. William R. Jones, Fighting the Hun from Saddle and Trench (Albany, NY: Aiken Book Company, 1918), 1. He served as a sergeant major in the Royal Canadian Dragoons. Following demobilization, he re-enlisted at Toronto in June 1919 and served in the 259th Battalion in the Siberian expedition.

  8. Herbert W. McBride, The Emma Gees (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1918), 2. See also Herbert W. McBride, A Rifleman Went to War (Plantersville, SC: Small-Arms Technical Publishing Company, 1935). After being wounded in 1916, he was discharged and returned home in April 1917 and spent the rest of the war training American troops in the United States.

  9. Speaking in Kingston, Ontario, in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt explicitly extended it to Canada, saying “the Dominion of Canada is part of the sisterhood of the British Empire. I give to you assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other empire.” Quoted in C. G. Fenwick, “Canada and the Monroe Doctrine,” The American Journal of International Law 32, no. 4 (October 1938): 782.

  10. J. A. Currie, The Red Watch: With the First Canadians in Flanders (London: Constable, 1916), 22.

  11. Quoted in Robert Craig Brown and Ramsay Cook, Canada 1896–1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 28.

  12. Quoted in J. L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer, For Better or For Worse: Canada and the United States to the 1990s (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1991), x.

  13. Quoted in Granatstein and Hillmer, xi.

  14. Quoted in Granatstein and Hillmer, xi.

  15. For her version of her al
leged exploits, see her book, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Comprising the Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps and Battle-Fields (Hartford, CT: W. S. Williams, 1865). Another Canadian living in Michigan who served in the Union army was a distant cousin of mine. James Tennyson, who was born at Hawkesbury, Upper Canada, moved to Port Huron, Michigan, with his parents in the 1850s. He enlisted in the 7th Michigan Infantry in August 1861 and was killed at Antietam on September 17, 1862.

  16. The Confederate soldiers crossed the border and robbed three banks in St. Albans, then returned to Montreal. They were arrested and charged, but the court ruled that because they had acted under military orders, Canada, which like Britain was officially neutral, could not extradite them to the United States. Canada therefore freed the raiders but returned the $88,000 seized from them to the banks.

  17. John Herd Thompson and Stephen J. Randall, Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies. 2nd ed. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 57.