The most unknown fact about ww1
Manufacturers formed a Shell Committee, got contracts to make British artillery ammunition,Īnd created a new industry. Was hoped that factories shut down by the recession would profit from the war. Since many farm labourers had joined the Army, farmers began to complain of a labour shortage. A prewar crop failure had been a warning to prairie farmers of futureĭroughts, but a bumper crop in 1915 and soaring prices banished caution. Between 19, the national debt rose from $463 million to $2.46 billion, an enormous sum at that time.Ĭanada's economic burden would have been unbearable without huge exports of wheat, timber and munitions. Canada's war effort was financed mainly by borrowing. In 1917 the government's Victory Loan campaign began raising huge sums from ordinary citizens for the first time. In 1915 he asked for $50 million he got $100 million. Since Britain could not afford to lend to Canada, White turned to the US.Īlso, despite the belief that Canadians would never lend to their own government, White had to take the risk. By 1915, however, military spending equaled the entire government expenditure of 1913. ( see Internment), and pressured Berlin, Ontario, to rename itself Kitchener.Ī Canadian perspective, from the Legion's Legacies.Īt first the war hurt a troubled economy, increasing unemployment and making it hard for Canada's new, debt-ridden transcontinental railways, the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific, to find credit. (See Wartime Home Front and Canadian Children and the Great War.) In patriotic fervour, Canadians demanded that Germans and Austrians be dismissed from their jobs and interned Churches, charities, women's organizations, and the Red Cross found ways to "do their bit" for the war effort.
A Military Hospitals CommissionĬared for the sick and wounded.
The Canadian Patriotic Fund collected money to support soldiers' families. Much of Canada's war effort was launched by volunteers. On 3 October, the First Contingent of 30,617 men sailed for England. Minister of Militia Sam Hughes summoned 25,000 volunteers to train at a new camp at Valcartier near Québec The Liberal opposition urged Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden’s Conservative government to take sweeping powers under the new War Measures Act.