The hot and languid summer of 1914 was rudely interrupted by
escalating hostilities an ocean and a world away from Canada. Once Britain
declared war on Germany, it was only a matter of hours before Canada rallied to
support her Mother Country. After all, Canadians were British subjects in those
days.
“WAR” screamed the Toronto
Star headline on August 5, and people cheered in the streets. With a mixture of excitement and patriotism,
over 30,000 naïve young Canadians hurried to enlist in a conflict that everyone
thought would be over by Christmas. They couldn’t have imagined the enormous
sacrifices they would make.
Privilege and wealth
didn’t help. In fact, officers were killed in proportionally larger numbers
than their men. Some families lost all their sons. Many felt that the best and
brightest were among those who lay in the endless rows of graves.
During the four years of conflict, 600,000 Canadians
enlisted, 68,000 died and over 170,000 were wounded, some more than once. Canada's
population at that time was less than 8 million. There is, of course, no record
of the mental and emotional toll that "the war to end all wars" took
on the participants and their families.