DAVID MACKENZIE
The people of Newfoundland and the Maritimes responded to the outbreak of the Great War in a fashion similar to Canadians elsewhere. Talk of war arose unexpectedly in late July 1914, and in the newspapers stories on the deteriorating European situation swept aside local politics, imperial affairs, and the ‘Irish problem.’ Even the rioting and violence that erupted during the street railwaymen’s strike in Saint John, New Brunswick, faded from public attention as ‘headlines concerning Sarajevo, the Kaiser, the British fleet, and Belgium drove Saint John’s labour troubles out of everyone’s mind.’1 The outbreak of war sparked an outburst of patriotism that spanned the divisions in Maritime society based on language, religion, class, gender, race and between rural and urban society. As one Maritime historian has written, ‘apart from a few eccentrics, almost everybody – workers, employers, Acadians, Blacks, Catholics, Protestants, Liberals, Conservatives, men and women – supported the Empire in its struggle against the Germans. Certainly, in August 1914 there were no important dissenters. Most Maritimers were intensely loyal to a Britain they identified with Christianity, civilization, and progress; for them, loyalty to King and Empire overshadowed loyalty to Canada or to region.’2 Before it was over the Atlantic region would contribute to the military over 72,000 enlisted men and women.3
Governments responded immediately to the declaration of war with pledges of support for Britain and the war effort. In New Brunswick, Acting Premier George Clarke announced that his province would ‘give whatever aid is deemed best for the empire to the utmost extent of the province’s ability in the present crisis,’4 and his government donated 100,000 bushels of potatoes for war relief. In Charlottetown, the Conservative government offered 100,000 bushels of oats to Britain and cut short the celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference. In Nova Scotia, Liberal Premier George Murray pledged 100,000 tons of coal on behalf of his province, but ended up giving $100,000 in its place. The Newfoundland government immediately pledged its support to Great Britain and within days, amid the public rallies and outbursts of patriotic enthusiasm, helped to create the Newfoundland Patriotic Association, an independent and non-partisan organization charged with the raising, equipping, and shipping of troops for the war effort. The first contingent of approximately 500 Newfoundland volunteers sailed for Britain on 4 October 1914.5
At the start of the war there were just under 1 million Maritimers, and they were a diverse group of people – English and French, Protestant and Catholic, White and Black, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, men and women, farmers, fishers, workers, managers, and many more. For most, allegiance went to province over region, empire over nation. This was also the era of progressive reform in North America, and, as Maritime historians have been quick to point out, it was no different in the Maritimes. The old notion of Maritime conservatism has been put to rest and the pressing issues of the day – women’s suffrage, prohibition, urban and social reform, labour regulation – were debated across Atlantic Canada in legislatures, church groups, universities, community centres, and at home.6
The Maritime economy continued to rely on the traditional primary products of the farm, forests, and ocean, but the real story of the new century was the growth in coal production and the rise of an iron and steel industry centred in Cape Breton Island and Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Thanks to railway construction and the protection of high tariffs on iron and steel imports, by the outbreak of the war the Maritimes were producing close to half the primary iron and steel in Canada. This industrial expansion was accompanied by the growth of a significant manufacturing sector in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. By 1915 Nova Scotia manufacturing produced over $70 million worth of material and employed almost 34,000 people.7 But there also were reasons for concern about the future. The out-migration of Maritimers was already a significant issue and, when combined with the population and economic growth of the west and central Canada, was gradually eroding the relative influence of the region in Confederation, leading to repeated government efforts to maintain Maritime representation in Ottawa.8 As news of the outbreak of the Great War spread across the region, however, the people of the Maritime provinces were generally optimistic about their future.
Newfoundlanders also had reason for optimism in 1914. It was not unusual for the pre-war governments of Newfoundland, a self-governing colony of 240,000 in 1911, to run a surplus. The long-standing problem of the French Shore (dating from the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which gave landing rights on parts of Newfoundland’s coast to French fishers), was finally settled in Newfoundland’s favour in 1904. In addition, the completion of the island-wide Newfoundland Railway and the 1905 establishment of the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Corporation and subsequent construction of a pulp and paper mill at Grand Falls led to some resource development and economic expansion and to even greater dreams of future growth and prosperity.
Nevertheless, there were great religious and class cleavages running through Newfoundland society. Most Newfoundlanders traced their ancestors to Ireland and the west of England, and the population mix of Catholic and Protestant was reflected in the denominational school system and in the fabric of Newfoundland society. Moreover, there were sharp class divisions in the fishing industry between the small, powerful merchant elite centred in St John’s and the great mass of fishers, who scratched out a living year after year, disorganized, exploited, and usually heavily in debt.
The outbreak of war was welcomed in the Maritimes and Newfoundland with an outpouring of support for Great Britain and the empire, and although this original commitment was sustained through the war, the original enthusiasm began to evaporate as it dragged on. In both countries the war unleashed internal tensions and divisions that were exacerbated by a conscription crisis and ultimately led to the formation of national coalition governments. Newfoundlanders, like their Canadian cousins, made enormous sacrifices for the war effort and emerged in 1918 with a stronger sense of national identity. For Maritimers the experience was a little less certain. While the war was only one crucial moment in a long period of social change, the patriotic response to the war hastened the integration of the Maritimes into the larger Canadian economy and likely made Maritimers more ‘Canadian.’ At the same time, it accelerated the process that would lead to the creation of a strong regional identity and the explosion of Maritime discontent in the 1920s.
Atlantic Canada was the part of the country closest to the war in Europe and the one part directly touched by enemy activity. The fledgling Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), small, neglected, and overshadowed by the much larger Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), pursued its wartime duties on the east coast with energy and determination. At the start of the war the RCN’s Atlantic fleet comprised one ship – the HMCS Niobe (manned by Canadians, Newfoundlanders, and a majority of British sailors) – and at first the lack of coastal defence was not a serious problem. Nevertheless, throughout the war coastal artillery were maintained at Halifax, Sydney, and Saint John, while the protection of Canada’s coastal waters was left to Great Britain and the Royal Navy.9
Fear of enemy activity off the Atlantic coast ran high for most of the war, and these fears were heightened by the success of German U-boats, which seemed able to roam across the Atlantic at will and with deadly success. In the early years the U-boat threat was a potential one only, but this was sufficient to raise concerns, and the RCN responded with coastal patrols all along the Atlantic coast and up the St Lawrence River. A direct enemy attack was unlikely, and coastal patrols ensured that no U-boat made use of any natural harbour. But the arrival of German U-boats off the coast of North America by the end of 1916, followed by Germany’s adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, brought the war to the shores of Atlantic Canada and Newfoundland. U-boats began to appear in Canadian waters and the RCN lacked the ability to stop them. RCN coastal patrols were stepped up, but even more important, a system of convoy escorts, based at Halifax and Sydney, was introduced. Later, in June 1918, the Canadian government established two air stations in Nova Scotia; a seaplane base at Halifax, which became operational in August, and one at North Sydney, operational in September 1918.10 There were some questions over command on the east coast, but the impact of the convoys on the Maritimes was clear. A convoy system needed administrative support and people, and large port facilities were constructed at Sydney and Halifax, the latter becoming the administrative centre for the east coast.11
The war was perhaps more obvious in Halifax than anywhere else in the Maritimes. Halifax residents (numbering 46,619 in 1911 and some 7,000 more in Dartmouth) saw their city and port turned upside down with military construction and as a centre for convoy assembly, coastal patrols, and, by 1918, aerial activity. The port facilities were expanded and shipping activity was greatly increased: tonnage handled in the harbour jumped from $2 million in 1913 to over $17 million in 1917, and the value of exports passing through the harbour soared from less than $20 million in 1915 to over $140 million in 1917. The defence of Halifax became the responsibility of the army, and a garrison of troops was stationed there for the duration of the war. More important for the city, by 1915 Halifax became the main embarkation point for the Canadian forces heading overseas, and the influx of thousands of soldiers in transit put enormous strains on the city’s resources. All these men needed hospitals and recreational facilities, as well as food and shelter, and their arrival sparked a construction boom. In addition, workers from across the province and country migrated to the city for the new jobs that appeared, increasing the population and introducing greater ethnic diversity. Halifax experienced its share of housing shortages and inflation, putting a great stress on a municipal government that was forced to deal with problems never before experienced.12
Despite the war off the Atlantic coast and the actions of the RCN, Maritimers, like most Canadians, looked to the army, not the navy, to conduct the war effort. Recruitment campaigns sprang up in the great wave of excitement, and thousands of young Maritime men responded to the call of empire. In each of the provinces Belgian Relief Committees and other charitable organizations were established to collect food and clothes for overseas relief, and public pressure was put on all eligible men to enlist. The divisions between politics, the press, church, and school blurred as politicians, preachers, university administrators, editors, and others used their influence and positions to encourage the youth of Atlantic Canada to heed the call. At first little pressure was needed. At Acadia University, for example, faculty resigned to take on war work and students enlisted in great numbers, so much so that financial problems resulted for the university. Of the class of 1918, twenty-seven of twenty-nine males who had enrolled in 1914 enlisted. Similar drops in student enrolment occurred at other universities. At Dalhousie, in 1914–15, one-third of registered male students joined up.13 Coal miners and other workers also enlisted by the thousands, and if the number of strikes is any indication, working-class support for the war effort was evident. In both 1912 and 1913 there were thirty-two strikes in the Maritimes; that number dropped to seven in 1914 (before the outbreak of the war), and in 1916 there were only three.14 In 1914 the Nova Scotia Provincial Workmen’s Association issued a resolution approving ‘the action taken by our Government and their determination to place all the resources of the country, our blood and our treasure, at the disposal of our Empire in order that this war may be prosecuted until the German Empire shall retain a place in history only.’15
Nova Scotia led the Maritime provinces in recruitment, contributing some 30,500 men. The battalions of the Nova Scotia Brigade were a source of great pride and were useful tools in recruitment drives, and any efforts to break up the Nova Scotians for reinforcements elsewhere were met with fierce opposition.16 At Aldershot camp near Kentville, Nova Scotia, a crowd of 5,000 watched ‘with thrilled hearts, and faces alight with pride, the Nova Scotia Highland Brigade swing past them in military manoeuvres.’ For this author the moral value and purifying nature of the war was clear: ‘a great miracle has been worked in Nova Scotia; the fisherman, the lumberman, the farmer, the clerk, the student of a year ago, was moving along that parade ground a part of a great human machine vibrant with determination surging with the manly blood of wholesome, keen eye, clear cut, clean limbed, sunburned manhood of the bluenose stock.’17
New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island lagged behind Nova Scotia in recruitment, and, indeed, Maritimers generally enlisted at a lower rate than English-speaking Canadians in Ontario and the western provinces. Whereas westerners and Ontarians enlisted at a rate of 15.52 per cent and 14.42 per cent, respectively, for the eligible age group, the rate of enlistment in the Maritimes was significantly lower at 9.96 per cent.18 One explanation for the lower enlistment rate in the Maritimes was the presence of the large Acadian population, whose support for the war mirrored that of other francophone communities in the country. The Acadian press supported the war effort, and the creation of 165th Acadian Battalion in 1915 helped to raise support, but there were troubles in finding sufficient Acadian recruits to fill the ranks. Even more important were the migration of many service-age men to other parts of Canada and the United States combined with the lack of a large British-born population in the Maritimes; for it was the latter group that swelled the ranks in central and western Canada.19
One group of Maritimers who were not welcome, despite their willingness to serve, were Blacks. Maritime recruiters were no different from those across the country, in that visible minorities were discouraged from enlisting in the CEF. Although there were no specific regulations preventing minorities from enlisting, local commanders and recruiters ensured that this was to be a ‘white man’s war.’ A handful of Nova Scotian Blacks served in the 106th Battalion, Nova Scotia Rifles, and several others saw action in France, but those who managed to get past the recruiters faced open and hostile racism from their officers, White soldiers, and in the local communities. Private Percy J. Richards from Saint John later recalled his experience: ‘We would go to the recruiting centre in Sussex … The recruitment officer, who was of German descent, told us that it was not a Black man’s war. He questioned why we wanted to join the Army.’20 This situation was unacceptable for the large Black communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and led to protests against the blatant racism and discrimination. Finally, in the summer of 1916 Ottawa agreed to establish the No. 2 Construction Battalion, CEF, a Black labour battalion headquartered first at Pictou before moving to Truro, Nova Scotia. The great majority of recruits for the No. 2 Construction Battalion came from Nova Scotia and to a lesser degree from New Brunswick, but it was open to all African-Canadians and also included some recruits from the United States. On 28 March 1917 the battalion left Halifax for Britain with nineteen officers and 605 men. Because of its numbers the battalion was reduced to a company and attached to the Canadian Forestry Corps, CEF and served in France until the end of the war.21 The Great War may have been about many things for Canadians, but racial equality was not one of them.
Across the Cabot Strait, a total of 11,988 Newfoundlanders volunteered for service in the war. Approximately 8,700 enlisted in Newfoundland and of this number 6,241 served in the Newfoundland Regiment (accorded the title ‘Royal’ Newfoundland Regiment in 1917 in response to its achievements and great sacrifices), 1,966 in the Royal Naval Reserve, and 494 in the Newfoundland Forestry Corps. The sailors in the Naval Reserve were dispersed into the Royal Navy, while the Forestry Corps was raised at the request of the British government to help to overcome the shortage of timber for ship-building in Britain. The Forestry Corps consisted of many recruits who were ineligible for other services as well as hundreds of experienced lumberjacks. At the same time, 3,296 Newfoundlanders enlisted in the CEF, meaning that well over 25 per cent of Newfoundlanders who enlisted chose the Canadian Army.22 In addition, more than forty female nurses served overseas in hospitals in Great Britain and France.23
The focus of the Newfoundland war effort was the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (RNR). Enlistment in the RNR was at a rate no higher than that in the CEF, but if you subtract from the Canadian rate those who were born in the British Isles, it becomes clear that native-born Newfoundlanders volunteered at a rate higher than did native-born Canadians. Equally, the fatality rate in the Newfoundland overseas contingent was significantly higher than that experienced by the Canadians. Of the 5,046 Newfoundlanders sent overseas in the RNR, there were 3,565 casualties, including 1,281 fatalities. A front-line Newfound-land soldier had a 70 per cent chance of being killed or wounded during the war.24 Given that the greatest source of recruits for the RNR came from the St John’s area, the impact of this extraordinary casualty rate was felt the greatest there. This impact was felt not only through the suffering and despair of the families of the deceased, but also in the post-war era if only because of the absence of so many potential leaders of Newfoundland society.
Royal Newfoundland Regiment just prior to sailing for Gallipoli; Aldershot, England, August 1915 (National Archives of Canada, PA127034)
Several companies served in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, where disease was as much a foe as enemy fire, but it is the battle near Beaumont Hamel in northern France that lives on in the memory of most Newfoundlanders: on 1 July 1916 – the first day of the Battle of the Somme – close to 1,000 members of the RNR were met by German forces in what can only be called a massacre. In their effort to capture the German lines, the Newfoundlanders suffered 720 casualties, and about one quarter of the regiment was killed. Other battles followed, recording similar carnage: in October 1916 at Gueudecourt the RNR suffered 239 casualties; in the Battle of Arras on 17 April 1917 another 460 casualties; and at Cambrai in December 1917 more than 300.25
All these dead and wounded had names and families, and the rising number of casualties brought the war home to Newfoundland. Home defence, which had been largely ignored before the war, now became a matter of much concern if not a cause for much action. Fear and rumours of possible German submarine activity off the Newfoundland coast added to the tension at home and partly explains why the Newfoundland government arrested and/or deported some sixty enemy aliens and others deemed suspicious or untrustworthy.26
At home the war seeped into the fabric of Maritime society. Politically, it was an era of stable government, and despite the heated debates and rhetoric of election campaigns, from a distance it is the similarities rather than the differences that stand out. At the start of the war there were two Conservative and one Liberal governments. All were fundamentally conservative in nature while offering a mild degree of progressive reform. They dealt with fiscal issues, public works, workmen’s compensation and employer’s liability, temperance, women’s suffrage, and, of course, the war effort.27
In Nova Scotia the Liberals, under the leadership of George Murray, were in office continuously from 1896–1923 and survived a wartime election in 1916. Likewise, in Prince Edward Island the Conservatives remained in office throughout the war and won a wartime election in 1915. The most significant change occurred in 1917, when Aubin-Edmond Arsenault was appointed premier, becoming the first Acadian premier in Island history. Only in New Brunswick did political power change hands, in an election that reflected the growing tensions within Maritime society. In 1912 the Conservatives under James Flemming won forty-six of forty-eight seats. Flemming resigned after being implicated in a scandal; his replacement, G.J. Clarke, died in 1917 and was replaced by James Murray, who called an election for February 1917. In that election the southern counties voted Conservative, but the Acadian counties voted strongly Liberal and helped to ensure a Liberal victory. Anglo outrage was expressed in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner: ‘if the English-speaking electorate submit quietly to the humiliation, the Acadians and their church will soon be in absolute control of the government and the affairs of the province.’28 The new Liberal government of W.E. Forster hardly threatened to transform New Brunswick society, but these divisions unleashed during the provincial campaign were repeated on the federal level later in that same year.
At the top of the political agendas of all three provinces was the issue of prohibition. The movement against alcohol prospered in the Maritimes as it did in parts of the rest of the country because it was embraced as part of the wide middle-class movement of progressive social reform before the war and after 1914 was linked to the war effort and patriotism. Church groups, women’s groups, and national and local temperance organizations all clamoured for prohibition, using the war and the need for conservation as a justification. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) demanded tougher temperance laws; others called for plebiscites on the issue. The wartime debate varied from province to province, but in all provinces there was a constant battle over the introduction and amendment of temperance legislation. Prince Edward Island introduced prohibition in 1901 and toughened its law in 1918; New Brunswick introduced a prohibition law in 1917. In Nova Scotia a temperance bill that excluded Halifax was passed first in 1910, and, with the increase of support during the war, temperance legislation covered most of the province by 1916, but Halifax was always a hard sell on this issue. Moreover, all the provinces came under the federal law when it was passed in 1918. Nevertheless, while the war can be credited with introducting prohibition on the national level, it was not the whole story with respect to the Maritimes. There was strong public support for prohibition and provincial legislation was in place – especially in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia – before the war began, and the support lasted long after the war was over.29
In the vanguard of the prohibition movement were Maritime women, and it is no surprise that the prohibition movement was interconnected with the struggle for female suffrage. Before the war, Maritime women – like most Canadian women – found that their role was defined by society as being in the home, and when women worked, they earned less than men and maintained an inferior legal status. Most Maritime women, especially English-speaking middle-class women, were enthusiastic supporters of the war effort, and they threw themselves into war work and recruitment activities, including the Red Cross and hospital work, fund-raising, and food and clothes drives. In New Brunswick, for example, the provincial Red Cross, led by Lady Tilley, collected money and thousands of socks, shirts, handkerchiefs, and bandages for overseas, while the Girls’ Home Efficiency Clubs collected 50,000 quarts of food in 1918 alone.30
The movement of women into the workplace and the monumental war work undertaken by women in organizations like the WCTU, the Red Cross, the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), and the Victorian Order of Nurses did a lot to overcome the strong anti-suffrage and anti-feminist attitudes in the three Maritime provinces. It also gave a boost to the women’s movements in the Maritimes, which at times in the past had been disorganized and in some cases almost non-existent. For some, the war played a key role in the granting of the franchise to women. One feminist journalist later wrote about her experiences in Nova Scotia, noting that ‘at the end (the vote) came without struggle in recognition of women’s services during the war. Things often work out that way I find.’31
Certainly in the political arena the contribution of women to the war effort was a constant factor in the suffrage debates, giving the male politicians a sound reason – and justification – for giving women the vote. But the extent of wartime influence must be assessed with some caution. In 1917 the Nova Scotia Local Council of Women supported a franchise bill, arguing that Nova Scotia should follow the lead of the western provinces that had given the vote to women, and Premier Murray himself announced that the vote for women was inevitable. Nevertheless, the bill was defeated. Similarly, in New Brunswick suffrage bills were defeated in 1917 and withdrawn in 1918, despite the great support from the WCTU and other women’s organizations. Only the women of Nova Scotia had the provincial vote by the end of the war (1918); it became law in New Brunswick in 1919 and in Prince Edward Island only in 1922. There is little evidence to suggest that the war had any significant impact on attitudes about the place of women in Maritime society.32
Much the same could be said about Newfoundland, where the progressive movements of women’s suffrage and temperance became the focus of considerable debate during the war. The temperance movement was influenced by developments in Canada and elsewhere, but wartime patriotism was likely the greatest impetus for success. In 1915 a national plebiscite went in favour of prohibition, and on 1 January 1917 the Newfoundland government outlawed the sale and use of alcohol.33 Similarly, the women’s movement, which had emerged from church basements and the WCTU into middle-class Newfoundland society, found fertile ground in wartime service. The outbreak of war was followed shortly by the creation of the Women’s Patriotic Association (WPA), and by the end of the war it had formed over 200 branches across the island and had some 15,000 members. The WPA raised money, organized sales and bazaars, sponsored concerts and dinners, ran a club for returning soldiers, encouraged recruitment, and conducted special charity events to raise money for various causes. Even more important, the WPA undertook an island-wide knitting campaign for the war effort and in so doing immortalized the Newfoundland grey military sock.34 The war experience may have also indirectly helped the suffrage cause, although the vote did not come until 1925.35
Both women and men benefited from the new jobs that opened up in war-related industries, and the war clearly helped to eliminate unemployment in the region, but gauging the impact of the war on the economy of Atlantic Canada as a whole is more difficult. On the surface the war probably helped the economy: Halifax and Saint John boomed with activity and construction; in 1917 the combined value of exports and imports through the port of Saint John was $206,087,220, up from approximately $30 million in 1912. In that same year, Halifax handled 1.7 million tons of freight and steel ship-building in Nova Scotia increased rapidly as well. Moreover, the value of manufacturing in Halifax alone topped $22 million. Munitions production went up, as did the prices for some of the products produced by Maritime industry; unemployment disappeared, and in some areas labour became scarce. ‘Wartime prosperity extended beyond manufacturing,’ McKay writes, ‘the fisheries were more active than they had been for years; farmers throve on a higher demand for their products and higher prices; lumbermen exploited new market possibilities, such as supplying British collieries with the pit props they could no longer obtain in Europe. There even seemed to be new hope for wooden shipbuilding.‘36
In other areas the economic benefits were less clear. The war had no significant impact on export patterns for the lumber industry, although it did produce higher prices and led to increased lumbering activity. Egg production increased, but not greatly; butter production rose and cheese production fell. The production of pig iron in Nova Scotia fluctuated, while exports of Nova Scotian apples rose dramatically, but this growth was part of a process of steady increase from the 1880s to the 1930s. Gypsum production in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick slumped during the war, but revived and expanded in the 1920s. Pulp-wood production in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick doubled between 1913 and 1920, but it doubled again in 1920s. In the important coal industry, output in Nova Scotia rose steadily up to 1915, then dropped over the next decade, only to revive in the late 1920s (output in New Brunswick, although on a much smaller scale, rose during the war). The sale of Maritime coal to the central-Canadian market, however, dropped significantly during the war, but even here the market revived after the war. More generally, the Maritimes fell further behind central Canada in manufacturing and industrial expansion, but this process had begun before the war and continued long after it was over.37
There is little question that the war was followed by severe economic problems in the Maritimes, but how the Great War fits into the equation is less clear. In chapter 6 Doug McCalla examines the economic impact of the war on the whole country, and it is clear that, like the rest of Canada, the Maritimes faced a period of economic readjustment after the war in trying to re-establish markets – in fish exports for the Caribbean, timber markets in Britain, coal for central Canada. But in most areas the economic problems following the war were caused by larger problems than those unleashed by the war. Railway construction in Canada had peaked before the war and was already in decline. With that decline came a drop in demand for steel rails produced in Nova Scotia and, consequently, a drop in demand for Nova Scotian coal. The out-migration of Maritimers to the west and elsewhere was a serious concern, and the rate of population growth in the Maritimes had already slowed down before the war. Likewise, manufacturing and banking were moving west, and central Canadian branch plants were moving in. The relative position of the Maritimes in Confederation was declining, and the region was increasingly becoming integrated into the larger Canadian economy.38
Nowhere was this process more apparent than in the amalgamation of the Intercolonial Railway into the Canadian National Railway, a process that lasted from 1917 to 1923. The Intercolonial – created as part of the Confederation agreement in 1867 – had long been an important factor in the Maritime economy. Low freight rates made it easier for Maritime business to compete with that of central Canada, but these same rates, combined with high costs and deficits made the Intercolonial an easy target for attack from central and western Canada. Maritime representation in the federal cabinet was weak and was unable to halt the merger that included the shifting of the Intercolonial head office from Moncton to Toronto. The impact of the demise of the Intercolonial on the Maritimes has been hotly debated, but the loss of control and the subsequent huge rise in freight rates undoubtedly contributed to the post-war sense of regional grievance in the region.39 The loss of the Intercolonial and other factors contributed to the economic eclipse of the Maritime provinces, but they also pre-dated the outbreak of the war. The Great War did little more than interrupt a process of economic decline that was already underway. It did little to reverse these trends and, indeed, in some ways – such as the push for railway amalgamation – probably accelerated them.
The railway question was not a factor in Newfoundland, but the war had an equally mixed impact on the Newfoundland economy. On the surface it was an era of great prosperity, but the era was brief and ended with the war in 1918. Exports jumped in value from $13.136 million in 1914–15 to almost $37 million in 1918–19, and imports rose just as quickly. Government revenue and spending rose sharply as well.40 In the fishery, foreign competition declined because of the war and the international price for fish rose along with demand. Fishers and merchants tried to benefit as much as possible from the advantageous wartime conditions, but in an odd way they became victims of this brief prosperity. As historian James Hiller writes, ‘at the end of the war the fishing industry was over-extended and vulnerable. Fishermen and merchants alike had borrowed in order to expand operations and profit from the boom, and a number of the newer firms were undercapitalized. Fish prices began to drop, yet the price of imports remained high. Market conditions became difficult as competitors’ fish began to arrive once again.’41 In other ways Newfoundland’s economy emerged relatively unchanged. There was fairly little industrial development, and, as a result, there was less of the influx of women and men into war production that was experienced in Canada, the United States and Great Britain.42 For most women the focus of war work remained the Women’s Patriotic Association, while for many other Newfoundlanders there were well-paying jobs to be had in Canada and the United States.
Financing the war was equally problematic. The main source of revenue for the government of Newfoundland was the tariff, and there were few direct taxes to speak of, although an income tax was introduced late in the war. The government borrowed heavily to finance its war effort, while expenses on public works rose considerably, and at the end of the war Newfoundland’s public debt had risen to $43 million. This debt continued to rise after the war as fish prices fell and economic conditions worsened, and these circumstances set the stage for the eventual catastrophic financial problems of the 1930s. The war should not be blamed for the collapse of responsible government fifteen years later, however, since there were problems in the fishing industry and in an over-extended and expensive railway that pre-dated the war. At the same time, successive governments made little headway in dealing with these intractable problems either during the war or in the early post-war years.43
For Newfoundlanders and Maritimers things began to go sour in 1917. Casualty figures mounted and war weariness set in, anti-enemy feelings escalated into xenophobia at home, and old divisions in Maritime society that had been patched over by wartime patriotism and a sense of self-sacrifice reappeared. The rising cost of living began to eat away at the gains made by labour, and the calls to God and country lost their appeal the longer the war lasted and with each new revelation of wartime profiteering and corruption. Unions that had thrown themselves behind the war effort in 1914 began to reassert traditional demands for wages and working conditions. Others, like the steelworkers, went through a process of unionization during the war, buoyed by the confidence that wartime prosperity had produced. The number of strikes began to rise, leading to an explosion of union militancy once the war was over.44
Other tensions appeared, especially over conscription. Recruitment began falling. In September 1916, for example, a two-week, province-wide campaign was launched in New Brunswick with more than two dozen meetings (which included the carrying of a burning cross of St Andrew across the province on horseback, foot, and by auto), but it was largely unsuccessful. The meeting in Saint John produced only four recruits. As in other parts of the country, criticism appeared against the ‘slackers’ and, especially, those who spoke French.45
The debate over conscription unfolded along predictable lines, but Maritimers voted in their own way in the conscription federal election of December 1917. Some newspapers lined up solidly behind conscription and Borden’s attempts to form the Union Government. The Saint John Globe said it was necessary to win the war, and that ‘a further trial of voluntary enlistment means a further drain of the young manhood of Anglo-Saxon Canada, but no further assistance from Quebec. Is that more in the national interest than an act which fairly distributes the burden of service, and makes all who are sharers in the privileges and benefits of Canadian life contribute to its maintenance?’46 Others were not so sure. The Acadians – who had never opposed the war – were generally opposed to conscription, even though some of their politicians and leaders were divided on the issue. The opposition may have been less vocal and the reaction to conscription less vociferous than in Quebec, but that was likely because of the status of Acadians as a minority in each of the Maritime provinces.47
In the election campaign, however, support for conscription and the Union government was lower in the Maritimes than in the rest of English-speaking Canada. None of the three Atlantic premiers actively campaigned for the Union Government; Murray of Nova Scotia was offered a position in the new government but declined. On election day, New Brunswick divided along linguistic lines. The Liberals won the four ridings with large Acadian populations: Restigouche-Madawaska, Gloucester, Kent, and Westmorland; the rest of the province voted Union. Twelve of sixteen seats in Nova Scotia went to Borden, but only 48 per cent of the popular vote, compared with 45 per cent for the Liberals. Prince Edward Island returned two members for each party and split the popular vote. Even these numbers are a little deceiving. Political scientist J.M. Beck suggests that several of the ridings – two in Prince Edward Island and five in Nova Scotia – were won only with the questionable use of the military vote under the Military Voters Act.48 The support for the Union Government and conscription was hardly overwhelming in Atlantic Canada.
The election campaign was punctuated on 6 December by the greatest domestic disaster of the war – the Halifax explosion. The French steamship Mont Blanc and the Belgian Relief steamer Imo collided in Halifax harbour soon after 8:00 a.m. The collision sparked a fire on board the Mont Blanc, which ignited the munitions cargo in its hold. The blast completely demolished the Mont Blanc; only one bent cannon was later found on the Dartmouth side of the Narrows, while parts of the anchor landed more than two miles away. The explosion and following tidal wave killed almost 2,000 and thousands more were injured, especially from the flying glass. It flattened the Richmond district, about one square mile, smashed windows and doors across town, and shook windows up to sixty miles away. To make matters worse for the approximately 10,000 homeless, a terrible early winter storm hit that night, leaving many to huddle in the shells of their wrecked homes.
The search for survivors and the clean-up began immediately, first by the local population, but as news spread, help began to pour in from across the province, the country, and internationally. Towns and cities across the region donated food and clothes, doctors and nurses made their way to Halifax to help the wounded, a ship with supplies came from Massachusetts, and money was raised from public and private sources across North America and Great Britain. The task of reconstrucrion and rehabilitation was given to the newly created Halifax Relief Commission, but it was difficult at first even to get glass for windows and lumber for walls. It took months to rebuild the city, and for many Haligonians the rest of the war was spent in temporary shelters. Many others were left with only the ‘ugly blue scars’ of their untreated wounds.49
View of Halifax after the explosion, looking south, Halifax, N.S., 6 December 1917 (W.G. MacLaughlan, National Archives of Canada, C19953)
1917 was equally dramatic in Newfoundland. Despite the heroic recruiting efforts of the various private organizations, maintaining the Newfoundland Regiment in the field proved to be a difficult task. By late 1916, thanks to the heavy casualty rates and dropping enlistments, a manpower shortage appeared. National pride was on the line, and, as in Canada, the call for conscription was heard, although not with the same enthusiasm across the country. The Newfoundland Patriotic Association ran its recruitment campaign from St John’s and had had only limited success in the few recruitment drives it launched outside the city. This problem reflected one of the divisions in Newfoundland society: most of the enlistments came from the St John’s area, while the fishers in the outport communities, who might more keenly suffer the loss of labour of a son or father who went off to war, were less enthusiastic about enlisting. It was in these outport communities that opposition to conscription was the greatest.
The divisions within the country were reflected in the House of Assembly and among those who would decide the conscription issue. The prime minister, Sir Edward Morris, had led his People’s Party to victory in the election of 1913 by winning most of the seats in the Catholic parts of Newfoundland and in a few Protestant districts. The opposition consisted of a loose alliance of the old Liberal Party and the new Fishermen’s Protective Union (FPU) led by the dynamic William Coaker. The FPU – part union, part cooperative movement, and part political party – appeared on the scene in 1908 and within a few years had expanded into a vigorous and progressive movement fighting for the rights of fishers and other workers in Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1914 the FPU was definitely on the rise, but when the war broke out, it was largely confined to the Protestant north and had already attracted the hostility of the Catholic Church and the business class centred in St John’s.
This political alignment put Morris in a difficult position, and the introduction of conscription as a partisan issue threatened to divide the country. The unfolding of events mirrored developments in Canada. Morris represented Newfoundland at the Imperial War Conference in London in the early spring of 1917, and, like Borden, he turned to the idea of creating a national government of all parties as a way to avoid a messy wartime election. For Borden the key was Laurier; for Morris it was Coaker and the FPU, and Coaker was more open to the terms offered by Morris (which included the latter’s eventual resignation) than Laurier was to those of Borden. Coaker accepted the invitation and the National Government was announced in July 1917.50 At the end of that year Morris resigned as prime minister to become a British lord and was replaced by Liberal leader William Lloyd.
One of the first acts of the National Government in August 1917 was to take over responsibility for the Newfoundland Patriotic Association and to establish a Department of Militia to oversee recruitment in Newfoundland. The new department was equally unsuccessful in keeping up reinforcements by the volunteer method, and calls for conscription were heard once more, this time more strongly. Again, Coaker was the key. He realized that a great many of his supporters opposed conscription, but his ties to the empire, support for the war effort, and desire to prevent divisive outbursts – even violence – led him to accept conscription.51 In May 1918 the Military Service Act was passed, calling up single men aged between nineteen and thirty-nine. By the end of the war some 3,629 men were called up; 1,573 were found fit for service and were sent to Britain in August 1918. They were still in training at the time of the Armistice. None saw combat or became casualties.52 As in Canada, conscription had a greater political and social impact than a military one.
The biggest political loser in these developments was William Coaker. Prime Minister Lloyd represented Newfoundland at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, but his National Government was already falling apart. Brought together by the exigencies of war, the initial cohesion evaporated quickly and old political divisions re-emerged. Coaker’s leadership had been damaged by his support for conscription, and the growth of the FPU was stunted by its inability to attract support in the Catholic areas of Newfoundland. When the war ended, the National Government disintegrated, and Coaker found himself moving into an alliance with the revived Liberal Party (called the Liberal Reform Party) and its new ambitious leader, Richard Squires. Coaker was an influential minister in Squires’s government, which came into office following the 1919 election, but he (and his party) never regained the stature or potential of the pre-war years.53 In this respect the war had not been a moment of great change for Newfoundland politically; when it was over, the old denominational, class, and geographic divisions returned. If anything, the war had stifled the great promise of change presented by Coaker and the Fishermen’s Protective Union.
The war ended almost as unexpectedly as it had begun, and the people of Atlantic Canada and Newfoundland were hardly prepared for the peace, even though they had been longing for it for years. At first there were the usual celebrations, ‘Bedlam let loose’ in Digby, for example. ‘The fire whistle first, then locomotive and boat whistles, bells, auto horns, guns, tin horns, fire-crackers and every conceivable noise-generator was put into operation with the throttle wide open. Digby never heard such a racket and never will again.’54 Once the celebrations were over, however, people were left with the new realities of post-war life. Stories about the war and the peace settlement gradually faded from newspapers and were replaced by new concerns over labour unrest and the spreading influenza epidemic.
In some ways it was business as usual and a return to ‘normalcy.’ Soldiers returned to their homes to resume their lives, businesses reconverted to civilian production. Wartime production ended, war work ceased, jobs disappeared. For many women this meant a return to their pre-war lives, and in the post-war era women worked as domestic servants, teachers, and in factories, and they still earned less than men. But Canadian women now had the vote (and would have it provincially in all the Maritime provinces in a few years), and this change should not be underestimated.55
Halifax and Saint John saw their roles as embarkation ports reversed with the arrival home of thousands of soldiers. The pace of repatriation was hindered by the lack of available transport, and the trip home was never quick enough for the soldiers. There was some rioting by returning soldiers in Halifax in both 1918 and 1919. The cause of the rioting was usually a relatively insignificant incident that sparked anger and then spilled over into violence, but the turmoil itself was a reflection of the unrest and sense of dislocation that came with the ending of the war. As McKay nicely puts it: ‘Everything seemed to be falling apart. The sky, once alight with patriotic fireworks as Maritimers headed for Europe, glowed with the light from incendiary fires set by rioting soldiers and civilians at the end of a war that had changed the world of 1914 beyond recognition.’56
For many workers it appeared that while they had made enormous sacrifices for the war effort, others had profited. Labour action, already on the rise in 1917, surged after the armistice; workers became more radicalized and new labour parties were organized. The number of strikes rose as workers resumed old struggles and fought to preserve the gains they had made during the war. In Halifax, for example, where labour tensions were already high, some 2,000 men in the building trades went on strike in May 1919. There was even less time for celebrations in the coal and steel industries. In 1919–20 the two steel companies were integrated into the British Empire Steel Corporation, and the following years were filled with cutbacks, lay-offs, and labour unrest. For some workers the war had been a period of union strength, but it did not last long.57
The war experience probably heightened the sense of Canadian nationalism in the Maritimes for both those who served overseas and those who stayed at home. For example, George Nowlan, who would later serve as minister of national revenue in the Diefenbaker government, was one veteran whose overseas experience increased his ‘identification with a larger Canadian context.’58 At home, Maritimers experienced the same problems engendered by the war – the dislocation, shortages, and tragedies – as other Canadians; they responded to the same calls for sacrifice, thrift, and volunteerism; and they were drawn into the national debates over conscription and Union government. The war also intensified the movement towards good citizenship as a goal of the public education system, transforming ‘moral instruction from the promotion of fixed standards of individual morality to the fostering of a public morality.’ Significantly, accompanying this transformation was a shift of emphasis from imperial to Canadian citizenship.59
At the same time, the war hastened the economic integration of the Maritimes into the Canadian economy, with the demise of the Intercolonial Railway serving as a symbol of the growing centralization of Canadian economic and political power. Even in areas of growth like manufacturing the Maritimes could not match the pace of industrialization in central Canada. This relative decline only sharpened the problems of the 1920s, which did so much to foster Maritime regionalism. In the process, what went missing was that air of progressive, open-minded optimism, reflected in the significant social movements of the day, that flowed through the Maritimes from the late nineteenth century. In its place, the post-war years offered depression, disillusionment, and sharper regional divisions.
The war did little to enhance the relationship between Canada and Newfoundland. On one level the links between them were growing stronger with each passing decade. Trade with Canada now almost equalled that with the United Kingdom, and Canada was an increasingly popular destination for Newfoundland emigrants, students, and seasonal workers. In addition, Canadian business and entrepreneurs were moving to and investing in Newfoundland, Canadian currency was legal tender, and Canadian banks monopolized Newfoundland’s banking system.60 Yet the prospects for the union of the two countries were slim. In 1912 Ottawa sent A.E. Kemp, minister without portfolio, to investigate, and he reported that there was ‘no agitation going on in respect to this question, and that, so far as public opinion is concerned, the people may be said to be indifferent.’61 The war did little to change this attitude. It had created a common cause and led to collaboration between the two nations, and clearly the war had accelerated the process of Americanization in Newfoundland,62 but in no way could this process be interpreted as a step towards Confederation. Indeed, the opposite is probably closer to the truth. Before the war was over, government leaders began referring to Newfoundland as a ‘dominion’ like Canada, and Newfoundlanders emerged from the war with a stronger sense of their independence and heritage than had been the case in 1914.63 The Great War heightened nationalism in both Maritime Canada and Newfoundland, but it was nationalism experienced and articulated for two very different countries.
Maritime Canadians and Newfoundlanders, despite their ethnic, linguistic, geographic, and economic diversity, responded to the war as others did across Canada and passed through waves of enthusiasm, patriotism, moral regeneration, and progressivism, to uncertainty, questioning, and, in some cases, anger punctuated by outbursts of hatred and violence. In both Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces the impact of these experiences would be felt for many years to come. In this way, the Great War was an experience that Newfoundlanders and Maritimers shared with all the people of Canada.
1 Robert H. Babcock, ‘The Saint John Street Railwaymen’s Strike and Riot, 1914,’ Acadiensis 11, 2 (Spring 1982), 27.
2 Ian McKay, ‘The 1910s: The Stillborn Triumph of Progressive Reform,’ in E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds, The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 203.
3 Margaret Conrad and James Hiller, Atlantic Canada: A Region in the Making (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001), 162.
4 Saint John Globe, 7 August 1914; see also St John’s Daily News, 11 August 1914.
5 Frederick W. Rowe, A History of Newfoundland and Labrador (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980), 370–1.
6 See Ernest Forbes, Maritime Rights: The Maritime Rights Movement, 1919–1927: A Study in Canadian Regionalism (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979), ix; McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 193–5.
7 J. Castell Hopkins, ed., The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs, 1916 (Toronto, Annual Review Co., 1914–18), 616. See also S.A. Saunders, The Economic History of the Maritime Provinces, ed. T.W. Acheson (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1984), 30–1; Forbes, Maritime Rights, 4; McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 194–5; Craig Heron, ‘The Great War and Nova Scotia Steelworkers,’ Acadiensis 16, 2 (Spring 1987), 4.
8 See Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1914, 570; Patricia A. Thornton, ‘The Problem of Out-Migration from Atlantic Canada, 1871–1921,’ Acadiensis 15, 1 (Autumn 1985), 3–34; Forbes, Maritime Rights, 14–16.
9 Marc Milner, Canada’s Navy: The First Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 44–5. For a comprehensive look at Sydney during the war, see Brian Tennyson and Roger Sarty, Guardian of the Gulf: Sydney, Cape Breton, and the Atlantic Wars (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 113–88.
10 S.F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Vol. I (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 603–6.
11 Milner, Canada’s Navy, 47–53.
12 Thomas H. Raddall, Halifax: Warden of the North (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 248–50, Milner, Canada’s Navy, 45; see also Henry Roper, ‘The Halifax Board of Control: The Failure of Municipal reform, 1906–1919,’ Acadiensis 14, 2 (Spring 1985), 46–65.
13 Barry Moody, ‘Acadia and the Great War,’ in Paul Axelrod and John Reid, eds, Youth, University and Canadian Society: Essays in the Social History of Higher Education (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989), 149; Judith Fingard, Janet Guilford, and David Sutherland, Halifax: the First 250 Years (Halifax: Formac, 1999), 130; Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1916, 607; see also Margaret Conrad, George Nowlan: Maritime Conservative in National Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 18–19.
14 Ian McKay, ‘Strikes in the Maritimes, 1901–1914,’ Acadiensis 13, 1 (Autumn 1983), 16; McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 205–10.
15 Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1914, 545–6; see also 544–5, 567, 570, 571.
16 For example, see National Archives of Canada (NAC), Robert Borden Papers, MG 26 H, I (a), vol. 45, 20219, S. Robertson to Borden, 3 September 1914.
17 Digby Weekly Courier, 8 September 1916; Moody, ‘Acadia and the Great War,’ 146.
18 Enlistment statistics taken from Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond, and John English, Canada, 1900–1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 14.
19 Phillippe Doucet, ‘Politics and the Acadians,’ in Jean Daigle, ed., The Acadians of the Maritimes: Thematic Studies (Moncton: Centre d’études Acadiennes, 1982), 245; Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1915, 604; McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 208.
20 Calvin W. Ruck, The Black Battalion, 1916–1920: Canada’s Best Kept Military Secret (Halifax: Nimbus, 1987), 45; see also 22–6; James W. St G. Walker, ‘Race and Recruitment in World War I: Enlistment of Visible Minorities in the Canadian Expeditionary Force,’ Canadian Historical Review 70, 1 (March 1989), esp. 5.
21 Ruck, Black Battalion, 9–20; see also appendix A.
22 Christopher A. Sharpe, ‘The “Race of Honour”: An Analysis of Enlistments and Casualties in the Armed Forces of Newfoundland, 1914–1918,’ Newfoundland Studies 4, 1 (Spring 1988), 28.
23 Margot Iris Duley, ‘“The Radius of Her Influence for Good”: The Rise and Triumph of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Newfoundland, 1909–1925,’ in Linda Kealey, ed., Pursuing Equality: Historical Perspectives on Women in Newfoundland and Labrador (St John’s: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1993), 27.
24 Sharpe, ‘“Race of Honour,”’ 33–5.
25 Rowe, History of Newfoundland and Labrador, 373–4; see also Captain Leo Murphy, ‘Newfoundland’s Part in the Great War,’ in J.R. Smallwood, ed., The Book of Newfoundland, Vol. I (St John’s: Newfoundland Book Publishers, 1937), 351–451; P. Whitney Lackenbauer, ‘War, Memory, and the Newfoundland Regiment at Gallipoli,’ Newfoundland Studies 15, 2 (1999), 176–214; G.W.L. Nicholson, The Fighting Newfoundlander: A History of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (London: Government of Newfoundland, 1965). See also Arlene King, ‘Beaumont Hamel: Our Place in the Somme,’ Newfoundland Quarterly 96, 2 (Summer 2003), 9–15.
26 See Gerhard P. Bassler, ‘The Enemy Alien Experience in Newfoundland, 1914–1918,’ Canadian Ethnic Studies 20, 3 (1988), 42–62. See also David Macfarlane, The Danger Tree: Memory, War, and the Search for a Family’s Past (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1991); David Facey-Crowther, ‘Home Is Where the Heart Is: The Correspondence of Newfoundland Soldiers in the Great War,’ Newfoundland Quarterly 96, 2 (Summer 2003), 32–9.
27 See, for example, Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1916, 602; Canadian Annual Review, 1917, 631.
28 Quoted in Doucet, ‘Politics and the Acadians,’ 255.
29 Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1915, 596; Canadian Annual Review, 1916, 608; E.R. Forbes, ‘Prohibition and the Social Gospel,’ in Forbes, Challenging the Regional Stereotype: Essays on the 20th Century Maritimes (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1989), 13, 29; McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 210–11.
30 Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1915, 605; Canadian Annual Review, 1918, 666; see also McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 200–2.
31 E.M. Murray, quoted in Catherine Cleverdon, The Women Suffrage Movement in Canada, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 176; see also 195–6, 202; Alison Prentice et al., Canadian Women: A History (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 201–2.
32 See E.R. Forbes, ‘Battles in Another War: Edith Archibald and the Halifax Feminist Movement,’ in Forbes, Challenging the Regional Stereotype, 88–9.
33 Rowe, History of Newfoundland and Labrador, 367.
34 Duley, ‘Radius of Her Influence,’ 28–32; Gale Denise Warren, ‘The Patriotic Association of the Women of Newfoundland: 1914–18,’ Newfoundland Quarterly 92, 1 (1998), 23–32.
35 Duley, ‘Radius of Her Influence,’ 32–3.
36 McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 205; statistics taken from Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1917, 713; Canadian Annual Review, 1918, 648–9, 655.
37 Saunders, Economic History, 34, 77, 80–5, 106–7, 120–8.
38 John G. Reid, Six Crucial Decades: Times of Change in the History of the Maritimes (Halifax: Nimbus, 1987), 162–3; Saunders, Economic History, 26, 33, 38. See also T.W. Acheson, ‘The Maritimes and “Empire Canada,”’ in David Jay Bercuson, ed., Canada and the Burden of Unity (Toronto: Macmillan, 1977), 87–114; Gregory P. Marchildon, Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).
39 See E.R. Forbes, ‘The Intercolonial Railway and the Decline of the Maritime Provinces Revisited,’ and Ken Cruikshank, ‘With Apologies to James: A Response to E.R. Forbes,’ Acadiensis 24, 1 (Autumn 1994), 3–34; Reid, Six Crucial Decades, 164.
40 S.J.R. Noel, Politics in Newfoundland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 130.
41 James Hiller, ‘Newfoundland Confronts Canada, 1867–1949,’ in Forbes and Muise, eds, Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 365.
42 Duley, ‘Radius of Her Influence,’ 28. See also David Alexander, ‘Newfoundland’s Traditional Economy and Development to 1934,’ in James Hiller and Peter Neary, eds, Newfoundland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Essays in Interpretation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 30.
43 Hiller, ‘Newfoundland Confronts Canada,’ 365–9; St John Chadwick, Newfoundland: Island into Province (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 126.
44 See Heron, ‘Great War and Nova Scotia Steelworkers,’ 21–2.
45 See for example, Digby Weekly Courier, 12 March 1915; Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1916, 639.
46 Saint John Globe, 22 November 1917; see also 7 December 1917.
47 Quoted in Doucet, ‘Politics and the Acadians,’ 255; see also 253–4.
48 J.M. Beck, Pendulum of Power: Canada’s Federal Elections (Toronto: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 141–5; Doucet, ‘Politics and the Acadians,’ 255.
49 Raddall, Halifax, 253; Suzanne Morton, ‘The Halifax Relief Commission and Labour Relations during the Reconstruction of Halifax, 1917–1919,’ Acadiensis 18, 2 (Spring 1989), 73–93; see Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1918, 650–54; Janet Kitz, Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery (Halifax: Nimbus, 1989); Joseph Scanlon, ‘Myths of Male and Military Superiority: Fictional Accounts of the 1917 Halifax Explosion,’ English Studies in Canada 24, 4 (December 1998), 387–411; Digby Weekly Courier, 14 December 1917; Saint John Globe, 7 December 1917.
50 Ian D.H. McDonald, ‘To Each His Own’: William Coaker and the Fishermen’s Protective Union in Newfoundland, 1908–1925, ed. J.K. Hiller (St John’s: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1987), 62.
51 Noel, Politics in Newfoundland, 124–7.
52 Sharpe, ‘Race of Honour,’ 41.
53 Noel, Politics in Newfoundland, 134–48.
54 Digby Weekly Courier, 15 November 1918.
55 McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 224; D.A. Muise, ‘The Industrial Context of Inequality: Female Participation in Nova Scotia’s Paid Labour Force, 1871–1921,’ Acadiensis 20, 2 (Spring 1991), 3–31.
56 McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 222; see also Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review, 1918, 656.
57 Heron, ‘Great War and Nova Scotia Steelworkers,’ 33–4; Morton, ‘Halifax Relief Commission,’ 91; McKay, ‘The 1910s,’ 219–24. See also Ian McKay and Suzanne Morton, ‘The Maritimes: Expanding the Circle of Resistance,’ in Craig Heron, ed., The Workers’ Revolt in Canada, 1917–1925 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1998), 43–86.
58 Conrad, George Nowlan, 24. For other examples of ‘broadening horizons’ and ‘patriotic Canadians’ from the Maritimes, see Susan Mann, ed., The War Diary of Clare Gass, 1915–1918 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), xiii, xxxiv; John Hawkins, The Life and Times of Angus L. (Windsor, N.S.: Lancelot Press, 1969), 42–53.
59 Robert Nicholas Berard, ‘Moral Education in Nova Scotia, 1880–1920,’ Acadiensis 14, 1 (Autumn 1984), 61–2.
60 See Malcolm MacLeod, Kindred Countries: Canada and Newfoundland before Confederation, Historical Booklet No. 52 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1994).
61 NAC, A.E. Kemp Papers, MG 27 II D9, vol. 192, file: Borden, R.L., Correspondence, 1912–1914, Kemp to Borden, 10 October 1912. For wartime efforts to achieve Confederation, see McDonald, ‘To Each His Own’, chap. 4.
62 Noel, Politics in Newfoundland, 131.
63 Not everyone was impressed; the St John’s Daily News editorialized on 5 December 1918: ‘The Term … is altogether too high falutin for a little country with a population of less than quarter of a million. Let’s forget it, and go back to the good old title Ye Ancient Colony. It both looks and sounds better.’
