For the Allies, Vimy Ridge represented an imposing, seemingly impenetrable barrier. The feature allowed the Germans to dominate the rolling plain around Arras, one of northern France’s major industrial cities. In separate attacks throughout 1915 and 1916, French soldiers had died in their tens of thousands in vain attempts to capture the ridge. Indeed, there had been no substantial Allied success against any of the German forces on the infamous Western Front since the stalemate of trench warfare had begun two years before. The task of capturing Vimy Ridge was given to the newly unified Canadian Corps, all four Canadian divisions in France — some 97,000 men — brought together for the first time for a single operation. The attack would be part of a large British thrust in the Arras area in an attempt to draw German reserves north before the major attack of the year by the French further south. The Allied command gave the Canadians an opportunity to prove themselves, and they were determined to succeed where all others had failed.
Sergeant Percy Till of the 26th Battalion was one of the soldiers committed to the attack on Vimy. Percy and the “Fighting 26th” had served in the trenches of northern France and Belgium for twenty months. Through harsh, often unimaginable conditions and heavy losses, particularly at Courcelette, the battalion had fought honourably and won the respect of both their Canadian comrades and their German opponents. As a non-commissioned officer (NCO), Till led much of the vital small-unit training the battalion conducted in the rainy and often snowy conditions of March 1917. Rehearsing the battle on similar ground behind the front with the German trench lines marked by white tape, the troops poured over terrain models and aerial photos — they were even issued maps, for the first time in modern war. Everyone knew precisely what to do. Finally, on April 1, the 26th Battalion received orders to spearhead the operation to take Vimy Ridge. On Easter Sunday, April 8, the battalion marched cross-country, past munitions dumps, artillery posts and communications trenches to forward positions in the Thélus sector. Their objective in the forthcoming attack lay less than a kilometre away.
The first goal of the Canadian Corps’ attack on Vimy Ridge, the Black Line, was the German trenches furthest forward. In the 5th Brigade’s sector, the task of capturing the Black Line went to the 26th Battalion alongside the 24th (Victoria Rifles of Canada) Battalion, a unit of anglophone Montrealers. Despite massive support from Canadian and British artillery, which had been pounding the enemy’s positions in the weeks leading up to the attack, the infantry would still need to cross eight hundred metres of open slope and then confront well-fortified Bavarian infantry and machine gunners to capture the trench systems that comprised the Black Line. If they succeeded, the other 5th Brigade battalions — the 22nd (French Canadian) and the 25th (Nova Scotia Rifles), both of which had numerous New Brunswickers in their ranks — would pass through to continue the attack.
At 0530 hours on the morning of April 9, the attackers surged forward. On the 26th Battalion front, C Company, Sergeant Till’s unit, led the way, accompanied by the deafening roar of thousands of artillery pieces, aircraft of both sides buzzing overhead and the freezing chill of sleet and snow. In just four minutes, the company reached the first German trench and discovered that the artillery fire had completely smashed the dug-outs and eliminated most resistance. Despite stiffer fighting to capture the Furze and Zwischen Stellung trenches, in just over half an hour the 26th Battalion had taken the Black Line and the 25th Nova Scotia Rifles were able to pass through the New Brunswickers and continue the attack exactly as planned. The success was memorialized in The Glorious Story of the Fighting 26th, which described how the battalion, after “piercing the enemy’s lines deeper than any other unit in the whole army corps employed in the big offensive,” showed pride in its origins and “dug a new line naming it the ‘New Brunswick Trench,’ thus placing the name of their native province on the map of every military commander in the Allied camps.”
Glory aside, in the first three days of the attack the battalion lost fifty killed and nearly 150 more wounded, although this was fewer casualties than the 26th had suffered in previous attacks. Among the dead, however, was Sergeant Percy Till, struck by German fire while leading his men in the early hours of the assault. His body was never recovered: the 23-year-old’s name is recorded on both the Lichfield Crater Memorial and the Vimy Monument.
The 26th Battalion’s sacrifices were vital to the success of the attack. By April 12, the Canadians controlled all of Vimy Ridge, holding the position against wave after wave of determined German counterattacks. This was the first major success for Allied troops in nearly three years of usually futile fighting. More German prisoners, guns and ground were captured than in any previous offensive, including all five months of the Somme attacks. Church bells tolled throughout the British Empire to pay tribute to the Canadians, who had won a great victory the first time all four national divisions had attacked together. Vimy Ridge became the most famous Canadian feat of arms, symbolizing the international accomplishments Canadians could achieve when they worked in unison. By the time it was over, however, two hundred and fifty men of the 26th Battalion and an unknown number of New Brunswickers serving in other units lay dead on the slopes of the ridge.
Despite the triumph at Vimy, the general Allied situation looked bleak in the spring of 1917. Russia had already slipped into rebellion, the tsar deposed and a new socialist government installed. The new leaders professed their commitment to the Allied cause, but Russia was sinking quickly into chaos. Even as Canadians celebrated their victory at Vimy, the Germans were secretly transporting V.I. Lenin, the head of the outlawed Russian Communist Party, into the Russian capital. The United States joined the Allies just days before the victory at Vimy Ridge, but the Americans needed time to expand their tiny military and immediately announced that they would do so through conscription. Nonetheless, no one expected them to make an impression on the fighting in Europe for two years. This was certainly the view of the Germans, who had adopted unrestricted submarine warfare on shipping in British waters in February, accepting that it would result in a declaration of war by the United States and assuming that it would not matter. By April, U-boats were sinking British shipping at an alarming rate: so fast that the British were not sure they could last beyond the summer. Canada’s Prime Minister Borden had a front-row seat for all these events. Summoned to London in February for an Imperial War Conference, he had been to the front to see the troops and been privy to events in Europe as they unfolded. He returned to Ottawa in mid-May convinced that Canada had to do more and that compulsory military service was the only answer to the crisis that now faced the Empire and its allies.
Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden addresses Canadian troops during his European visit in early 1917. LAC PA-022654
P.J. Veniot, the outstanding Liberal party organizer who delivered the Acadian vote in the February 1917 election. He became minister of public works in the new government, and later served as New Brunswick’s first Acadian premier (1923-1925). PANB P106/47
The New Brunswick context for the bitter debate over conscription that followed was set in February by the results of the provincial general election. The Conservatives had controlled the government since a massive victory in the 1912 election reduced the opposition to just four of the forty-eight seats: two Liberals from Madawaska and two independents. But the changes the war had brought about in the province caused the public to lose faith in the Conservatives. Nepotism, corruption and failed public works schemes did not help either. The result was a massive shift in popular support and an unexpected change in government that fuelled the latent prejudices of many anglophone New Brunswickers.
In the 1917 provincial election campaign, both the Conservatives and the Liberals conducted blatant sectarian efforts. The Conservatives, despite a long history of Acadian and Catholic support for the party, opted to slander those two groups with not-so-subtle suggestions that francophones wanted language rights even as they refused to fight for the British Empire. Since provincial politicians had little impact on foreign policy, the Conservatives merely hoped to distract voters from their scandals by using prejudice and fear of francophones and Catholics to win support among the English-speaking population. The Liberals emerged victorious at the polls anyway, but the final tally split the province along north-south lines. The Liberals won only five seats in the south, in Queens, St. John and Sunbury counties, each by less than a hundred votes. The Liberals’ other twenty-two seats came in predominantly French-speaking ridings across the north.
Never before had the Acadian vote played such a decisive role in a New Brunswick election. The outstanding political organization of Liberal P.J. Veniot, soon named minister of public works in the new government, had done much to reverse the formerly solidly Conservative Acadian vote. But this was not the only factor at work. The thousands of New Brunswickers serving overseas were not permitted to vote in the election, and most commentators agreed that these “missing” votes probably would have saved the Conservatives from defeat, which immediately prompted questions about the legitimacy of the new Liberal government.
The first response to the stunning political upset was a wave of anger and resentment across the south of the province directed against Acadians and Catholics. The Fredericton Daily Gleaner commented,
Our people are facing unfortunate and serious conditions at a very critical time, and those who cannot agree that the English-speaking people of New Brunswick should be eliminated from all in the Government of the Country and pitchforked into the position of serf and servants for the Acadians . . . may be expected to put up a bitter fight before they will yield to such intolerable conditions. . . . If the English-speaking electorate submits quietly to the humiliation, the Acadians and their church will soon be in absolute control of the Government and affairs of the Province.
The Gleaner was not alone. Conspiracy theories about francophone and popish plots to destroy the province abounded. Senator William Thorne explained what he thought had happened in a letter on the Kent county results he sent to federal fisheries minister and fellow Saint Johner J.D. Hazen: “It appears that they [the Liberals] have cleverly managed the French vote by having emissaries from Quebec thoroughly canvassing all the French localities and putting forward the French propaganda of bilingualism and creating a fear that conscription would be the result of a Government success.”
New Brunswick francophones responded carefully to these accusations. Le Madawaska, an Edmundston weekly newspaper known for supporting the Conservatives, decried the “mauvaise tactique” of the Gleaner and the equally underhanded St. John Standard, closing its editorial on the subject with the hope that “les esprits vont se calmer et que ces questions de race, qui font tant de mal ailleurs, vont bientôt être abandonnées dans l’intérêt de tout le monde.” It remained to be seen, however, what kind of effect the new provincial Liberal government, or the division that had helped bring it to power, would have on New Brunswick’s contribution to the war effort.
Above all else, that contribution would depend on the conscription issue. Many different factors pressed the Canadian government to enact conscription. For one, the British had already resorted to universal military service and they firmly believed that the Dominions should follow suit. British conscription advocates reminded their listeners that both Trafalgar and Waterloo had been won by conscript forces, statements echoed by imperial supporters in Canada. Likewise, many influential organizations, including the Canadian Defence League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and most Protestant churches, publicly demanded conscription. Yet the real motivation to introduce conscription came from the prime minister himself. During his European trip Borden toured Great Britain and the Western Front in search of a solution to the reinforcement problem. When he visited the Canadian Corps in France, the soldiers jeered and booed him, demanding immediate reinforcements. The troops, some of whom had been fighting in horrendous conditions for two years and had seen many of their comrades maimed or killed, believed there were plenty of physically able men at home who were capable of serving, but who had chosen not to perform their duty: their turn had come. As Borden announced upon his return, “What I saw and learned made me realize how much more critical is the position of the Allies and how much more uncertain is the ultimate result of the great struggle.”
The outcome of the “great struggle” most certainly remained in doubt. The more optimistic forecasts, Borden’s included, predicted Allied victory by 1920, and only with hundreds of thousands more troops. Indeed, the Canadian capture of Vimy Ridge was a rare Allied bright spot in that bleak year. And if things were not bad enough, by the time Borden returned home in mid-May, the French army, holding three-quarters of the Western Front and badly depleted from the constant fighting, mutinied and withdrew from offensive action for the foreseeable future. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, which then captured Romania and its oil reserves. The Italians, who had joined the Allies in 1915, teetered on the brink of total collapse in the face of Austro-Hungarian attacks, forcing the British to send badly needed troops to their defence. All the while, the German U-boat campaign threatened to cut Britain’s merchant-shipping lifeline.
This dire situation in the spring of 1917, at the exact moment of Canada’s great triumph at Vimy, required yet another increase in the country’s collective war effort. Since virtually all the other belligerents used conscription, the nature of the increase was obvious. Moreover, in the summer, reports appeared claiming that Canada had contributed “only” 284,000 soldiers to the war effort, supposedly the lowest per capita in the British Empire. According to these critical reports, Canada needed 500,000 men to match the relative size of Australia’s contribution, 450,000 to catch New Zealand’s and 400,000 to compare with South Africa’s. One prominent Liberal MP, Newton Wesley Rowell, even claimed that “Canada has profited the most and suffered the least from this war of any of the nations of the empire.”
These numerical comparisons focused on expanding the Canadian contribution, but reinforcement remained the pressing problem. Even dispatching all of the 20,000 troops of the 5th Canadian Division, training in England, would not fulfill the need at the front. Demand further increased because the Canadian Corps formed one of the very best units available, placing it consistently in the vanguard of any offensive, especially after the mutinies in the French army. And in the vanguard of any offensive came the infantry. Not surprisingly, the majority of the casualties, by a margin of eight to one, were suffered by the foot soldiers. Thus, recruits were needed where they were most likely to be killed.
Since Canadian soldiers served for the “duration of hostilities” or until seriously wounded or killed, enlistment was an onerous undertaking. Life in the army, even outside the trenches, could be less than ideal. Troops received little rest or recreation, with other ranks entitled to only ten days of leave per year. Corporal Will Bird of the 42nd (Royal Highlanders of Canada) Battalion recalled only five days of leave between enlistment in 1916 and release in 1919. Harsh discipline often reduced even that tiny number. Moreover, soldiers served for little pay: the lowest-ranking, privates, earned only $1.10 for each day of front-line service. These wages stayed constant even as the pay of unskilled labourers at home rose to more than double this paltry amount with the war’s creation of more agricultural and industrial jobs. Essentially, anyone who signed up in the early euphoria and was still alive in 1917 was unlikely to return home unless the war somehow ended, and they were not going to come back any wealthier either. Most volunteer soldiers believed that they had done their duty and that only conscription could increase their ever-dwindling chances of returning to Canada in one piece.
Prime Minister Borden heard many complaints on all these topics first-hand during his visit to Europe. He knew as well as the soldiers that, while patriotic enthusiasm had enabled the Canadian Corps to maintain its strength until the great victory at Vimy Ridge, the pool of men willing to volunteer for the infantry had dried up. The murderous sweep of the conflict and the desperate Allied position necessitated compulsory service. On May 18, the prime minister rose in the House of Commons and announced his national service proposal, the Military Service Act. The government released nationalist appeals and propaganda campaigns, using the support of most of the English-language newspapers to promote both conscription and a union of all political parties. These extraordinary measures were deemed necessary to win the war.
The Liberal leader, former prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, refused to join a new united government, even though most of Canada’s allies had already formed similar coalitions. While other Liberals, especially those from outside Quebec, defected to the new Union, Laurier refused because of his opposition to conscription. As Sir Wilfrid proclaimed in his public refusal, “If we are to win this war, if we are to get men to the fighting-line, the proper way is by appealing to the soul, not to coercion of the conscience.” Most of the province of Quebec agreed, setting the stage for a serious confrontation.
Immediately after the announcement of the Military Service Act, a massive anti-conscription rally paralyzed Montreal, the country’s largest city. Opponents held many more rallies throughout Quebec over the following months, and used the popular press to win over a homogenous and mainly rural population dominated by a sympathetic Catholic clergy. Public support for the Borden government, which had been elected in 1911 with strong Quebec backing, quickly disappeared among the francophone population. Radical intellectuals, such as anti-conscription advocate F.X. Moisan, sent messages to Ottawa with fiery speeches. “If you are resolved to have justice and liberty,” declared Moisan in June, “be resolved to sprinkle the soil of the Province of Quebec with your blood instead of reddening the soil of Flanders with it for the benefit of the English.” Dissent took other forms as well: the Montreal home of newspaper publisher Lord Atholstan was dynamited in 1917, ostensibly because of his support for conscription. The opposition of Quebec premier Sir Lomer Gouin was more sedate, but he demanded an election to settle the matter, reminding Unionists that “[t]he attitude of the Province of Quebec is sincere. To us it appears that a Government elected six years ago on a programme containing not one word pertaining to military matters is not a Government which should impose Conscription on Canada to-day.”
Sir Wilfrid Laurier speaking to an enlistment rally, Montreal, September 27, 1916. LAC-014952
Borden, confident that most Canadians supported conscription, agreed to the challenge, and the election was set for December 17. Government propaganda made the war the only issue. Failure to back the Union government in the election was depicted as giving in to a profane combination of French-Canadian slackers and German enslavement. After all, the Germans had been the first to use gas, flamethrowers, zeppelins and submarines; what inhuman weapon might they come up with next? A Canadian Military Service Council pamphlet reminded readers that they would suffer the same fate as Europe: “Recalling the desperate valour of Canadian soldiers in many battles with the best troops of Germany, is it likely that Ontario or Quebec or any other Canadian province would escape the hard fate of Alsace and Lorraine or receive a greater portion of mercy than the harassed Polish subjects of the Kaiser?”
While propaganda tried to convince the Canadian people of what awaited them if they failed to back conscription, Laurier’s call for a national referendum on the issue was ignored, and on July 24 the House of Commons approved the Military Service Act by a vote of 102 to 44. The act became law the following month. The Union government worked hard to ensure the electoral victory necessary to keep conscription in place, then passed legislation to shore it up, including the Military Voters Act and the War-Time Elections Act. The former allowed soldiers serving overseas to vote, a direct attempt to avoid what had happened in the New Brunswick election in February. The latter enfranchised women for the first time, although only the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of those in uniform. The War-Time Elections Act also stripped the franchise from conscientious objectors and those born in enemy countries. A disgruntled Liberal, W.R. Motherwell of Saskatchewan, aptly noted, “the government chose the voters instead of the voters choosing the government.”
Canadian troops, however, had no qualms about the government’s actions. Officers even became politically involved, lashing out at the Liberals and other perceived slackers. Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, the now-famous commander of the Canadian Corps, eagerly lent his name and reputation to the Union cause. Likewise, Canon F.G. Scott, the 1st Division’s popular Anglican padre, stated forcefully, “to shirkers at home, nothing but hisses are due. I never want to take the hand of any man who is physically fit and has not volunteered to come to the Front.” Much of the specific scorn was heaped on French Canada. Captain Maurice Pope, himself a Quebecer of mixed English-French origin, complained about the province in a letter to his father on August 31. “The French are surely playing a very poor game,” wrote Pope, “and I for one am finished with them. I would never to the smallest extent try to interfere with a change in the government of the province, for they have not in the slightest degree shown any appreciation or gratefulness for the extraordinary privileges that they now enjoy.”
If the military’s position on conscription did not seem certain enough already, the Third Ypres Campaign, especially its final phase known as the Battle of Passchendaele, decided it once and for all. With the French forces incapable of attacking the Germans in the aftermath of the mutinies, the British decided to launch an offensive of their own. The German U-boat campaign was wreaking havoc on British shipping from submarine bases in occupied Belgium, not far from the Ypres salient. Throughout August and September, British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers assaulted well-entrenched German forces in a determined effort to reach those bases. They made small gains and suffered the usual heavy losses. The fighting took place in low, poorly drained farmland, which heavy rain and intense artillery shelling had reduced to a fetid muddy swamp. Troops had to move over wooden duckboards carefully built by engineer and pioneer units. Soldiers drowned in the mud regardless, and the bodies of tens of thousands were never recovered. The names of 55,000 British Empire soldiers who simply disappeared in the Ypres salient are etched on the Menin Gate, while another 12,000 soldiers are buried and 35,000 of the missing are commemorated at Tyne Cot, near the village of Passchendaele, the largest British Commonwealth war cemetery in the world.
The Canadian Corps joined the Passchendaele fighting in October 1917. General Currie grimly prophesized that the corps would lose 16,000 troops to capture Passchendaele village itself and complete the campaign: he proved to be right virtually to a man. The Canadian attack, led by the 3rd and 4th Divisions, commenced on October 26, and made immediate gains against the German defenders despite the horrendous conditions. On November 6, the 1st and 2nd Divisions made the final push toward the tiny village of Passchendaele, by now merely a red smudge of shattered roof tiles on a blasted landscape. The 26th Battalion captured and held the eastern section of the village. Once again, the cost of victory had been steep: in just two days of intense fighting, the New Brunswick battalion lost 284 killed, wounded and missing. The depleted battalion had gone into battle with only some 562 all ranks, so that its casualty rate at Passchendaele was more than fifty percent.
The overall campaign of Third Ypres fell far short of the British command’s initial objectives, and five months of assaults cost the Empire another 450,000 casualties, including, just as General Currie had predicted, 16,000 Canadians. As a result of these losses and the conditions in which they were suffered, Passchendaele has become synonymous with the horror and mud-soaked futility of the Great War. Canadian soldiers went to the polls in the aftermath of this action, and they were in no mood to oppose conscription.
Most New Brunswickers were not either, and a majority of the province’s MPs supported the Military Service Act. These included the prominent Liberal Frank Carvell (Carleton), T.A. Hartt (Conservative, Charlotte), J.D. Hazen (Conservative, St. John county), W.S. Loggie (Liberal, Northumberland), H.H. McLean (Liberal, Sunbury and Queens), H.F. McLeod (Conservative, York), William Pugsley (Liberal, Saint John City) and F.J. Robidoux (Conservative, Kent), all of whom voted in favour of Borden’s act. Only Liberal MPs Arthur Copp (Westmorland), Pius Michaud (Restigouche and Madawaska) and Onésiphore Turgeon (Gloucester) opposed the measure. Eight of New Brunswick’s ten senators, including both Acadian members of the upper house, also backed conscription. The support of Loggie and McLean for conscription saw them leave the Liberals and join the Union coalition, but the most shocking change came when Frank Carvell, a rumoured Liberal leadership candidate and vocal critic of Borden, did the same. The London Times’ Canadian correspondent Arthur Ford noted that “[t]he entrance of Mr. Carvell into a cabinet headed by Sir Robert Borden created almost as much amazement and excitement in New Brunswick as if German warships had bombarded Saint John.”
Of course, a French-English split existed over the conscription issue in New Brunswick, but for different reasons than those behind the break between Quebec and the rest of Canada. In fact, unlike French Canadians in Quebec, Acadian support for voluntary enlistment coexisted comfortably with opposition to conscription. Acadian opposition to compulsory service was founded primarily on geographical and occupational factors rather than purely ethnic ones, and by the ruinous actions of the anglophone majority. During the debate over conscription, virtually all of New Brunswick’s anglophone politicians, military officers and newspapers espoused anti-French views openly. In doing so, they ignored both Acadian contributions to the war effort and the Acadian elite’s own support for the Military Service Act. These vocal critics also conveniently ignored nonfrancophone opposition within the province to conscription.
Frank Carvell, Liberal MP for Carleton-Victoria and the touted successor to Laurier as leader of the federal Liberal party. His support for Union ended his long association with the Liberals, who refused to allow him back into the party in 1919. LAC PA033972
The Acadian response to conscription was actually characterized by debate between elites and the mass of the population, by debate between supporters of the two political parties and by the long-standing division between the French-speaking regions within New Brunswick. F.J. Robidoux, Senators Thomas Bourque and Pascal Poirier, the Catholic bishop of Saint John, Édouard LeBlanc, the majority of the Acadian clergy and the newspaper Le Moniteur Acadien all publicly backed conscription. Robidoux did the most to popularize the act. As the MP for Kent explained during the conscription debate in the House of Commons on June 26, “I would take no part in this debate did I not feel bound to raise my voice in support of the measure introduced by the Prime Minister, and I take this position believing it to be in the best interests of the race to which I belong.” Likewise, Senator Thomas Bourque stated in a Senate speech on the same subject that, “in justice to those who have already gone to France, in justice to Great Britain who is giving us our protection and our liberties, in justice to the allied cause, in justice to the fair name of Canada, it seems opportune at this stage to pass this measure.” The weekly Shediac newspaper Le Moniteur Acadien disseminated this position. The paper printed Acadian soldiers’ letters, alongside the regular feature au champ d’honneur, a listing in every issue of Acadian casualties suffered overseas. On September 13, an editorial justified conscription as the necessary response to an incredible situation, proclaiming “Le Moniteur recconait que la loi du service militaire est une loi extraordinaire; mais aussi la situation dans la monde entier est extraordinaire.” While these Acadian leaders supported conscription, even urging “their Quebec colleagues to emulate the Acadian example,” their appeals had no discernible effect on Acadian public sentiment against the Military Service Act.
Senator Pascal Poirier of Shediac, Acadian intellectual and partisan, and a staunch supporter of the Military Service Act. CEA PB1-540
The most pronounced form of that anti-conscription sentiment came from the other pages of the Acadian press. The Liberal Moncton newspaper L’Acadien, partly owned by P.J. Veniot, featured a dignified photograph of Sir Wilfrid Laurier on its masthead and spoke out especially strongly against fellow Acadians who sided with Borden. On August 10, the paper published an anti-conscription song set to the tune of La Marseillaise, with the memorable chorus, “Aux polls, les citoyens! Formez un bataillon! Votons, votons pour Sir Wilfrid, contre la Conscription!” New Brunswick’s other French-language newspapers, Edmundston’s Le Madawaska and Moncton’s L’Évangéline, took more relaxed positions. Originally a Conservative twin to Le Moniteur, Le Madawaska evolved into an independent voice during the crisis, preaching calm and adherence to the law. Geographic distance from the centre of the province, as well as the fiercely independent nature of the Brayons, the French-speaking citizens of northwestern New Brunswick, also kept Le Madawaska focused on agricultural news instead of the fighting overseas and bickering at home. L’Évangéline, which had the largest circulation of any French weekly in the province, remained as objective as the times allowed, carefully reporting different political opinions and taking pride in Acadian enlistment, but also urging readers to obey the Military Service Act as they would any other law.
While press opinion may have been divided, New Brunswick’s Acadians were united in support of two things: the general war effort and their opposition to the labelling of Acadians as slackers. To dispute the slacker charge, Acadians redoubled their efforts in support of the war. Liberal MPs Pius Michaud and Onésiphore Turgeon, both of whom had voted against conscription, regularly spoke at voluntary recruiting meetings in northern New Brunswick. During the Military Service Act debates, Michaud proudly stated, “My ancestors became British subjects about two centuries ago; today their descendants willingly form part of the great army of the Allies in the fight for freedom and liberty.” The leaders did not just talk, they acted, led by the enlistment examples of L’Évangéline editor Rufin Arsenault, two of P.J. Veniot’s sons, two sons of Sir Pierre-Amand Landry and Onésiphore Turgeon’s son. Accusations of slacking were a particularly personal slight for provincial cabinet minister Auguste Dugal, whose son Louis Armand had his right leg blown off fighting overseas with the 26th Battalion.
From the anglophone New Brunswick perspective, the Acadians and their positions on the war effort were defined purely by their ethnicity and language. No other reason was given for their opposition to conscription other than their being French speakers, which supposedly united them with the many francophones in Quebec who did not support the war. Yet, the vast majority of New Brunswickers, of every ethnic origin and mother tongue, were locally born, with ancestral ties to the province and thus distant from European affairs — exactly the type of Canadian least likely to enlist. Many of these same people — those of Loyalist descent living in the St. John River Valley, the descendants of New England planters, Miramichiers whose families had arrived during the 1840s Irish potato famine, Yorkshire settlers in the Tantramar region — struggled to make a living as farmers, fishermen and labourers. All of these occupational groups tended to oppose conscription, even while supporting the war effort through valuable sacrifices and hard work on the homefront. In fact, the anglophone majority singled out an ethnic Acadian opposition to conscription mainly because of the prevailing national mood against French Canadians.
Yet French Canadians were not the only opponents of conscription, least of all in New Brunswick, as the conscription crisis further revealed the deep prejudices of the age. For instance, most Blacks deeply resented the Military Service Act. They had tried to enlist voluntarily and been turned away because of their skin colour; now, when the economy presented better options than ever before, they would be forced to fight overseas and possibly be killed. Other minorities, including Mi’kmaq and Maliseet volunteers — although exempt from conscription as “wards of the state,” they were often rejected by recruiters — and Asian Canadians, experienced this double standard as well. The province’s Danish community also found itself suddenly disenfranchised: although Denmark itself remained neutral, many of the founders of New Denmark had come from Schleswig and Holstein, ethnically Danish provinces annexed by Germany in the mid-nineteenth century; as a result, they were declared “enemy aliens” and denied the right to vote by the War-Time Elections Act.
Opposition to conscription also arose from agricultural and labour organizations, which spoke out against war profiteering. In Ontario, the Third Annual Convention of the United Farmers, held in 1917, resolved that, “Since human life is more valuable than gold, this convention most solemnly protests against any proposal looking to the conscription of men for battle, while leaving wealth exempt from the same measure of enforced service. It is a manifest and glaring injustice that Canadian mothers should be compelled to surrender boys around whom their dearest hopes in life are centred, while plutocrats, fattening on special privileges and war business, are left in undisturbed possession of their riches.” Farmers themselves could often find no labour at harvest season, thanks in large measure to the number of rural enlistments. Calls to oppose conscription came from the nascent socialist movements as well, especially on the Prairies. Workers especially resented the implication that only military service equalled real support for the war. To appease groups like the United Farmers and the socialists calling for “conscription of wealth,” the Borden government established an income tax as a “temporary wartime measure” — a measure that is, of course, still with us today.
English-speaking Roman Catholics throughout New Brunswick also found it necessary to defend themselves against slacker accusations. The New Freeman of Saint John, a weekly with Irish Republican leanings, repeatedly decried the myth of low Catholic enlistment, pointing out at the same time that “Belgium is practically solidly Catholic and it was this little Catholic nation that refused the bribe of the Lutheran Hun for a back-door attack on France; it was the Catholic soldiers of Belgium, headed by their Catholic king, and encouraged by their Catholic queen, who blocked the way to the domination of Europe by the Huns.” The New Freeman openly defied the Military Service Act at the same time that it urged Irish Canadians to enlist, noting that, despite Britain’s occupation of Ireland, the Germans remained the most immediate threat to Canada.
English-language Liberal newspapers across the province also opposed conscription, especially in the southeast. The Sackville Tribune and Hillsborough’s Albert Journal reminded their readers that the troops of the 5th Canadian Division and the many soldiers training in Canada should be sent to the front before risking a national crisis. By the same token, the Moncton Transcript labelled Borden a “soulless corporate lawyer.” Its headlines asserted that “conscription is being used to bludgeon Quebec politically” and that, with business interests and the Protestant churches backing conscription, “a coalition of pulpit and profiteers imperils human liberty.” Similarly, the Newcastle North Shore Leader urged its readers to vote Liberal and “Save Canada for the Farmer and Labourer.” A Kings county writer summarized farmers’ grievances in a letter to the Transcript, asserting that Union supporters wanted conscription to take farmers’ sons, “their flesh and blood, and drive them to the battlefield to fight for the rich as well as the poor, and then laugh and say he is nothing but a poor boy.” This bitterness was widespread in a province whose population was seventy-two percent rural. Likewise, despite the vital economic role of the fishing industry, especially along the predominantly Acadian north shore, the government wanted to conscript fisheries workers. Onésiphore Turgeon argued in vain against this selfdefeating position, pleading the fishermen’s “special case” in the House of Commons and stressing the importance of Canadian food production to the overall Allied effort.
Canada definitely did need labourers, farmers and fishermen, and Unionists likewise wanted their support during the December 17 federal election. The Union government had already disenfranchised many probable opponents of conscription, soldiers seemed certain to vote as a bloc for Borden, and, despite Liberal efforts to show the diversity of opposition to the measure, attacking French-Canadian slackers remained central to Union’s election plan. Most New Brunswick newspapers happily did so as well, led by the large-circulation dailies in the main population centres, including Fredericton’s Daily Gleaner, the Moncton Daily Times and the St. John Standard. Unionists could also provide something that the opposition could not: exemptions from military service.
Gloucester Liberal MP Onésiphore Turgeon, of Bathurst, had two sons in service at the time he voiced his support for exempting fishermen from conscription. CEA PA1-1677
In October, the government required all single men ages twenty to thirty-four to report to the military or appeal to a local tribunal for exemption from the Military Service Act. At the tribunals, potential conscripts pleaded their case in front of a local committee. Ideal recruits fit for service at the front, “Military Prospects 1A,” consisted of physically fit British subjects who were not farmers. “B” prospects were fit for non-combatant service overseas, “C” for similar duty in Canada, “D” for a higher category with medical treatment, while those labelled “E” were deemed unfit for service. Few 1A prospects remained in New Brunswick, and the work of the exemption tribunals finally brought this home to everyone.
Grave of Private M. Hawkins, MM, of Beaver Harbour. Hawkins fell in the 26th Battalion’s final attack at Passchendaele on November 6, 1917, that captured the ruins of that ill-fated Belgian village. His grave was destroyed in subsequent fighting, and Hawkins is listed among the missing on the Menin Gate at nearby Ypres. NBM 2003.5.11
On November 26, the veterans of Passchendaele began voting overseas, but Borden’s government clearly remained anxious about the final outcome. On December 4, the Union government decided to forego the exemption tribunals for two groups, granting all farmers and the next of kin of serving soldiers total exemption from conscription. This was the final act in one of the most remarkable federal elections in Canadian history. The Union government had used every means in its power — shifting the franchise virtually at will and exempting targeted groups from conscription — to win the election. By election day, the result was hardly in doubt, but it remained to be seen what it would all mean for the worsening national crisis.
