Conscription Crisis 1917
After the Battle of the Somme, Canada was in desperate need to replenish its supply of soldiers; however, there were very few volunteers to replace them. The recruiting effort in Quebec had failed, and Canada turned to its only unused option: conscription.
Almost all French Canadians opposed conscription: they felt that they had no particular loyalty to either Britain or France. Led by Henri Bourassa, they felt their only loyalty was to Quebec. English Canadians generally supported the war effort as they felt stronger ties to the British Empire. The Conscription Crisis of 1917 caused a considerable rift along ethnic lines between Anglophones and Francophones.
After visiting Britain for a meeting of First Ministers in May 1917, Borden announced that he would introduce the Military Service Act. On August 29, 1917, the Act was passed, allowing the government to conscript men across the country if the Prime Minister felt that it was necessary.
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Famous quotes containing the words conscription and/or crisis:
“We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator’s power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to “negotiate” between this hunger and this greed.”
—Meridel Le Sueur (b. 1900)