The First World War and The Roaring '20s
Canada played an extraordinarily large role in the First World War relative to its size. It sent over hundreds of thousands of troops, and was also the granary and arms producer for the allied side. This led to a further boom on the prairies as wheat prices skyrocketed. The rest of the country, even the Maritimes, benefited from an increase in manufacturing.
The immediate post-war years saw a short, but severe, recession as the economy readjusted to the end of wartime production. By 1921, the Canadian economy was back on its feet and rapidly expanding. In the 1920s, there was an unprecedented increase in the standard of living as items that had been luxury goods such as radios, automobiles, and electric lights—not to mention flush toilets became common place across the nation. The boom lasted until 1929.
Read more about this topic: Economic History Of Canada
Famous quotes containing the words the first, world, war and/or roaring:
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem I had my birth.”
—Sydney Carter (20th century)
“As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“For half a mile from the shore it was one mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak.... This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed,—more tumultuous, my companion affirmed, than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on a far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, a clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, which labored much, as if it were anxiously seeking a harbor.... It was the roaring sea, thalassa exeessa.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)