Recruitment during the First World War

Central to Canada’s efforts during the First World War was the recruitment of a force that Canada would send to the front. Organizations, especially anglophone ones, were created to promote the recruitment of volunteers. Young men answered the call in great numbers: 150,000 in July 1915; 250,000 in October 1915; and, finally, 500,000 in January 1916. By July 1916, however, the seemingly endless flow of recruits had dwindled to a mere trickle. Volunteerism was over and the casualty rates were appalling. The first cries for conscription were heard on the home front. In 1917 Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden abandoned his promise of no conscription and passed the Military Service Act: 100,000 single men aged 20 to 22 would be conscripted. The division between the majority of French Canadians, who opposed conscription, and the majority of English Canadians, who supported it, wreaked havoc on national unity.