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“Our Boys Want Smokes,” trumpets a First World War storefront window poster sponsored by the Over-Seas Club. “For 25 cents we send a dollar’s worth. Contributions received here for Canada’s Tobacco Fund.” It was happening all across the country: show your patriotism and support our... -
Time spent in the trenches of the First World War was miserable. Not only were chances of being killed or wounded high, but Canadian soldiers were in the line for days at a time in the same damp clothes, fighting over muddy grounds. It was... -
It was 1942 and one evening 20-year-old Winnifred Davidson, known as Davey to her friends, was whisked away from Toronto in an unmarked maroon car and driven to an undisclosed location. When she arrived there, she was instructed, “Don’t tell anyone where you are or... -
On the frigid Winnipeg morning of Feb. 19, 1942, Diane Edgelow’s mother sent her out to buy a loaf of bread. She was 12 years old and got the shock of her life when she crossed the bridge into downtown. “They were guarded by German... -
On April 1, 1942, Canada’s Minister of National War Services, Joseph T. Thorson, issued a statement advising his fellow citizens that the country’s human and material resources were being mobilized for total war. “Thus far Canada has been an essential and vital factor in holding... -
In 1917 and 1918, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and its successor, the Royal Air Force (RAF), directed an ambitious flight training operation in Canada. The scheme had no precedent, but it inspired later, similar schemes—the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (1939-1945) and a general...
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War and the women’s vote
This year marks the 100th anniversary of not only the end of the First World War, but also the extension of the federal suffrage to most Canadian women, a development spearheaded by tenacious Canadian suffragists and abetted by the war itself. Like the Allies’ victory in November 1918, the Canadian suffragists’ important, but incomplete,...
