Remembrance Day continues to reflect the exact month, day, and hour that marked an end to the horrific fighting of the First World War. Canada’s landscape is dotted with war memorials stemming from that conflict. As well, in the former battle areas overseas there are a number of specifically Canadian monuments. The most famous is at Vimy Ridge. But contrary to a perception fostered by later historians that the successful Canadian attack there gelled our First World War army into a sense of being Canadian, long before that famous battle the army was an incubator promoting Canadian identity.
From the moment recruits swore the oath and signed the legally-binding attestation paper that transformed them from being a civilian into a soldier, they began encountering an intensified emphasis in their lives of the fact that they were Canadian. The first time they put on a uniform, the tunic buttons read Canada and bore the maple leaf. Their shoulder badges consisted of a badge reading “CANADA” in block capitals. Their cap badge was likely as not in the basic shape of a maple leaf, and even where it wasn’t the badge frequently incorporated that Canadian icon. When they saw one of their generals they could note that his red collar patches often had a row of golden maple leaves, rather than the golden oak leaves that Britain’s generals wore. Their unit would be in a “Canadian Brigade” within a “Canadian Division” forming part of the “Canadian Corps.”
For most of the soldiers the war was the first time in their lives they encountered large numbers of persons from different parts of the country. The units generally reflected a local or regional origin. But the exigencies of war meant that reinforcements were sent where they were needed, so many Canadians began the war in local units then served in one or more units from elsewhere in the land. But even if soldiers spent the war entirely in their original unit, on leave and in the lines they inevitably encountered many comrades in arms who came from other provinces and regions.
The growing feeling of Canadianism promoted two attitude shifts. The first was that many soldiers began identifying their primary loyalty as being with Canada as a whole rather than with a particular component of the federal nation. Second was a lessening of the one empire feeling which had predominated at the start of the war. The decline in imperial identification came partly from greater contact with the British, and a desire to draw a distinction. Many Canadian troops met British soldiers and discovered there was a cultural and accent gap between them. Then too the British army reflected that country’s class system – alien to Canuck sensitivities. The arrogant presumptuousness of British officers was cause for adverse Canadian comment. Nor was there widespread respect for British generals who sacrificed hecatombs of troops to gain a few yards of mud while leaving enemy defences unbroken.
Canada’s soldiers brought these new outlooks home with them. But they also brought home the sense of Vimy as their own Agincourt, a battlefield triumph that became a lifelong source of pride to those who had fought there. Long before Vimy our troops knew they were Canadian. After Vimy, they knew they had proven that Canadian soldiers excelled.
Writer David Haas is a long term St. Albert resident.
