Canadian military preparations during the First World War

Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden and his government were unprepared for the First World War. So was the nation. The only member of cabinet with any military experience, and it was chequered, was Samuel Hughes, the minister of militia and defence. Key departments of the public service – Finance, Justice, Trade and Commerce, and Labour – each had fewer than a hundred employees as late as March 1915. Small arms (the Ross rifle) were manufactured in Canada, but there was no capacity, or manpower, to produce heavy armaments. A much-touted war book, quickly implemented, barely hinted at what a government at war needed to do. But by Sunday, 9 August, the basic orders in council had been proclaimed, and a war session of parliament opened just two weeks after the conflict began. Legislation was quickly passed to secure the nation’s financial institutions and raise tariff duties on some high-demand consumer items. The War Measures Bill, giving the government extraordinary powers of coercion over Canadians, was rushed through three readings. Finally, the Canadian Patriotic Fund was set up to assume responsibility for assistance to the families of soldiers. With complete support from the opposition Liberals under Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the government’s war legislation was in place in just five days.

An expeditionary force was authorized by cabinet on 6 Aug. 1914, and Hughes, ignoring the mobilization plans prepared by his chief of staff, Willoughby Garnons Gwatkin, sent flurries of contradictory orders across the country. Instead of gathering the force at Petawawa, an established training site in Ontario, he ordered the men to report to Valcartier, an undeveloped site near Quebec City. His contractors, under the direction of William Price, had a huge camp ready there in less than three weeks; its first commander was Hughes’s brother John. In late September, amidst more confusion, the 1st Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force began boarding hastily assembled transports at Quebec, several thousand men overstrength. It landed in England on 15 October. On his way to England to consult with the division’s commander, Lieutenant-General Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson, Hughes had announced in New York on the 7th that Canada “could send enough men to add the finishing touches to Germany without assistance either from England or France.”

The men of the 1st Division would spend months on Salisbury Plain in winter learning the rudiments of warfare. Alderson found them ill-equipped and untrained, with many weak officers. In a few cold, rain-sodden months, he did what he could to put things right, dismissing some of Hughes’s chosen officers and replacing useless Canadian-made equipment with British issue. Meanwhile, the fear in the government, and the country, was that the Canadians would not get to the front in time: it was widely anticipated that the war would be over by Christmas.