The French-Canadian Conscription Crisis

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During the First World War, Canada suffered a great conscription crisis that divided the nation. The French-Canadian nationalists, led by Henri Bourassa, opposed conscription and felt that they were fighting an English war, and therefore felt no obligation to fight. The vast majority of those who enlisted during the age of voluntary recruitment were Anglophones; in contrast, very few Francophones volunteered to fight. On 17 May 1917, Prime Minister Robert Borden announced that military service was to become compulsory among men of fighting age of all classes. French-Canadians protested; however, despite their best efforts, the Military Service Bill came into effect. The protest eventually led to lengthy riots. Following this, Canada became …show more content…

Tensions were already high between English- and French-Canadians, especially after Ontario had stopped teaching French in Catholic Schools, and the conscription crisis only served to increase them.
Prime Minister Borden had promised to provide 500,000 troops to aid in the war against the axis. When news of the gruesome trench conditions and the staggering number of casualties began to reach Canadians on the home front, the number of volunteers diminished at an astonishing rate, and the lack of reinforcements to the front lines proved detrimental to the Canadian war effort. Borden argued that obligatory military service of all men from the ages of 20 to 45 was the only way to provide these necessary reinforcements. The Francophones detested the idea of being forced to fight amongst those who had discriminated against them for years and had shown them and their culture little respect. Riots quickly ensued, and the divide between English and French Canada quickly …show more content…

The bill for conscription was passed in a matter of weeks, showing French-Canadians that the federal government was not considering their interests. French-Canadians were also fighting for their own cultural rights, such as the right to use French in Catholic schools in Ontario. Regulation 17 was introduced in 1912 and “restricted French-language education in the province and reignited the simmering debate over language rights.” Multiple school acts in the past had given the French and English populations equal status in the education system until Regulation 17 was brought about and amended all previous acts, infuriating the French population. In the years before the war, Bourassa had spent much of his time “campaigning for greater autonomy and linguistic parity.” When war finally broke out, he was in France, where he had fled in order to return home. On his journey home, he had witnessed Frenchmen unite and pray for the safety of France, and realized that this war could be a uniting moment for Canadians, as well. However, in 1914, Bourassa’s support for the war effort earned the disdain of many English-speaking Canadians who thought the war was a “crusade against evil and required unqualified support.” Bourassa quickly adopted his views about the war and the divide between the English-Canadian imperial nationalists and the French-Canadian

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