First World War’s social impact still reverberates

The impact of the First World War, which ended with the signing of the armistice 100 years ago in November, affected our world in untold ways.

This first global conflict claimed between nine million and 13 million lives and caused unprecedented destruction. But the continuing influence, particularly the social influence, was much more farreaching than just the stats.

Legion, the magazine of the Canadian veterans’ organization of the same name, links the war with years of cigarette smoking. This in part results from the way cigarettes were promoted during the conflict.

Tobacco companies, charities, institutions, businesses such as newspapers, and individuals promoted campaigns to raise money to send smokes to the troops overseas to make life more livable for soldiers fighting half a world away.

One Quebec newspaper emphasized how necessary tobacco was in the defence of civilization. “Benefits included helping soldiers retain their self-control, soothe their nerves, distract them from sadness, and enable them to face dangers.”

Posters stated: “Our boys are giving their lives; all they ask of us is something to smoke.”

These campaigns equated patriotism with smoking, thus trampling anti-tobacco forces.

War stalled anti-tobacco hearings in 1914 and Parliament would not seriously debate tobacco control for another six decades.

Among the anti-tobacco groups that faced failure was the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The goal of the WCTU was to protect the home from evil influences and strengthen family life, but its primary objective was to promote abstinence from alcohol.

The first WCTU was formed in the U.S., but temperance organizations had started in Canada as early as the 1820s.

The Canadian WCTU can be traced to a Prohibition Women’s League formed in Owen Sound in 1874 by a Mrs. William Doyle. Canada’s second WCTU branch was founded in Picton by Sunday school teacher and stepmother of eight, Letitia Youmans.

Although the WCTU had no impact on reducing tobacco use by soldiers, it found other areas of success, including the women’s suffrage movement.

That has had a huge impact on our world, right up to and including the Ontario election next June.

The movement was a decades-long struggle intended to address fundamental issues of equity and justice and to improve the lives of Canadians, in addition to gaining women’s right to vote.

Ontario became the fifth province to enfranchise women in April 1917. In June 2018, a female premier will defend her government’s record in a provincial election.

Among those challengers is another female leader, Andrea Horwath of the NDP, and numerous female candidates throughout the province.

It would be a stretch to suggest the First World War played a role in suffrage, but the experience gathered in fighting tobacco use by soldiers certainly helped with attempts at other reforms, including voter reforms.

The encyclopedia tells us the

WCTU was the largest nondenominational women’s organization in 19th-century Canada.

The Canadian Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s membership numbers have been in decline for years. In 1995, there were 1,700 members in 67 branches, as compared to 2,473 in 1987.

Although the WCTU continues to exist in the U.S. there is little evidence of activities north of the border.

However, former members are able to reflect on the organization’s successes, particularly in election years such as 2018.