PACIFISTS BE DAMNED — OR JAILED

Men across Canada were

ridiculed for not enlisting in the First World War. Posters read, “Your chums are fighting, why aren’t you?” Although many took up arms for Canada voluntarily, the issue of conscription was hotly debated. With the number of casualties, troop numbers eventually dropped, even with widened medical parameters like allowing people less than five-feet tall to enlist. As a result, Prime Minister Robert Borden enacted conscription through the Military Service Act in 1917 until the end of the war. The War Museum of Canada says that while the MSA allowed objection on the grounds of religion, many practicing men sought refuge from the war as farmers instead; that was easier to explain, and all farmers were exempted of service without question. The societal tendency of the time was to suggest men were “lazy,” "unpatriotic” or even “pro-German” if they declared themselves opposed to violence. Some were even jailed for their open pacifism; by the time the armistice was signed, 34 men were imprisoned in Canada for being conscientious objectors. “I think they should be sent to the Front,” read letters from some prison wardens, such as J.H. Rivers, to Canada’s Deputy Minister of Justice. “Please stop any more of this Kind from coming to a respectable jail,” he said of the objectors. Eventually, the government outlined a specific group of religious objectors — Mennonites, Quakers and other peaceoriented churches — to be granted conscientious objector status.