Special Edition: 1911 - 1921

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to the second new decade of the 20^th century in the last, best west. This seventh edition of the Times, published, at the close of that same century ⁽¹⁾ will likely be the last of the original series about Coubroughs in Canada. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that many of the people who were born during and after this decade are still with us. For them, the time after 1921 is memory, not history.

Moving from Ontario to Saskatchewan was a big event in the lives of Matt and Liz Coubrough and their families. They couldn't know it, but the coming decade would be the most eventful they--and their Canada--had ever seen. For now, life in Saskatchewan is just fine. Sure, there's hard work, and the weather doesn't always co-operate, but that's farming; that's just the way it is.

Life is not quite the same out here as it was back in Ontario, but not all that different from what Matt's and Liz's parents faced when, in 1856, they "went west" to Dawn Towship, at the edge of the world. ⁽²⁾ There are no huge trees to root out before you can plant anything, but the work is still hard, and the climate harsh. The soil is better here, too. Unlike the dense clay of Dawn Township, it is light enough for the ploughs to breaks the sod, but heavy enough to hold a little moisture after a rain. Of course, there are no logs to build houses with, either, but the railroad that made this move possible in the first place has also made sawn lumber readily available. More importantly, there is room for all the boys to have affordable land nearby. And there is a feeling too powerful for words that comes from working for yourself and owing no man anything.

By 1911, Liz and her younger children have been on the new farm for two years, though Matt and the older boys have already been there for five. Some of her older sons and daughters have married and started families of their own. Others of the older boys have moved to "homes" of their own on their own land, as part of their homestead requirements, even though they have not yet married. Some of the children who have moved away are not exactly next door, and sometimes the few miles between might as well be a hundred. The new farm has a bonus for the middle children: The first school in their district will not be built until 1912.

All around Matt, Liz and their family, the country is growing rapidly. Immigration is at an all-time high, and the population is increasing at a rate that will not be matched again in this century. The country's mood is brightly optimistic; life is definitely worth living. Some places had a bumper crop last year, in 1910, but ours wasn't that great. In this land of limitless opportunity, this year is bound to be better, isn't it?

Fortunately, we cannot see the future. In 1911, the hope and promise of the new decade are not yet overshadowed by several successive crop failures, or by the deep, inconsolable sorrows which will repeatedly sear the family. And we could not know that these same sorrows would change Canada from a mere colony to a strong nation, well-respected on the world stage. So, since this will be our last visit to some of our old friends, let's head out and see what their future holds.
 

1911-1921  Back to Top of page

Matt, aged 57 in 1911, and Liz, 48, have settled into their new home at NW-36-7-23-W2, in the Mount Joy School District, not far from what would be the town of Ogema, incorporated in 1911. Their house is not as large as some in the district, but it doesn't need to be. Jim, Bill, Harve, Floy, Annie, and Maggie have all left home. The rest of the family is growing up fast, and even the babies, Ethel and Earl, are walking and talking. Too young to remember the long trip west ⁽³⁾, life on the Saskatchewan farm is all they know.

Jenny and Billy Atwell have come west, too, but they settled further north, near Rosetown. Minnie was only 51 when Jenny moved west in 1909, but I could find no mention of her later than her mother's 1902 will. (Does anyone know what became of her?)

Barbara is still in the US, whence she sometimes writes but seldom visits.

Progress is everywhere, as the "Last Best West" fulfills its promise of a better life. The railroad arrived at Ogema in 1911, and the good things in life are now much closer to home. For the most part, the hundred-mile round trip to Weyburn is no longer necessary, as it was in 1909 when Liz came west with her children. In far off-Ottawa, Sir Wilfred Laurier's Liberal government gave way to the Tory, Robert Borden.

The spirit of adventure and optimism that created Canada is ever alive and well. Not even a serious economic depression can quell that spirit, and a good thing it is. Canadians will need all the optimism they can find, and many young men will have had more than enough adventure before the decade is out. Even in this atmosphere, though, there are still improvements in every part of our daily lives.

Politics  Back to Top of page

On September 21, 1911, Mr. Robert Laird Borden, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, replacd Sir Wilfred Laurier as the Premier of Canada. Mr. Borden was the ninth man in that job. He would keep it until 1920, when ill health would force him to resign in favour of Arthur Meighan, who would be the premier for only a few months: The legally required election of 1921 would replace him with the Liberal William Lyon MacKenzie King.

One of Sir Wilfred Laurier's last major acts before leaving office was to finally work a reciprocity agreement with the United States. It started in Washington with the president, Mr. William Taft, trying to regain the favour of his western voters with Canadian Free Trade. In 1910, Mr. Taft drafted a proposal which he sent to both Ottawa and the US Congress for approval. It easily passed in both places, and the Liberal government was sure it had made a great coup. Tories had unsuccessfully sought such a deal for half a century, and now Mr. Laurier had done it. It was sure to please Canadian voters, and assure the Liberals of another majority government.

Trouble was, Canada had begun to see herself as an independent nation; one who could look after herself without charity from her neighbours. By the summer of 1911, Canadians had long since grown accustomed to trading with other Canadians, and now, here was the government crowing about how well it was looking after its people. Shockingly, many ordinary Canadians viewed Reciprocity as a threat to their jobs! And those Canadians were not pleased with the government which had engineered that threat. Worse still, many prominent (rich!) Liberals, including Sir Edmund Walker of the Bank of Commerce, Mr. Clifford Sifton, and Sir William van Horne of the CPR publicly disagreed with their party. In an effort to regain control, Sir Wilfrid called an election for September 21, 1911, but he had underestimated the depth of anti-American feeling: Mr. Robert Borden took 134 seats to Sir Wilfrid's 87.

After arranging a suitable cabinet, Mr. Borden set to work on some of the projects he had proposed in his 1908 election platform. One of the first, and, to him, most important, was civil service reform. I still can't imagine where he came up with such an odd idea. He seems to think civil servants, as feeders at the public trough, ought to do what they are paid for! Even stranger, he thinks these people should earn their way to the top, rather than having the current crop of politicians appoint their incompetent friends and relatives to the best jobs. Imagine civil servants being promoted on merit like everyone else. Politics will never be the same again. All in all, it is looking like we made a good choice in Mr. Borden. He is doing a pretty fair job of cleaning up the mess left by his predecessors. Already (1912) he has proposed a commission to find a better way to set tariffs, begun to investigate the National Transcontinental Railroad ⁽⁴⁾ scandal, solved the Manitoba border debate, ⁽⁵⁾and expanded both Quebec and Ontario into the Ungava District around Hudson's Bay. There's no telling what he might be able to do in the future.

Things haven't gone all his way, though, and he has suffered a few setbacks. In 1912, he scuttled Sir Wilfrid Laurier's "tin pot navy," which would have given Canada control not only of who built and manned the five ships, but how they were used. Instead, he proposed that Canada give Britain $5 ⁽⁶⁾million to buy the most advanced battleships available. The Liberals, of course, could not allow their baby to be drowned so easily, and they made sure the debate dragged on into 1913. Mr. Arthur Meighan, came up with the idea of a motion for closure, forcibly ending the debate. The Liberals were not yet defeated on the issue: The senate being full of Liberal appointees, they easily rejected the naval policy. For good measure, they rejected Mr. Borden's federal highways act, and his tariff commission, too--because they could.

Mr. Borden and his Tory government were not having an easy time of it. The government had been Liberal during the good times in the first decade of the century, when it is easy to please people by spending money. Tories, on the other hand, now had to contend with a world-wide economic depression. The foreign immigration schemes were still in effect, but now they gave results we were not prepared for. Many countries being even worse off than Canada, thousands of immigrants were still pouring in, looking for a better life. But in the face of rapidly growing unemployment, many Canadians were complaining about "foreigners" who couldn't even speak English filling up the country and taking jobs away from "honest citizens." No matter, of course, that some of those same honest citizens had been born in countries other than Canada, and didn't speak English when they arrived. They were here first, after all!

The government was in serious trouble. The Canadian bubble had burst, and we had to face reality: The good times were over. Widespread, successive prairie crop failures in 1913 and 1914 finally showed the idea of farming the drought-ridden Palliser Triangle for the folly it was. We demanded the government do something, so it did. We now have restrictions on the people who can come into Canada: If you are not from Britain, France, or the United States, or if your skin is not white, you need not apply.

If you are Chinese, you might get in: if you can work, and if you can afford the huge head tax our government charges Asians for the privilege of living here. Don't try to bring your family, though: Everybody knows that Japanese and Chinese are "unfit for full citizenship…obnoxious to a free community and dangerous to the state. ⁽⁷⁾"

Blacks--even Americans--are not wanted. Negroes are best fitted for hot climates, and you cannot withstand our severe winters ⁽⁸⁾. That thousands of your brothers and sisters have lived here for generations is of no moment to our government.

Little did we know that we would soon be looking back on those distressing times as "good old days." We had heard that on June 29, 1914, some archduke had been assassinated in someplace called Sarajevo, Bosnia. Who cared? It was just another name in the newspaper. Few Canadians had ever heard of Sarajevo on August 3, 1914. On August 4^th, Britain declared war against Germany. Most English-speaking Canadians assumed that we would support Britain. It was part of our duty to the Empire, after all, even if we weren't prepared. Our French-speaking brothers in Quebec would lose no time in telling us what they thought of the idea.

As it turned out, we were better prepared than we had thought. The federal government had been planning and improving the military's abilities for quite some time, even though it was not the stuff of headlines at the time, and the point of those plans now became apparent.

In 1905, the Liberals had built a huge training area at Petawawa, Ontario (west of Ottawa). In 1909, most provinces (even Quebec) had added military training to their school programs. Military spending had increased ⁽⁹⁾, and 60,000 militiamen had drilled in the 1913 camps. By early 1914, though, the fervour of the last Imperial war (South Africa) in 1901 had vanished, and the military languished. The minister of the militia, Colonel Sam Hughes, was convinced that he knew much more than any mere professional soldiers about the way an army should be run.He was certain of the uselessnes of the plan Major-General Gwatkin had prepared, whereby 25,000 men could be mobilised in a month. The minister scrapped the general's plan, then went ahead and ordered a contractor to build a huge rifle range and an even bigger camp at Val Cartier, near Quebec City. He sent telegrams to hundreds of militia colonels, inviting them to bring their volunteers to his new camp. Chaos reigned as thousands of men began arriving at the huge empty fields where no one had though of feeding or housing them, or even sorting them out.

Worse was to come. The minister himself arrived to try to sort out the mess he had made, and begin some sort of training, only to find there were not enough rifles to go around. More than two of every three soldiers were unarmed, and there were no rifles to be had. British factories used to make all the weapons for the Canadian Army. When they could no longer keep up with the demand, our government approved Colonel Hughes's recommendation, the Ross rifle. It was highly accurate and it was built in Canada, which made supply less of a problem. But it had an unfortunate tendency to seize up when fired rapidly, and was later blamed for costing hundreds of Canadian soldiers' their lives. We heard many stories of troops throwing them away on the battlefield and using rifles taken from dead British--and German--soldiers. And the rifles approved by the minister were not the only shoddy equipment they bought for our troops. The original boots most of them were issued in 1914 literaly disolved in the mud in Europe. This was not to be wondered at when it was discovered that a military contracter had supplied boots made of pasteboard, and charged for boots made of leather. Now (1915), they have ordered 150,000 pairs of new and improved boots.

There were other political fiascoes in the early days of the war. Those rabidly anti-Asian citizens of the West Coast had the pleasure of having that same coast defended by ships of the Japanese Imperial Navy, since the Canadian Navy was by this time little more than a memory. The one ship we had, the Rainbow out of Esquimalt, was so under-manned and poorly armed that it was most fortunate that she never met up with the German battle cruiser that roamed nearby. TheRainbow couldn't even defend herself, let alone Canada. The railroads were in trouble, too, due to the depression, but of course, Sir Robert's ⁽¹⁰⁾ Tories bailed them out, as had all his predecessors. They really had little choice, since the railroads were what held the country together. They were a vital part of life in Canada, transporting produce, equipment, troops, and supplies all over the country.

Nonetheless, we amazed ourselves when we managed to send off thirty-two thousand troops by mid-October, 1914. We little knew, and cared less, how ill-equipped and ill-trained those boys were, or what would be the final cost. From the start, the French-speaking people of Quebec opposed Canada's involvement in what they considered a European conflict that had nothing to do with us. Most of the units the government tried to raise in Quebec were filled by the unemployed, or otherwise discontented. Quebeckers made their opinions known to the rest of the country, and were accused of treason for their troubles, especially after they refused to register for the militia. Had we known that this registration would be later used to call up conscripts, we might not have been so quick to judge.

In English Canada, the view was somewhat different. Most of the first volunteers were men who had been born in Britain, and when the mother country called, they answered. Others of those first eager young men were looking for adventure as a relief from the unending toil of the farm. In those heady days, of course, we all thought the war would be over quickly and our boys home in a few months. Part of the reason some of the boys were in such a hurry was that they were afraid it would all be over before they got there. Nobody remembered the obscure Mr. Ivan Bloch, who, in 1898, had predicted that modern wars would go on until all sides were exhausted. Some of those who spent their young lives in the trenches would surely have agreed with him.

And, in the best style of politicians everywhere, ours were fond of promising what they had little hope of delivering. At first, Sir Robert promised the British government 100,000 troops. By 1916, he had promised 500,000 troops from a country with a population of only 7.5 million! He also promised that all recruitment would be voluntary. We should have been warned, but not many noticed.

By 1916, filling the ranks of all new infantry battalions was becoming more difficult. The most eager youngsters had already gone overseas, and the less adventurous were proving to be more reluctant than Colonel Hughes could have wished. French-Canadians were not the only ones starting to think that Canada had already done more than her share in a war so far from home. People with jobs, farms, or deep family roots in Canada were not anxious to give them up. The recruiters were more successful in areas of high unemployment, even in rural Quebec, than in industrialized cities anywhere in the country. No one seemed to notice that recruiting was no more successful in the Maritimes than it was in Montreal.

The size of the casualty lists that poured in after every major battle had two very different effects. In some places, it spurred recruiting to new heights; in others it caused a shift from war fever to the idea that we had already done more than enough. In the summer of 1916, the Somme alone claimed nearly 35,000 men. In 1917, Vimy Ridge and Passchendale would claim nearly 26,000 more. Even more detrimental to voluntary recruiting was the fact that at last the Canadian economy was growing again. Thanks to wartime production and factory jobs, employment was at an all-time high. A lot of the jobs were filled by women ⁽¹¹⁾who were encouraged by the suffragists to break out of the traditional moulds (they even wore trousers) and go to work outside the home in jobs that paid well. At the time, we thought these patriotic women would just do their part for the war effort, then go home where they belonged, to take up brooms and sewing needles, as decent women should. We never guessed how hard they would fight to keep those jobs, even after their proper breadwinners came home.

Another serious deterrent was the first casualties coming home. Bitter old men who had been laughing boys only months before was a shock we hadn't anticipated. Blind and crippled old men who had not yet reached their 25^th birthdays were not the stuff of recruiting posters. And, too, it had dawned on us at last that the War would not be over as quickly as we had thought. There was no need to rush overseas "before the party was over."

To add insult to injury in the recruiting business, most English-speaking Canadians could see nothing wrong with the fact that there was only one French-speaking battalion in the whole Army--and most of its officers spoke only English. There was plenty of room for conflict when French-speakers could see only foreign oppression, while their English-speakering counterparts saw only people who wanted the advantage of being Canadian, but who were too cowardly to fight for it.

Whatever the reasons why young men were no longer mobbing recruiting offices, the result was not in doubt: Canada must send more troops to replace the tens of thousands of casualties the Army had already taken. Sir Robert had been saying all along that Canada was a full participant in the war, despite what Quebeckers thought of that policy. Sir Robert had also been demanding a say in British military policy. After all, Canada had contributed millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops. Why shouldn't we have a say in how they were used? The Premier had no options: He had to have more troops. Reducing our commitment to the war would have destroyed any hope of ever having a say in the deployment of the Canadian soldiers and equipment that were already overseas. Our troops would have continued to be split up and used as replacements for British losses. As it was, it would be April, 1917, before an entirely Canadian unit fought together under a Canadian commander. ⁽¹²⁾

To the Premier's credit, he insisted on personally visiting Canadian troops at the front, where he saw what most of his countrymen could not even imagine: wounded men who were returned to the front again and again until they were either dead, or so horribly mangled as to be unwanted even by the Army. It was frighteningly obvious that replacements for the 10,602 dead and wounded from a single battle at Vimy Ridge ⁽¹³⁾ would have to found before they could reduce the strain on those hollow-eyed men. For the Premier, it was insupportable that able-bodied young men were living the soft life at home while their worn-out countrymen enjoyed the solace of lice and rats in the icy slime of the trenches in France. Reducing Canada's commitment was unthinkable.

The Conservative government was not faring well at home. There were accusations of all sorts of scandals and mismanagement. In the election year of 1916, the opposition Liberals had agreed to extend the parliament for one year, in the interest of the war effort. They refused to agree to a second extension, so, by law, there had to be a federal election in 1917. The future looked pretty dark for Sir Robert and his Tories. Many Liberals, including, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, thought that if the party could stick together, it could defeat the Tories and return to power. Then a topic which had been a major Tory bugbear surfaced, and offered a perfect opportunity to split the Liberal Party.

By early in 1916, with the military manpower shortage becoming horribly apparent, conscription became a subject for violent debate everywhere. To say that Quebeckers were violently opposed to the idea would be a serious understatement. Conscription was an anathema to Henri Bourassa and his compatriots--just one more instance of anglophone oppression. In English Canada, however, conscription was seen as a way to force those treasonous French slackers to do their part. After all, they were Canadians, too. Why should only those who spoke English have to die? Mr. Borden needed a coalition government in order to make conscription a non-partisan issue, but he couldn't overcome Sir Wilfrid's refusal to accept the idea.

Desperate, the Tories set to work ensuring that the Liberals would remain split on the issue. In 1917, the Military Voters Act allowed all troops to vote in federal elections. If a soldier did not know his home riding, he could vote "for" or "against" the government, and electoral officials would distribute the votes. The same year, the Wartime Elections Act not only took the vote away from men who had emigrated from certain "enemy" countries after 1902, it also extended the franchise to the female relatives of soldiers. The thinking seems to have been that anyone who was either overseas themselves or had relatives there would be in favour of forcing slackers to "do their duty," but the idea was marketed as letting the women speak for their men who would never more have a voice. Women had been demanding this very right for years, and they were quick to accept it, however it was packaged. It must have been quite a time in the House when only the Tories' use of closure enabled them to force that law past the opposition. In another blatant attempt to buy votes, they also promised farmers that their sons would be exempt from military service.

It worked. On December 17, 1917, the soldiers' vote helped the Unionists ⁽¹⁴⁾sweep English Canada. Predictably, there were riots in several places in Quebec, some of them so nasty that federal troops were sent in to restore order. Secessionist debates took place in the provincial parliament, but were withdrawn before votes were held. Life was eventually quiet again, but the resentment was still there...waiting....

The Military Service Act of 1917 provided for the registration of all Canadian men, aged 18 - 40, to be called for military service, if required. It was touted with the slogan "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription." A small number of Quebeckers were imprisoned for failing to comply with the Act, but better alive in a Canadian jail than dead in an irrelevant foreign war.

The year 1917 seemed to be one of constant tension of one sort or another, but nothing brought the war home like the Halifax explosion. On December 6, a Belgian relief ship, the Imo, collided with a French munitions ship, the Mont-Blanc, in a foggy Halifax harbour. The resulting explosion, which flattened more than two square miles of the city, was followed by a tidal wave and huge fires. Over 1,600 Haligonians lost their lives, 9,000 were injured, and 25,000 more were left homeless. A threat of more explosions from local munitions stores forced the evacuation of the rest of the city. That disaster was our first realization of the destruction wrought by modern weapons; it was one we will never forget.

It is always darkest just before things turn completely black. After the conscription battles and the Halifax explosion in 1917, we were sure things had to get better. Then came the spring of 1918, and a massive German offensive. Thousands of the men who had been forced to register under the Military Service Act of 1917 were now ordered to report for duty overseas. And the exemption promised to farmers' sons was cancelled, just when the farms needed them the most. Needless to say, this did not amuse voters--English or French--who felt they had been double-crossed by their government. The Armistice of November 11, 1918 meant that very few of the conscripts saw battle, but the move would soon have enormous consequences for both the Borden government and the country as a whole.

The year 1917 was a dificult one for the Borden government. They faced a serious cash shortage, even after they had printed more money ("Dominion notes," we called them), increased tarifs, and borrowed in both New York and London. Starting in 1915, we handed over billions of dollars in "Victory Bonds" and "Victory Loans" to finance the war effort, but it was not enough. The government introduced their direct tax on business, in 1916, and conscription in 1917. Not only did they want all our young men, they now wanted to "conscript our wealth" by levying a temporary Income Tax of three to five per cent. They promised it would only last until the war debts were all paid. They must have a pretty poor opinion of our intelligence if they expected us to swallow that!

Although they were less influential than they may have thought, by 1917, the "colonial" governments did have some say in how their troops were used. At the insistence of Ottawa and her senior officers, Canadian troops had fought together under their own officers for the first time in April, at the battle of Vimy Ridge. In taking an objective that had stymied the French and British for more than two years, the Canadian Corps, comprising the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Canadian Divisions, had shown the rest of the world what we could do. For the rest of the war they would continue to build a reputation that Canadian troops would uphold for many decades to come.

By the summer of 1918, it had begun to look as if the War might eventually be over, after all. Canadian troops seemed to win the day every where they went, and things were looking up at home. In May, the government created the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, ⁽¹⁵⁾ ostensibly to keep track of how many bushels of wheat we grew and how many children we had. I think it just gave us yet another place for civil servants to live out their dreary lives at our expense. In many respects, life at home carried on almost as usual, except that more people had jobs and the rich were getting richer faster than in 1914. Wages were high, but so was the cost of living, and most people were mostly concerned with earning a living. And if we thought we had problems, imagine being the King of England, at war with Germany, and having a name like "Hanover!" On June 19, 1917, King George V of Britain ordered his family to quit using German titles and surnames, and take the name "Windsor."

For most people, the Canadian Army's exploits in Europe were the War, but not all Canadians involved fought in Europe, or even on the ground. In fact, the famous infantry brigades rarely included more than one-third of the troops overseas. The war in the air was an important part of the Allied victory. By April 1, 1918, a total of 22,000 members of the Royal Air Force, ⁽¹⁶⁾including 40% of their pilots, were Canadians. Of the top 27 British "aces," ⁽¹⁷⁾ten were Canadian. These daring young men did every kind of duty from flying heavy bombers over Germany to spotting enemy submarines. Why, a Winnipeg bush pilot named Roy Brown even shot down the infamous "Bloody Red Baron" von Richtofen, though to hear them tell it, it was an Australian anti-aircraft gunner who did the deed. In spite of all this, Ottawa did not consider that we needed our own air force, and it would be the very end of the war before they finally consented to make one. Of course, our British cousins were happy to have our boys: A Canadian Air Force would have destroyed the British one.

While these brave boys were upholding the skies of Europe, many of their countrymen were saving the rest of the free world. The Canadian Cavalry Brigade served as part of the British Cavalry Corps. Allied troops in the Mediterranean were cared for by Canadian nurses and doctors. Canadian river pilots and marine engineers provided water transport on the Tigris in the Egyptian campaigns. Nearly all of the light railways behind British lines were built and maintained by Canadian railway troops, using lumber produced from trees felled by Canadian Forestry troops in Scotland and the Jura region of France. Canadians troops were even in Russia, supporting the "white Russian" government forces against the "red Bolsheviks." While many of the Canadians who went overseas felt they were supporting the mother country, it seems pretty clear that the mother country could not have survived the war without assistance from all her Imperial children.

There were many times when we thought the war would never be over, but it did at last come to a close with the German surrender of 11:00 AM on November 11, 1918. We never dreamed that for many returning troops, their hardest battle--trying to regain their lives--was just beginning. Of the approximately 425,000 Canadian troops who went overseas, more than 60,000 never came home. Of those who did make it back, more than 100,000 were disabled, some so seriously that they could no longer work to support themselves and their families. When these boys left, they expected to go and do their duty for King and Country, then come home and take up their lives where they had left off. For a lot of them, it didn't quite work out that way.

For starters, none of them were the bright-eyed youths they had been when they left. Even those who had not seen battle had seen life in a different country, and nothing could ever be the same again. Thousands of those who had given their best in the service of their country now found that that country seemed to have no time for them. By 1919, the federal government did have a pension plan in place for disabled soldiers, with some of the most generous benefit rates in the world. Sadly, this apparent generosity was outweighed by the strictness of the rules for granting the benefits. The Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment ran hospitals, nursing and convalescent homes, and tuberculosis sanatoria, of course, but their first priority was to re-train all disabled soldiers to be productive members of society. Any pension benefits that were doled out went only to those totally incapable of supporting themselves. Anyone who survived the war without losing an eye, a limb, or his mind was on his own. We can't be having lazy veterans taking advantage of the taxpayer by lounging about on a pension for the rest of his life. It just won't do.

The returning soldiers were also the victims of very bad timing. Thousands of war workers had been laid off at the start of the winter slack season in the munitions plants; national morale had not yet recovered from the influenza epidemic that had scourged the country; and it was winter. By they time the 350,000 overseas troops began to arrive in Canada, Halifax and Vancouver were the only ice-free ports still open. The Canadian railways maintained that they could transport only 20,000 troops per month from these places. There were loud complaints from the troops about conditions on one of the scarce ships, and officials were forced to use only the very best ones. To further complicate matters, General Curry and his fellows insisted that the troops not only had to come home in organized units, but that they had to have a chance to visit England on the way.

Needless to say, the delays did not make the now unwanted troops any happy, and in March, 1919, riots broke out in a camp at Kinmel, Wales. Five men died and 27 more were injured. The month of May saw more riots. Both times, British authorities managed to find transport, and by July, 1919, they had almost everybody back in Canada.

One of the more useful by-products of all those months of waiting was that when they did get back, most soldiers were quickly de-mobilised after landing. Most units arrived at a large railroad station somewhere in the vicinity of their final destination. They formed up, marched off to an exhibition hall (or similar large building) to turn in their rifles, sign any last discharge papers that might be required, collect their back pay, pick up tickets needed for any further travel, and walk away into the future.

Those who had managed to remain able-bodied expected to be able to work, and were angry and disappointed when there was little to be found. Now the war was over, production had been severely reduced or shut down, in the factories that made weapons, munitions, even uniforms and military vehicles. The wartime jobs had disappeared, and anybody (including women) who one wasn't about to give it up--for a veteran or anybody else.

The returned men faced something else, too: the fears of their civilian countrymen. We were afraid of these strange old-young men, with their haunted faces, and their unknown expectations. Would they understand what we had gone through at home? Would they all be wanton drunks after all those years in the Army and the exposure to strange foreign women of who knew what sort of morals? Although we would soon see just how different we had all become, most of the returning soldiers just wanted to go back to a normal life, and forget the past five years. For thousands of them, that was just what happened.

For thousands more, however, the glad homecoming became a nightmare. Those who hit Winnipeg in May and June of 1919 landed in the middle of that city's bloody general strike. Men who had become accustomed to a glass of wine with their dinners or a glass of beer at a pub on a Sunday afternoon came home to a country where the consumption of non-medicinal alcohol was against the law. Men who wanted to work found the jobs they needed were filled by women. Men who could not work because their bodies were whole but their minds were not, were scorned as slackers and bums. Thus, the year 1919, the year the soldiers came home, saw social unrest across the country. There were strikes everywhere from Halifax to Vancouver, mostly by people looking for better wages and working conditions. High wartime wages had been mostly offset by the exorbitant cost of living, and most workers felt that they were no better off than they had been before the war.

But it was Winnipeg, that hotbed of prairie idealism, where the unrest culminated in the huge General Strike of May 15-June 25, 1919. It started with the metal trades workers. Their employers refused to recognise the unions, and refused to give workers a wage increase. The Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council appealed to all workers to go on a general strike in support of the metal workers. The whole city was pretty much shut down when almost the entire labour force responded in solidarity. Employers and middle-class citizens organized themselves into the Citizens Committee, and were supported by all levels of government who were afraid that the strike represented a threat to the established order. They were right, in a way. Workers were tired of a world where most wealth was controlled by a few people who already had too much money, while many workers still couldn't afford to send their children to school. There was much rhetoric, with strike leaders making loose talk of "revolutions," and employers who spoke of "Bolsheviks" and "bohunks." Police and strikers clashed several times, but on June 21, a large peaceful demonstration had gathered in front of city hall. The Citizens' Committee, fearing the worst, demanded and got federal troops to assist the police in quelling the strike. The Riot Act was read to to the huge crowd, and the troops were turned loose. The strike officially lasted until June 25^th, but the thirty casualties, including one death, of "Bloody Saturday" had effectively ended the strike. Several of the strike leaders were jailed, but none were seriously prosecuted. We never thought such a thing could happen here at home, but it did, and labour relations will never be the same.

By 1920, many people were disillusioned with the way the Tories were running--some say ruining--the country. Farmers, especially, felt they had a serious grievance after the way they had been duped on the conscription issue. They were unhappy about the low prices they continued to get for their grain, whose sales, they were certain, had been mismanaged by the Easterners. In 1917, the Canadian Board of Grain Commissioners was formed in Regina, then in Winnipeg, on January 6, 1920, the National Progressive Party was organized by delegates from provincial farm groups. United farmers' groups had been around both on the Prairies and in Ontario since the early 1900's, but it wasn't until 1919 that farmer candidates entered politics in Ontario and Alberta. In 1920, 12 farmer candidates won seats in a general election, showing the country that farmers weren't the mindless yokels so many successive federal governments had taken them for. Of course, politics are so strange that the people even elected a woman in the 1921 election. On the funny side, this caused a great difficulty for the speaker of the house. The House rules say that anyone who rises to speak must do so without a hat, and no self-respecting woman is going to appear in public without a hat!

The decade between 1911 and 1921 was dominated by the Great War and its aftermath. We had suffered through our "fuelless" days in order to conserve fuel for the war effort. We had had our "meatless Mondays" to help ensure adequate food for our troops. But for most of us, the war was far away, and even those of us who had husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons "over there" really had no idea what life was like outside of Canada. Besides the War news, there was still all the usual stuff that sells newspapers. When Sir Charles Tupper died late in 1915, it seemed we had lost more than the last Father of Confederation: We had lost a piece of history. Sir Charles had taken part in the conferences in Charlottetown, Quebec, and London which had made British North America into Canada. Father Albert Lacombe, Oblate priest, missionary to the plains Indians, and church spokesman for the prairie people passed away the following year (1916). In those dark days when we had begun to realise that the War would not be over soon, his passing marked the end of what now seemed to have been a golden era. A few months later, the Parliament's Centre Block building in Ottawa burned down. ⁽¹⁸⁾A quick-thinking librarian closed a fireproof door, so the Parliamentary Library's books were all saved, but seven people died. On February 17, 1919, the country once again mourned the loss of a former Premier when Sir Wilfrid Laurier died. It may be long before his unbroken 45-year stint in Parliament is equalled.
 

Economy  Back to Top of page

In spite of the national optimism, times were tough in the farming business before the Great War. Due to a late, wet spring and a heavy snowfall the first week of June, Ogema-area crops had been poor in 1910. Many other areas, though, had had bumper crops and the prices remained low--due to oversupply, the government told us. Around Ogema, heavy snow at the end of May, 1911, followed by a drier-than-usual summer, meant only fair crops that year. Some areas, including parts of southern Saskatchewan, had good crops in 1912 and 1913, in spite of an August cyclone (1913), a long, dry hot spell in July (1914), and a mid-June killing frost (1915), but many other areas suffered complete crop failures. Things picked up a little after that because so much grain was needed overseas, but the prices we got were barely enough to feed us. The government said this was because the crops had been so good in 1909 and 1910 that they were still trying to sell that off. Other wheat-growing countries had had bumper crops of their own, they said, and were not interested in buying ours. They seemed surprised that we were hard put to believe those city folks running the government knew anything about farming!

According to the newspapers, when the War broke out, we were in the midst of an agricultural depression. The crop failures on the prairies and in other parts of the world caused hard times everywhere, they said. People whose jobs depended on the wheat crop no longer have jobs, and those who still have work are not paid well because it is so easy to find replacements for complainers. Some folks around here say it's our own fault for trying to farm land that should never have been farmed. Others say the government misrepresented the quality of the land to innocent immigrants. Maybe they are all right: Maybe rain doesn't follow the plough after all.

After the start of the war, a lot of young people moved to the city. There were more jobs than they could fill in the new factories opening everywhere to build guns, ammunition, vehicles, uniforms and boots for the troops overseas. There are so many jobs and so few men that women went to work in the factories. Women even joined the Army to drive ambulances and work in offices! In 1917, Canadian Army Medical Corps nurses were on the battlefields along with the troops. Bluebirds, they call them, for their blue uniforms. They share all the hardships of the troops, including air raids and poison gas attacks. The war effort was an excuse tailor-made for those pushy women who call themselves "suffragettes," but the Bluebirds' contribution seems a bit extreme. They think are as smart as men and have the right to work on any job they want. And they think they should get paid the same as men for doing it! No wonder the families of today are in such poor shape, what with all their women out working and giving themselves airs. It's not fashionable to tell them they should be home looking after their children and their men. Then again, I suppose that's rather inane when so many of them have no more menfolks at home. And they are doing work that must be done, even if there aren't enough men to do it. We never imagined the upheavals that would cause when women refused to leave their jobs in favour of men who assumed they could go back to work when they came home.

The War, which caused so much distress in so many homes, was also the source of more money than most workers had ever dreamed of earning. Wages that were as much as two and three times what they had been in 1913 led to people flocking to the cities in search of pay cheques. After all, a factory job couldn't be all that much harder than farming, and the money was a lot more regular. At the beginning, life seemed more than rosy for most factory workers, but as the War dragged on, prices of everything went up. Before long, the cost of living was so high that few people were any better off than they had been five years earlier. By 1920, the Federal Department of Labour reported that the average cost of living for a city family is $15.98 per week, more than double what it had been before the War. In Toronto, we heard that, starting in 1920, the provincial government of Ontario will give the wives or widows of disabled men up to $45 a month. On top of all that, in 1917, we ended up with what were told would be a temporary "income tax" to help pay off government debts incurred during the War. They must have thought we were all feeble-minded if they expected us to believe they would let a good thing like that go, once they got their hands on it. In spite of the income tax, there were plenty of things to spend your new five-dollar bills ⁽¹⁹⁾on, though some things were in short supply. Technology seemed only to be accelerated by the War. In fact, in 1916, the federal government established the National Research Council in an effort to support the technological research that every week seems to become more important to our daily lives. It even seemed to be closely tied to many an individual family's finances.

Around 1908, a man named Olds began building cars on a new system. He had originally built each car in one spot. The men who built each part went from one car to the next. Then Mr. Olds came up with an idea: It would be easier to move the cars from place to place, while the men stayed put. He built some flat platforms with wheels, where each car was assembled, then driven off the platform. In 1913, Mr. Henry Ford, of Detroit, Michigan, realized that in order to sell more of his cars, he would have to find a way to reduce the price. One of the reasons cars were so expensive was that it took a long time to train a builder, and as such skilled tradesmen, they were scarce and very high-priced. Mr. Ford's idea was that if, instead of each worker building a whole car from wheels to roof, the cars were put together on an endless moving belt, then each worker would only have to be trained to do a single job over and over. With less training and less skill, they could be paid less money. Cars could be made more quickly, too. This "assembly line" could run 24 hours a day, using shifts of workers. Eventually, this idea would be employed in munitions and other factories to increase production. Cars went from more than $3,000 each to a few hundred. By the start of 1914, the idea was so successful that Mr. Ford could--and did--raise workers' wages from about $2.50 to $5 for a short eight-hour shift. This came to about $1500 per year, which compared as favourably with the $500-600 per year a female rural schoolteacher could expect to earn as it did with the unlimited backbreaking labour for both sexes on the farm. In this light, it wasn't really much wonder that so many men and women were anxious to take a factory job.

In 1913, drillers had found oil at Okotoks, near Calgary, Alberta. Some farmers were beginning to use tractors and trucks instead of horses, but surely they would be only the playtoys of rich men. Who could imagine farming without our faithful Dobbin? We could not have guessed what a rôle that oilwell would eventually play in the country's economy--or its politics. In spite of Canada's rich fuel resources, we felt it patriotic that we should follow Britain's example when, in 1916, they went on Daylight Savings Time to conserve fuel.

It seemed like everyone who was left at home was trying to make their fortune before the War was over. In a 1917 move whose consequences we would be long in recognizing, the Royal Bank of Canada took over the Quebec Bank, which had been established in 1882. Owners of factories with government contracts seemed to make so much money that one would think they were printing it themselves. And, of course, there were those patriotic souls who thought it their duty to quench the thirsts of their parched brethren on both sides of the border.
 

Entertainment  Back to Top of page

Early in the decade, we seemed to be frantically searching for new ways to amuse ourselves. As usual, young people led the way. New music being played in all the best nightspots was something they were beginning to call "jazz," that had some odd frenzied dances to go with it. I don't know what this younger generation is coming to. When they aren't dancing themselves silly, they are going to the "movies" in droves. The first full-length movie I recall was a comedy called Tilley's Punctured Romance. It sure was funny, even if we couldn't hear what they said. Why, hundreds of girls--and even women, who should know better--are mooning over some guy they saw in a film called The Sheik (1921). Rudolph Valentino, I think his name is. Imagine how they will behave if they ever figure out how to make those movie people talk so we can hear them!

Thanks to Mr. Marconi and his compatriots, we now don't even have to leave home to listen to people far away. Just last week one of our neighbour's sons made one of those new gadgets they call a "radio receiver." There isn't much to hear, and only one person at a time can listen, but it sure is amazing. We read that a commercial radio station was licensed last summer (July, 1920) in Detroit, USA, but we are too far away to hear it. There are some other stations broadcasting, though, and sometimes, late at night, we can hear music!

If radio is too exciting for you, there is always the newspaper. We saw one a while back which had a whole page of comics ⁽²⁰⁾. And we heard of a new kind of puzzle--something called a "crossword" (1913). It seems to be a grid of squares, some blank, some solid black. There is also a list of "clues" which you use to guess the words which fit in the squares. The words are interlocking so that they share some letters. Very entertaining, they say. There was kind of a heartwarming article awhile back (1917), about a black bear they call Winnie, in the London Zoo. The name is short for "Winnipeg," a female black bear cub, a mascot who had been smuggled aboard a troopship with a contingent of Manitoba troops. When her guardian, Captain Harry Colebourne, was ordered to the front, he left Winnie ⁽²¹⁾in the care of the zookeepers, as a gift to the people of London, whose hearts she has stolen. And speaking of things in the paper, we recently (1915) saw a very moving poem by a Canadian Army doctor at the front. I don't remember it all, but the first line was "In Flanders' fields, the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row."

For those among us with lots of money who like paintings and other works of art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, recently (1920) opened the first exhibition by the Group of Seven. The 114 works were painted by Carmichael, Lismer, Jackson, Varley, MacDonald, and Harris while they lived during the past year in remoe areas of Quebec, around Lake Superior, and near Jasper, Alberta. Detractors call their work the "Hot Mush School," because the paintings are not in the classic pastoral style.

It seems like the whole country has gone sports mad, and some sportsmen will stop at nothing to find a way to play hockey. It's not cold enough to play outside in Victoria, they say, so somebody has figured out a way to make an ice rink inside. It didn't help the hometown Victoria Aristocrats when, on January 3, 1912, they lost to the New Westminster Royals, 8-3, on Victoria's home ice. At least the winners were a Canadian team. In 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans became the first US team to take Lord Stanley's cup out of Canada when they beat the Montreal Canadiens.

Baseball has long been a US passion that seems to be making its mark in this country. Nearly all the rural schood districts have teams that play against each other. In the spring of 1914, one of the teams consisted of Howard Ott, Nine Westley, Roy Rose, Ed Barnes, Bill Coubrough, Harry Roleston, Percy Tripp, Art George, Fred LaFraugh, Ed Gurnsey, and Del Coubrough. Mr. Tripp, you'll recall, was the one who held the 1910 Goose Mountain Christmas party at his house. If you are really good at the game, there is even money in it. In September 1914, some youngster named Babe Ruth hit a home run. As the pitcher, he allowed only one hit when his team the Toronto team 9-0 at Toronto's own Hanlon's Point field. Ruth went on to be a wage slave for the Boston Red Sox in 1915, but couldn't hold the job. In 1920, they sold him to the New York Yankees--for $125,000! Those Americans must have more money than they know what to do with. And only in the US would you find a sports competition open only to US teams but called the "World Series" (1913). ⁽²²⁾
 

The home  Back to Top of page

When, in 1915, Ontario created a government board to control liquor distribution, it was the beginning of the end for the legal consumption of non-medicinal alcohol. Starting with Manitoba, in 1916, the entire country was officially pretty much dry by the end of 1920. Only British Columbia and Quebec held out. There was no doubt that those temperance-mongering suffragists were influential in this: Our addle-headed provincial governments gave most of them the vote, starting with those radicals in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta in 1916. Ontario, B.C. (1917), and Nova Scotia ⁽²³⁾ (1918) followed, and in 1918, they were even allowed to vote in federal elections! And now that they had the vote, they were even more demanding of laws to protect themselves and their children. Men grumbled about not being allowed to stop for refreshment on the way home from a hard day's work, but even the scoffers had to admit that violence was down and the quality of life up in working-class homes, now that breadwinners were more likely to bring home the entire contents of the pay envelope. A month after prohibition went into effect in Albert (1916), the Edmonton Bulletin reported that bank deposits had gone up 100%. It was too good to last. It was only a matter of time before provincial politicians figured out how much money was to be had from government licencing and control of alcohol distribution. ⁽²⁴⁾ In the Yukon Territory, they went straight to government control and didn't even bother with prohibiton.

At the same time as they were going on about the evils of alcohol and such, the suffragists were also squawking about women having a right to more of a life than having a baby every year. An awful lot of women secretly agree with them, though of course most are afraid to say so. Not only is such talk against the law, but most men and many women think that is a woman's lot in life and she has some nerve complaining about what God has decreed. Still, some brave women struggle to make a change. We have heard of an American named Margaret Sanger who published (1914) a magazine called Woman Rebel that contained information on contraceptives and family planning. She was charged with nine violations of her country's Comstock Act, which labelled the information "obscene." As such, the magazine was banned from the U.S. mail, which made distribution difficult and expensive. In 1916, Mrs. Sanger opened a clinic where women could get accurate information about safely limiting the size of their families. Her clinic was closed and she was thrown in jail as a public nuisance. It is most unfortunate for us that Canadian lawmakers are no more open-minded than their American counterparts, and any sort of willful family planning is illegal here, too. Maybe they will come to their senses one day and see that families can live better it they are smaller than most are today.

Our neighbours recently went on a big train trip, all the way to Winnipeg. The things they saw in the stores there seem scarcely to be credited. The signs on some of the stores were made of long glass tubes filled with something called neon (1915). They can make the tubes into any shape--even handwriting. And they glow red in the dark! Apparently some of these things had been around for so long that city folks take them for granted, but they were most wonderful and amazing to our friends who live way out on the prairie, like us. There was one huge store called "Eaton's," (same as the catalogue), that they call a department store. It sells all kinds of things in different "departments," all under the same roof. There was a part called "housewares" that just sold things for the home, like dishes and the new electric appliances. There was an electric toaster (1910) that all you had to do was plug it into the electric socket and put in your bread. After a little while, you took out the toast, and you didn't even have to light the stove! And they said that there was a new type in the U.S. that even popped the toast up (1919) when it was done. They saw a brand-new type of teakettle that whistles when the water is boiling (1921), and a new type of steel forks and knives called "stainless steel" (1921) that doesn't rust. And to clean your metal pots and pans, there were little pads of steel wool with soap in them (1917) that they called SOS. What a great idea! There was something else, too: cooking pots made out of glass. They say you can put this Pyrex (1915) in the oven straight from the icebox and it won't break! I would have to see that to believe it.

In another department, where they sold some of those new-fangled electrical appliances, there was a clothes drier (1915). Imagine not having to freeze your hands hanging wet clothes outside in the dead of winter. Too bad electricity is mostly only available in the cities. ⁽²⁵⁾ A machine like that could sure lighten a woman's workload. They also saw a hair dryer (1920), though I can't really see any real sense to that. What if your haircaught on fire?

There was even a large drugstore, where there was something that would be pretty handy for small nicks and cuts: a small strip of sticky tape with a little gauze pad in the middle, called a "Band-Aid" (1921). Nearby, at the perfume counter, was a new scent they say was dreamed up by some French female clothes designer. It's obviously not her first attempt, since she called it Chanel N^o. 5. ⁽²⁶⁾

Next to the drug department, was a food section with a couple of strange things in it that no self-respecting woman would be caught dead with in her kitchen. Some American had come up with the idea of packaging cookies in a clear plastic wrap called Cellophane (1912). The clear wrapper is a good idea, since you can now see the contents of the package before you buy. The thing that worries me is the cookies. Worse, someone named Betty Crocker ⁽²⁷⁾ (1921) has packaged the dry ingredients for a cake and put them in a box. All you have to do is add water and bake it. What is the world coming to when women can't be bothered to bake their own cookies and cakes? They were likely invented by those sorry females who insist on working in factories and offices instead of being at home looking after their families.

We saw an adverisement a while back (1912) for a thing that could be handy. It's a slender cylinder with a small, dry battery in it and a bulb at one end. The light flashes on and off with a flick of the switch on the side. Imagine: no more coal-oil to spill, no more washing lantern globes, no more hunting for matches when you have to go outside at night.

Another type of plastic now in use had kind of a slow start in the market. In 1903, a scientist named Benedictus saw a labortory flask which had previously held a transparent plastic solution fall off a high shelf. It didn't shatter, as one would expect, but somehow mostly retained its original shape. He tried selling his safety glass to car makers to reduce injuries from flying glass in a crash, but no one was interested. The safety glass was eventually used to make lenses for gas-masks for soldiers. After the war, it was used in cars because the car-makers thought that if it could stand up in battle, it might be good after all.

Closer to home, there is still lots of hard work. In most families, all housework is still done by hand. Clothes are still washed on a scrub board with either home-made soap, or Sunlight bars that have to be rubbed directly on the clothes or grated like cheese to disolve in the water. Water is hauled from a well, if you are lucky enough to have one, or from a slough, if you aren't. Most of the slough water is fairly clean, though some has so much alkali the water is no good for anything. Drinking water usually has to be strained through a floursack cloth to get rid of the "wigglers." ⁽²⁸⁾ In the winter, we melt snow for nice, clean soft water. Don't have to carry it as far, either.

All our cooking is done on the little old kitchen stove. Ours burns coal, as do those of most of our neighbours, since wood is in such short supply. In summer, a lot of folks burn dried cow patties--or cow chips, as they are also known. There is plenty of coal to be had, although we usually have to go out around Readlyn to get it. It always seem like such a long trip ⁽²⁹⁾ with the team and the sleigh. One winter, one of our neighbours, Mr. Ott, went to get a load of coal, but the trail was so bad on the way back that the horses played out. The load upset several times, and had to be unloaded several more to get the team through the snowbanks. Mrs. Ott said by the time they got home there was only ¼ ton left, and that was so wet they had to dry it in the oven before it would burn!

For most families, the summer day starts at dawn. There is so much to do that we can't afford to waste daylight. By the end of the War, it was getting easier to get dressed as women's clothes got lighter and fewer, but before that, you first put on a long, thin shirt-like dress called a shift or chemise, then your corset, a corset cover to protect your dress from wearing on the hard parts of the corset, long cotton stockings, possibly bloomers, two or three petticoats (as many as eight in winter), an ankle-length dress, and, finally, your shoes, which are fastened either by laces or buttons and loops.

Our house has two rooms, but many of our neighbours are not so fortunate. They eat, cook, sleep, and everything else in the same room. Some folks even have the barn attached to one end of the house. Handy in the winter, I guess, and likely helps keep everybody a little warmer, but a little too smelly for us. We have a board floor now in our house. The new floor is much warmer, but that old hard-packed dirt never needed to be scrubbed! Most of our furniture is home-made, since there wasn't room to bring much with us. I did bring my own dishes, and my great-grandmother's china which had travelled all the way from Scotland with my mother. Some day, I hope to have a china cabinet to put it in, but for now it will stay in the old trunk, where it won't get broken. Every morning, after I light the fire, I put the breakfast porridge on to boil, alongside the teakettle. The oatmeal has been soaking in water all night, so it won't take long to cook. Then I set the table with the dishes, and some of last summer's wild strawberry jam. I haven't decided if I will toast some slices of yesterday's bread or leave them plain. We'll eat when my husband comes in from the barn with the milk.

After breakfast, there is bread to bake from the sponge I set last night, and milk to take down cellar to cool. Tomorrow, as I do every week, I will fill the churn half-full of cream to make butter. While I wait for the butter to come, I will have time to look at the new Eaton's catlogue, and dream about all the things I could buy--if the coyotes don't get my chickens, and the garden and the crop don't get hailed out, burnt out, or die of thirst from lack of rain. Speaking of gardens, I will spend part of this afternoon there with the children, pulling weeds and picking beetles off the potatoes. I have been canning some of the small vegetables like peas and tomatoes as they come ready. It will soon be time to dig spuds and turnips, and butcher a hog. There seems to be no end to the work here, but this land is ours and it's all we have. Besides, there's a dance at the school house next week.
 

The family  Back to Top of page

The years between 1911 and 1921 were filled with both deep sadness and great joy for Matt and Liz. At age 80, Liz's father, James C. Brown, was the last of the "old guard" when he went to his last reward on November 11, 1914, but there were lots of new grandchildren to love, too.

Because of the need for food, especially grain, farmers and their sons were exempt from military service until almost the very end of the war. Married men were not expected to join up until all the able single men had gone, so most of Liz's sons didn't have to go. But they did. Of the ten boys she raised, four were overseas at one time or another, three were farmers, and the other three were too young to go to war. It must have torn her mother's heart to think of her babies all so far from home. But she was luckier than some: Two of her boys managed to get safely home. I doubt whether that thought did much to assuage the grief she felt on hearing that she would never see her dear Johnny and Simon again in this world. And spare a thought for their poor father, who keeps a stiff upper lip because, unlike his wife, he may not show the torment in his soul.

All of Liz's daughters were now married except the "baby," Ethel, who at 12 years of age, could be expected to stay at home for a while yet. The girls don't all live as close as Liz would like, though Barbara is only a mile down the road. Floy and her family are nearly straight west of Matt and Liz, about 4 miles away. In summer, this is a two-hour walk, and not even to be considered on most winter days. Annie and Maggie live within a mile or so of each other, but are nearly 10 miles from their mother. Harve's new wife, May, lives right across the road from her sister-in-law, Liz McGuire Coubrough. By the time the younger boys, John, Simon, Bob, and Del went looking for land, they ended up being nearly 40 miles from home.

Matt and Liz's children all lived within a few miles of their parents, but might sometimes have just as well been on the moon for the difficulty in getting to them. In winter, snow and extreme cold often kept everyone in the house, except for feeding livestock and flying trips to the "necessary." When travel was possible, visiting neighbours and friends was one way of keeping one's sanity through the long, dreary season. For example, in 1910, the "Goose Mountain Bachelors" were treated to a Christmas party at the home of one of them, Jack Myren. The dinner was provided by another of their number, Percy Tripp, but was cooked and served by Mr. and Mrs. Denton. Alex Grier, and Harve and Bill Coubrough were among those in attendance. Goose Mountain, named by one Matt Coubrough, was a hill behind the house of one of the neighbours, Mr. Gosling.

Late in the fall of 1909, the year before the big Christmas party, there was terror in the whole neighbourhood as a huge prairie fire swept over hundreds of acres. Fortunately, no one in Matt and Liz's family was injured. The same winter, on New Year's Eve, all party celebrations were cancelled or never went out of doors when a bad blizzard blew over the whole countryside. The next spring, it seemed like Mother Nature tried to make up for the devastation. Burning off the old grass, combined with the extra moisture from all the snow had turned the ground a lovely, soft purple from acres and acres of crocuses.

By 1912, Ogema was a booming little town. In the spring of 1911, two large tents appeared at the new townsite. One housed the store of Mr. Sargent and Mr. Brunton; the other held the store owned by Mr. Moffet and Mr. Robertson. Soon after that, the railroad reached the town, and the C.P.R. surveyors were persuaded to survey the townsite. Speculators swarmed in so as to get in on the ground floor. Farmers and labourers who had learned other trades in the past now walked miles to town, where they worked a twelve-hour day at bricklaying, construction, or whatever, then walked home again. It was exhausting, but the builders paid in cash, a commodity hard to come by on a prairie homestead.

On February 12, 1911, the town council was voted in, with Mr. D. B. Robertson as overseer. They were kept busy building sidewalks (10 feet wide on Main Street!), passing bylaws for such things as dog taxes and hiring us a policeman (April 1911) to collect them. On July 7^th, 1911, Mr. J. A. Fowley printed the first edition of the Ogema Tribune. It contained an account of the July 1^st sports day, and advertisements for fifty Ogema businesses. In the summer of 1911, the Key West Telephone company started up, with the government giving out free poles to have one installed. If you waited until 1912, you had to pay for your own poles--at $110 a mile! Not many people outside of town have telephones.

By the end of 1911, we were a pretty good-sized town. We had a land office (1910); several stores, selling almost anything you could imagine; a 16X20-foot frame school (1911), with a teacher we paid $700 a year; a municipal office; a barber shop; Lodge No. 83 of the Independant Order of Oddfellows; ⁽³⁰⁾a Post Office, with Mr. R.L. Green as the Postmaster; ⁽³¹⁾a doctor named D.W.Allen, a butcher shop, a blacksmith, and the Ogema Union Sunday School. A year later, in 1912, we got a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada; a Federal Grain Elevator; the Ogema United Church; and the Curling Club. Sadly, when a cyclone blew through town on August 14, 1912, it took the club building with it. On the bright side, that was also the day that Mr. West installed a gas pump for automobiles in front of his hardware store on Main Street. Mr. West also built the National Hotel, in 1914. The fact that there was several stores selling the same things helped to keep prices down. Even so, we thought they were high enough. It was 45¢ for a 5 lb. pail of jam, and 35¢ for the same amount of syrup. Salmon was $1.75 for a dozen cans, cocoanut was 18¢ a pound, and lobster, 25¢ a can.

By 1913, we had a second doctor, Dr. Kester, a dray line, and several lumber yards and building contractors. We paid a bell-ringer 25 cents a day to ring the town bell four times a day. The town council does their best to see that we keep our little town clean: In 1914, they passed a by-law which made it illegal to spit on the sidewalks.

In January, 1915, a fire broke out that destroyed most of the East side of Main street. Soon after that, the town fathers decided that we should invest in a chemical fire engine, as the water one simply didn't work in the cold of a Saskatchewan prairie winter. Later in 1915, Dr. Patterson built a drug store, and Mr. Miller built a poolroom. In 1916, the municipalities of Key West and Norton agreed on the need for a hospital in Ogema, but couldn't agree on anything else, so the project was dropped.⁽³²⁾

In the rural areas, things were growing, too. In 1912, one of Matt Coubrough's neighbours, Mr. Jim Cousins, who was a stonemason, and two of his brothers did most of the stone-cutting for the Mount Joy District school. The school opened in October, with 24 pupils, and a teacher by the name of Miss A. E. Gimby. The stonemason, Mr. Jim Cousins, would eventually be the father-in-law of Matt Coubrough's son, Harve. Nearby, in the Adell district, Mr. James Coubrough, Mr. Robert Longley, and Mr. Charles M^cMullen were the trustees of a school that opened in 1913. Its seven pupils had a Mr. Clarence Stone as their teacher. Mr. Coubrough was obviously a man of some foresight. His only child at the time the school opened was an infant daughter.

In 1914, Britain called upon us to help, and dozens of our young men made the long trip to the recruiting centre at Weyburn. Families often went together, as did the Coubroughs. Harve had gone and joined up in 1915. Not to be outdone, his younger brothers, John and Simon, both went in January of 1916. They stood in line together, and Simon signed first, then John. Some of these men were fortunate enough to spend their whole time overseas in the company of men they knew, but many others were separated and sent to British units as replacements for casualties. After much effort by our government, soldiers were re-united in their own Canadian units. John, Harve, and Simon were all at Vimy Ridge in 1917. John and Simon were in the same company, (80 - 200 men), so they likely saw each other at least occasionally.

Of the three, only Harve made it safely home. Like the others who came back, he was not the same man as when he had left, and seldom talked about what had happened "over there." Men who had been there already knew what it had been like, and folks who hadn't been there could never understand, so there was just no point in talking about it. Still another son, Del, would be called up in 1918, under the Military Service Act. He was sent overseas, but the war was over before he had to go into battle.

In 1916 and 1917, we organized a branch of the Red Cross, whose ladies sewed and knitted, and packed parcels for the boys overseas, and a branch of the Royal Canadian Legion. After the War, in 1919, we formed a Return Soldiers Welcome and Aid Society, to help our soldiers get their lives back. The Society also started a Memorial Fund for a large stone memorial, but it won't be finished for a while yet. ⁽³³⁾ By July 8, 1919, all the boys that were coming home were back, so we had a Peace Celebration. Even those whose soldiers would not be home again were glad to celebrate: no more would have to go.

For Matt and Liz, it must have seemed a welcome end to a long, dismal stretch of years. The official letters had said their soldiers had died bravely and well. But they had died and no amount of poppies or soothing words could bring them home. It would be long before Matt and Liz no longer felt the loss of three sons. ⁽³⁴⁾
 

Question corner  Back to Top of page

Here are some of the things I am currently working on:

1. Still looking for Annie's family, but with little more success than usual.

2. Still looking for the original Coubrough. I have managed to sort out about 6 lines that originate before 1650…and, well…you know the rest.

3. Hunting the Australian connection, too, but not making much progress there either. I did find a family who appeared out of nowhere in the Scots records, but seems to have started out in Australia. A John Coubrough and Margaret Harrold (or Herald) had a son, James, b1866, and a son, John, b 1868, both registered in the Central District of Glasgow. I couldn't find their Scots marriage record, and was at a loss until I stumbled across them in the Australian Vital Statistics index, which said they were married in Melbourne in 1857. They had three children there before they went back to Scotland. James was born at sea on the way home. Still working on where they connect.
 

Editor's corner  Back to Top of page

Uncle John, Uncle Simon, Uncle Harve, Uncle Del, and Cousin David all belonged to the 1^st Canadian Division. The 1^st was known as General Sir Arthur Currie's "Red Patch" division, from the colour of the shoulder patches they wore. In World War I, Canada fielded four full divisions and one understrength one, each with up to 25,000 men. These divisions were all disbanded by the time the Canadian Forces integrated the Army, Air Force, and Navy into a single force in 1968: A peace-time army had no need of so many troops.

In 1984, the 1^st Canadian Division was re-instated as a Headquarters unit, in Kingston, Ontario, and later amalgamated with the 1^st Canadian Signals Regiment. I have just finished a three-year tour with that combined unit, and I can say that it gave me a sense of pride and family to wear that red patch on my shoulder, as had so many of our bravest and best.

This family search is the joint project of a number of Coubrough cousins. As the Canadian Connection, Mary and I have broadly divided the search. She keeps track of "new" Coubroughs, who came after of Matt and Liz. I look for "old" Coubroughs who came before Matt and Liz. We are not psychic: If you don't tell us when someone joins your family, you could be forever lost to history. Please, please take time to write to me  at the e-mail address below when your family expands. We need You!

Some other Web sites you might like to have a look at:

Commonwealth War Grave Commission has burial and commemorative information on soldiers from all British Commonwealth countries. (Free) http://www.cwgc.org

Canadian National Archives has records from soldiers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) in WWI, records of Dominion Land Grants (homesteads), etc. (Free)http://www.archives.ca

The General Record Office (Scotland) has indexed Parish Registers from as far back as 1563 in some areas. There are also records from the 1891 census. Note that there is a charge for using these records. It is free to look at the site, but costs £6 ($15 Cdn) to look at the index, and £10 ($25 Cdn) each if you want to order a document.

http://wood.ccta.gov.uk/grosweb/grosweb.nsf
 

Subscriptions  Back to Top of page

Subscriptions are $5 (Canadian) per year for paper copies. My only interest in creating this newsletter is to share the family information I find, so I have no objection to people making their own copies.

My apologies, but due to technical difficulties, I am no longer able to send this newsletter by e-mail. The files are too big to send in one piece, and I have not had much luck trying to split them. This electronic edition may be freely downloaded. If you would like more information, please e-mail me at the address below.

e-mail: myrna@coubrough.com
 

Honour Roll 1914-1918  Back to Top of page
 

M2/183284 Private John Coubrough

6763 Serjeant J. B. Coubrough

We were the lucky ones  Back to Top of page

1960 Private Andrew Coubrough, CEF

210195 Private James Dowall Coubrough, CEF

527214 Private John Coubrough, CEF

81182 Private John Paterson Coubrough, CEF

693233 Private Malcolm Coubrough, CEF

452365 Private Malcolm Coubrough, CEF

772292 Private William Coubrough, CEF

All of these men (except Alexander) served in the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force (CEF), and were lucky enough to come home again. Uncle Del seems to be the only one who was drafted. With all the older boys gone, Uncle Del was likely needed on the farm, but all exemptions were cancelled in March of 1918, so he had to go. He was over seas, but, as with most of his fellow draftees, the war was over before he had to go into battle.

Privates Andrew , Charles Gilroy, and John Coubrough, of Verdun, were sons of David and Mary S. MacKay Coubrough, and brothers of the David Coubrough in the 14^th Battalion who died in 1917. Imagine the strain on this poor woman having four sons overseas.

Private James Dowall Coubrough was the son of Matthew Gibb Coubrough and Margaret Dowall Coubrough. Matthew was the youngest brother of Grampa Matt's dad, thus James Dowall was first cousin of our Grampa Matt.

Private John Paterson Coubrough was a great-great-great-great-grandson of John Couburgh of Ellrig, who is the earliest we can connect to any of our extant branches.

Private Malcolm Coubrough of Portage la Prairie was the father of Donald Coubrough, who now lives in that same town.

Private Malcolm Coubrough, husband of Isabella of Brantford, was the father of David and William, sons of Isabella. This poor lady's whole family seems to have joined up. Her son David seems to have been so anxious to go that when he was turned down by the Hamilton recruiting office--probably because he was too young--he went to the London office 6 months later and tried again. They seem to have taken him the second time.

Private Alexander Coubrough, of the Australian Infantry, was either the older brother or the cousin of the Private Victor Thomas John Coubrough who died at the Somme, July 1916.
  Back to Top of page

1. Technically, the 21^st century does not start until January 1, 2001. Back to text

2. In 1856, Upper Canada ended at the eastern shore of Lake Huron, and to the north on a line about even with the top of that same lake. Back to text

3. Anywhere from 4-10 days on the train, depending on the weather and track conditions. Back to text.

4. Canadian National Railway Back to text.

5. Manitoba's northern border had been under much debate since 1908. In 1911, it was officially set at the 60^th parallel, the same as Alberta's and Saskatchewan's. Back to text.

6. This figure may have been as high as $35 million. Back to text.

7. From the 1902 report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration. A head tax had been in place since 1884. Under pressure from British Columbia, it was raised to $100 in 1900, and in 1903, to $500. In 1923, parliament passed laws making it nearly impossible for Asians to enter Canada. The laws were not repealed until 1947. Back to text.

8. The Canadian government passed a law to this effect in 1911, in response to complaints that the country was being "polluted" by foreigners.  Back to text.

9. From $1.7 million in 1898 to $7 million in 1911. Back to text.

10. Mr. Borden was knighted in 1914.  Back to text.

11. By the end of the war, 30,000 women worked just in munitions factories.  Back to text.

12. At Vimy Ridge.  Back to text.

13. April 9, 1917: 3598 dead, 7004 wounded. Back to text.

14. Coalition supporters.  Back to text.

15. Now Statistics Canada.  Back to text.

16. The Canadian Air Force was formed in 1920, and received its "Royal" designation in 1923.  Back to text.

17. Pilots who shot down more than five enemy planes and lived to tell the tale.  Back to text.

18. The fire began late on the night of February 3, 1916. The Centre Block was rebuilt in its original style. The restoration was finished in 1920.  Back to text.

19. The first such note, with the King's picture, was issued May 1, 1912.  Back to text.

20. The New York Evening Journal, January 31, 1912. Back to text.

21. Winnie would later be the inspiration for the bear stories of A.A.Milne. Back to text.

22. The competition was actually named after the newspaper that sponsored it: The New York World. Back to text.

23. P.E.I. held out until 1922, and Quebec women had to wait until 1940. Back to text.

24. By 1924, the last holdouts in Alberta gave in, and the country was wet again. And there were always those who considered that satisfying the thirst of their friends more a matter of charity than crime. Some of Canada's wealthiest families got their start this way, since the U. S. Prohibition lasted several years after Canada's ended. Back to text.

25. Ogema was not connected to the provincial power grid in 1951. Back to text.

26. Invented in 1921, it was given its name because Coco Chanel thought five was a lucky number. Back to text.

27. Note that Betty Crocker was a brand name, not a person. Back to text.

28. Mosqito larvae. Back to text.

29. About 35 miles each way, as the crow flies. Back to text.

30. The Rebekah Lodge received its charter in 1914. Back to text.

31. Mr. Green resigned in April, 1912. He was replaced by Mr. R. S. Stevens, who held the job until 1915. The post was then filled by Mr. Alfred Douglas Taylor, who would hold it until 1950. Back to text.

32. It would be 1948 before Ogema's 4-bed hospital was finally completed. Back to text.

33. The monument was unveiled in 1923. A WWII Memorial Plaque was added in 1947. Back to text.

34. Bob had died in 1916. Back to text.