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THE WHO, WHAT, WHY, AND HOW OF IT!. Canadian Home Front - WWI. The Home Front. Canadians began producing our own munitions, or weapons of war. Many other wartime goods, such as blankets, could be produced in Canada with safety.
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THE WHO, WHAT, WHY, AND HOW OF IT! Canadian Home Front - WWI
The Home Front • Canadians began producing our own munitions, or weapons of war. • Many other wartime goods, such as blankets, could be produced in Canada with safety. • However, with many men fighting overseas it was the women of Canada who performed the duties at hand in the factories.
What women did • Many women enlisted to become ambulance drivers, nurses and aircraft workers overseas. • Others stayed in Canada and worked on farms, sewed uniforms for Canadian soldiers and worked for the Canadian Red Cross. • Women also started to work in the munitions factories all over Canada.
Working Conditions • The conditions in which the women worked were also unfavorable - the buildings were very cold and often home to rats. • Women were not paid the same wages as men but did a more than acceptable job in replacing them.
Victory Gardens • During the war Europe had serious problems getting producing enough food. • All the farmers in Europe had gone off to war during the summer of 1914, leaving their crops ripening in the fields, some never to be harvested. • The burden fell to North America to provide food for the 120,000,000 people in the countries of the Allied Forces.
Victory Gardens • The burden fell to North America to provide food for the 120.000.000 people in the countries of the Allied Forces. • Prices increased for foods such as butter, eggs, and coffee. There were meatless and wheatless days to try to cut consumption of highly valued food products. As a response to the cuts in consumption, community gardens began to spring up everywhere.
The Farm Service Corps"Farmerettes" • “Farmerettes” were women who worked on the Home Front. • They assisted in all aspects of farm work, replacing the labour of men lost to military service. • In 1918, for example, 2,400 women picked fruit in the Niagara region.
Rationing • At the start of the war people went around panic buying food and hoarding it at home. • Some shops sold out of food in days in August 1914. • Canadians had to send food and supplies to Britain during the war and therefore had to limit what they were eating.
Rationing • With the German’s introducing Submarines (a new weapon in WWI) they were sinking our ships on the way to England. • This caused further rationing. • What was rationed: • Weekly, each Canadian adult was entitled to have 1.8 kg of meat and 220g of sugar. • Gas and metal was also rationed.
Anti-German Sentiment • During the war Canadians feared and harassed Germans. • In Canada, the Ontario city of Berlin changed its name to Kitchener, after Lord Kitchener, famously pictured on the "Lord Kitchener Wants You" recruiting posters. • Several streets in Toronto that had previously been named for Liszt, Humboldt, Schiller, Bismark, etc., were changed to names with strong British associations, such as Balmoral.
Wars Measures Act (1914) • The Canadian Parliament within days of entering the war passed the War Measures Act with little debate (August 2914). • The Government was granted the authority to undertake any action seen as necessary "for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada." • The Government was given control over transportation, trade and commerce, and property; censorship of the means of communication, which at the time primarily meant newspapers; and the right to arrest and deport suspected enemies.
War Measures Act • Using the War Measures Act the Canadian Gov’t took lands from all people in Canada to grow crops and farm beef. • For example, the First Nations people who lived in OKA had their lands taken and were promised it back after the war. This never happened.
War Measures Act • This act allowed the Gov’t to also have curfews put in place. • Citizens of Canada had no rights and freedoms that they have today under this Act.