Between 1914 and 1945, two world wars, an influenza pandemic, and economic collapse touched the lives of all Canadians. Each of these crises enhanced the role of the state and deepened the fault lines that bedeviled the nation. As political parties sprouted left and right to address perceived problems, it was an intensely political time, fraught with danger and potential. It was also a period in which mass consumer culture called into question old verities and made automobiles, fashions, household appliances, radios, and movies the standard-bearers of status and well-being. With no place to hide from global trends, security – economically, politically, and militarily – became the overriding obsession.

DESCENT INTO THE ABYSS

As a member of the British Empire, Canada was automatically at war when Great Britain declared its intention on 3 August 1914 to intervene in the madness unfolding in Europe. The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist set off a chain reaction among European military alliances that drew one country after another into the conflict. In the end, Great Britain, France, and Russia – and eventually Italy, Japan, and the United States – were aligned against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. On 4 August, members of the Canadian House of Commons, in a rare moment of unanimity, approved the War Measures Act, giving the federal government authority to do anything deemed “necessary for the security, defence, peace, order, and welfare of Canada.”