The other side of The Great War: Conscientious Objectors in Canada

Dr. Shaw says a conscientious objector was a person who claimed the right to refuse to perform military service during conscription, or to perform only limited service, on the grounds that it went against their religious or moral beliefs. It was something all of the allied countries, including Canada, allowed during the First World War.

“In Canada it was a little more limited. We wanted it mostly to be for members of religious denominations like Mennonites, Quakers and things like that. But those weren’t the only people who saw this as fitting them. You also see Baptists and Anglicans and people who didn’t belong to any denomination sort of seeing that that fit for them, too.”

She says the Canadian Government was even more stringent than other countries like Britain were. Officials wanted the objector status based mainly on religion: for example what denomination a person belonged to, and what its rules were — rather than simply a person’s ‘conscience.’

“They were worried that too many people would take advantage of it if it was more open and that it would be too disorganized to prove conscience. It was easier to prove membership in a denomination that had these certain rules.”

Tribunals

In order for a person to avoid military service, or to avoid active combat, they had to prove to the Canadian Government that they should not serve. They did so, at a series of tribunals across the country.

It’s not clear just how many people were exempted from military service, Dr. Shaw explains, because the records of the tribunals were burned after the First World War by the eighth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Lyman Duff, who thought conscientious objectors from Quebec were “a living menace to national unity.” Her estimates are pegged at around 7,000.

Many of those who did take part, came from rural areas, and in some cases, were illiterate, or nearly illiterate.

“This was pretty difficult. If you’re a young man, especially if you’ve lived apart from urban people for most of your life and you have to try to articulate your conscience in this public tribunal setting, the judges were respected locals, so they were pro-war. Most people didn’t get their exemption when they went that way.

“Oftentimes people didn’t even quite understand what they were being asked to prove. They would try to push really hard to show what their beliefs were, and bring evidence of actions in the past or to bring witnesses and the tribunal didn’t want to really accept that. They wanted them to show membership in a religious denomination. That was a harder thing.”

Options: Prison or Limited Military Service

For those men who were granted Conscientious Objector Status, there weren’t many options, says Dr. Shaw. They either went to prison, were sent overseas to frighten them into giving up their objections, or if they did enlist – they did not take part in active combat.

“Some were willing to do other things, like caring for the wounded. So, stuff like that did happen. There were Quaker ambulance brigades and things like that. But this accommodation didn’t always work out. By 1917, when the Canadian Government instituted conscription, so many thousands of infantries had been killed already that that was what they wanted more of: foot soldiers with guns. So they didn’t accept this willingness to do something else.”

There were others who simply objected to military service, period. The thought was that if someone enlisted, even if they were a cook or a medic, if they were ordered to kill, they had to.

Those objectors were generally sent to jail.

“In the Second World War, there were more options for them. People sort of recognized that having somebody sit in jail the whole time isn’t useful for society. If you were a conscientious objector in the Second World War, you got sent to some kind of work camp, often logging or road building. There were people who got sent to hospitals or asylums to work there, so they were doing something. They were paid very little for this. The rule was they had to be paid less than a soldier. But that was better than the First World War. In the First World War they didn’t receive any pay, and for many of the men who were the sole supporters of their families, this made things difficult too.”

Ridicule in Canadian Society

The First World War was seen in Canada as a very ‘popular’ war. People thought it was a war of ‘good versus evil’ and those who refused to take part in it, were ridiculed, says Dr. Shaw.

“Standing apart from that wasn’t easy…they tended to be talked about as though they were thinking too much. They were focusing on themselves when they should just act and follow what the rest of the country was doing.

“There were two kinds of negative stereotypes. The kind of overly intellectual ‘sissy’ who needs to kind of get over himself, and the other one is more drawing on stereotypes of Mennonites and people like that as ‘backwards,’ ‘stupid’ and really stubborn by following these old rules out of habit.

“I think it’s really interesting if you’re trying to understand a society. And Canada in the First World War – lots of things came out of that time that affected us for the rest of the century, like freedom of religion.”

Shaw’s book “Crisis of Conscience: Conscientious Objection in Canada during the First World War” is available online.

by Lara Fominoff @fomsy1 on Twitter

The other side of The Great War: Conscientious Objectors in Canada

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