We’re being given a holiday to mark the centennial of Canada’s entry into the First World War.
Not really…it’s a coincidence that the upcoming Monday, August 4 Civic Holiday this year happens to fall on the same date, August 4 in 1914, that Great Britain declared war on Germany and so automatically Canada was also at war because of our colonial relationship with the “Old Country” at that time.
Great Britain’s entry into the war was the final step that, then, involved virtually all European nations and her nominal rationale for doing so was because Germany had invaded Belgium as a way to attack France after being denied military passage through this small democratic monarchy.
There had been discussion of a likely war with Germany in Great Britain for many years as it was becoming clear that Germany’s massive naval buildup was meant to challenge Britain’s seagoing supremacy so Germany’s invasion of Belgium was the excuse Britain needed in order to come to the aid of her allies France and Russia, both nations on which Germany had already declared war in the past week.
Of course on Manitoulin we won’t be focusing on the beginning of a war 100 years ago next Monday for this occasion will be appropriately overshadowed by the important and iconic Manitoulin summer festivals Haweater Weekend in Little Current and Wikwemikong’s Cultural Festival, the highlight of which is the competitive powwow that attracts participants from throughout North America.
These local celebrations that exemplify the rights we take for granted as Canadians who are free to do whatever we want, triumph through our efforts, make all the mistakes that we want to (as long as we are acting within the law and with ordinary recognition of other people’s right) are a marked contrast to the war in which so many thousands of Canadians willingly signed up to fight a century ago.
It’s a stretch, but there is a link between our ability to go our own ways in this country in 2014, to revel in Wikwemikong’s Cultural Festival, to enjoy Haweater Weekend and the willing and voluntary sacrifices made by our ancestors.
A century ago, most Canadians were from rural backgrounds unlike today where most people live in cities.
In 1914, the young men and women who volunteered to fight in Europe or for overseas nursing responsibilities in the case of women came from small communities precisely like Sheguiandah, M’Chigeeng, Mindemoya, Wikwemikong, Poplar, Barrie Island, Honora, Sheshegwaning, Little Current.
The First World War was the world’s first truly mechanized war: that was when armoured tanks were introduced as a part of war on land. It was the first time submarines had been used as offensive materiel. It was the introduction of the newly-invented fixed-wing aircraft as war machines and the defensive flying maneuvers developed and perfected by the airmen of 1914 to 1918 are basically the same ones that jet fighter pilots use in combat today. It was the first time that poison gas (how decried as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ and imputed vast stores of the stuff in Iraq, intelligence that ultimately proved false, was the excuse the US and Great Britain used to invade that country in 2003) was used as a particularly nasty offensive weapon. It was the first time that enormous battleships were set to patrol the seas and to intimidate not only other military shipping but civilian shipping as well.
Many of the Canadian volunteers were trained as cavalrymen, many learned how to fight with swords during basic training for these had been the standard units of armed fighting for infantrymen in all previous international conflicts.
And then they were sent to France and Belgium and had to quickly learn how and when to don a rudimentary gas mask, to learn how to dodge and get behind the enemy high above the ground if, as many Canadians did, they accepted a commission in the Royal Air Force or to become part of a ship’s company whose occasional companions were the enemy u-boats intent on sinking them.
These volunteers went to war a century ago with the belief that they were doing so to save civilization.
Whatever history may now make of the First World War, when we’re enjoying Manitoulin at its summer best this weekend and participating in her two largest festivals we should also pause to honour the naïve volunteers, young men mostly, from rural places mostly, who went to Europe to fight in a war whose vicious scope none of them could even imagine.
They went to war with the best of intentions and, most certainly, on our behalf.
They must be honoured and, as it happens, history has presented us with a day off next Monday on which to think of them, at least for a little while.
