One of my cousins is transcribing correspondence between our grandparents, prior to their being married. I'm very glad she is, it's been most interesting.
These date from mid winter of 1916-1917. It's entering to see how the Great War shows up in them, as a casual reference, as they corresponded back and forth from Quebec to Charleston, South Carolina.
January 12, 1917:
I saw by the paper last night that Humbert Mariotti’s father was dead. Also that the Irish Rangers have been broken up as a unit in England and that Major O’Brien and Trihey(?) are returning to Canada along with others, and they are sending the boys in drafts to the front. Isn’t it too bad. I think it is a shame.
January 19, 1917:
I saw by the paper this morning that Judge Doherty had made a statement that the Irish Rangers were going to Ireland and thought they would go to the Front as a unit. Also that as far as the particular officers mentioned as returning to Canada, he knew nothing about it. So I guess Mr. McCrory will be going alright.
January 24, 1917:
I heard this noon through a girl in Marguerite’s office that Jim McCrory was engaged to May Wittels (if this is the way to spell it) and wanted to marry her before he left, but she didn’t want to until he came back. Do you think it is true? I guess May must be delighted if it is true, but it seems to me she would have married him before going, if it is true. Anyhow, she has some very pleasant memories of happy moments she passed in the office, hasn’t she? Only it was mean of Percy Minto (?) to always intrude.
January 29, 1917:
I saw by the papers this morning that the Irish Rangers are having a great time in Ireland. Col. Trihey is still in Canada. I do not know whether he is going back or not. I believe for a while during his absence Mr. McCrory was in command. It seems Edgar Reynolds is not at all liked by the men under him. He was exercising his usual authority.
February 8, 1917:
February 13, 1917:
I saw by the Star bulletin just as I came along that there was quite an accident on the Grand Trunk Pacific. A train coming eastward conveying 300 French Canadian soldiers jumped the rails. I think 2 were killed and 40 injured.
February 14, 1917
I wonder if the U.S. went to war if they would have to censor the mails between there and here. They would soon get to know ours, dear, and let them go through.
Regarding staying there indefinitely, dear, this will not be necessary, but don’t you think it would be advisable to stay there, for say, a year or so after the war, as people say that times will be worse after the war for a couple of years until things get settled. If you get an increase by the end of April we could get married and instead of renting a house and (paying for) or buying furniture, we could board and with the money you would have in the bank you could put it into stocks. Of course if things were very good there we could stay on after the war.March 14, 1917
March 17, 1917
At noon today, there was an extra out with the news that a U.S. ship had been sunk. If true, I wonder if they will go to war.
Last night it seems there was some kind of a soirée in Outremont at which Henri Bourassa presided, and this morning all the store windows and poles throughout Outremont had little posters on them about eight inches long and five inches wide marked “Down with CONSCRIPTION. A bas la CONSCRIPTION”. I presume it must have been some of his party who did it. It seems in the East end the same thing has been done.
March 20, 1917
Greta Morris told me in speaking of Ralph Goodchild that he got married before going away to some very nice little girl from Kingston. I was quite surprised, as I had heard nothing about it, although I have seen Winnie several times lately. It seems he met her this summer while at some summer resort down the St. Lawrence where his regiment was located, and became engaged to her while there. Of course his battalion went overseas shortly afterwards, so I presume she has gone along with him.
The war news this morning seems to be very good. The English and French are driving the Germans out of France at a great rate, according to our newspapers. I hope it is true and that it will continue.March 23, 1917
Last night the 245th battalion, Kitchener’s own, left for overseas. Two of the Rolland boys, Stuart and Charlie, who are cousins of the Terrouxs were with them. Stuart was to have brought his wife along with him but at the last moment found she could not go. Of course they were very much disappointed.
14 comments:
That is interesting. You are fortunate that your grandparents' correspondence was preserved. I do not have mine on either side--they were thrown out by my mother in a fit of housekeeping. Fortunately, I do have some very interesting maps used by my grandfather, who was a lieutenant in the US Army Ambulance Service on the Western Front. I'm currently working on an American memoir for my series, Hervey Allen's "Toward the Flame," and I looked through the maps to see if Grandad served in the key areas mentioned in that book, Chateau-Thierry and Fismes. He had many maps but you can tell from the ones that are heavily fingerprinted and also from a French newspaper clipping that he was mainly in the area of Soissons (not far away--all part of 2nd Marne). I discovered that he had a captured German map that showed locations of specific artillery batteries. Fabulous!
Regarding the posters you included in this post, I must say the one with the provinces of Ireland saying "All in One" is a bit funny considering the divisions in Ireland--but at the same time understandable given the desire to recruit people whose families originated in all parts of Ireland. I did a piece about Ireland in WWI on my Endless Streams and Forests blog: https://streamsandforests.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/deneys-reitz-in-wwi-the-irish-battalion/
Neat to have your grandfather's maps!
On that Irish poster, that has even an added level of irony. These posters are all recruiting posters for The Irish Canadian Rangers, a Canadian unit raised from the Irish in Montreal. My family on my mother's side was instrumental in creating and raising the unit, which was centered around the Montreal Polo Club. However, even those the Irish in Quebec had done well in Canada, they were not sufficiently enthusiastic enough about Canadian participation in the war such that the unit was able to be fully manned. As a result, the unit, when it went overseas, was stationed first in Ireland, where it trained, but where there was a further unit to recruit to fill the unit. That was also unsuccessful and ultimately the unit was broken up into smaller ones before being sent to France. The All In One poster was part of that recruiting effort.
Two levels of distance from Britain, then--Quebec of course is French rather than British in allegiance, and if the Irish in Montreal were Catholic, then likely not all that sympathetic to Britain either. I wonder if the French Army sought volunteers from Quebec even though it was part of the British Commonwealth.
This taps into the story of the Irish, and the English, in Quebec, as you've noted. It's a bit of a complicated story.
In general, the Quebecois had little interest in World War One, and indeed that attitude continued on somewhat into World War Two. This was for historic and cultural reasons, although they've been somewhat lost in post World War Two Canada. Going back to the French Indian War, when the British defeated the French in North America, the Quebecois (mostly Norman by descent) felt abandoned by France, which had not handled the North American expression of the Seven Years War well at all. The English, acting wisely, however, made a concession to Quebec by which the United Kingdom promised to allow the Quebecois to worship as Catholics without interference. Indeed, that was something that English colonist in the lower Thirteen colonies viewed as intolerable, and formed part of the propaganda in some quarters against the Crown during the Revolution.
(continued in next comment below).
Securing freedom to worship, the Quebecois went on to form an agrarian, isolated, culture for the most part. In this, they were encouraged by the Church, as the Catholic Church in Quebec feared that if the Quebecois was forced to interact with the English, it would be forced into making concessions to them. This approach to things really worked out for the Quebecois, which remained, therefore, very French (Norman) and very Catholic, a culturally distinct reservoir in an increasingly English entity.
Regarding the English, after the French Indian War the immigration of English speakers to Canada in general was a constant feature of the region, with Quebec of course receiving some immigration but other areas that were generally open receiving more. Toronto, for example, was extremely English. Canada, in its early period, also received quite a few Loyalist refugees from the United States, who went on to form very loyalist communities. "UE" is still a title that descendants of these people can tag at the end of their name, although its becoming increasingly rare. It stands for "United Empire Loyalist".
Anyhow, the Quebecois basically kept to themselves (there are exceptions) and sat out the greater events in the English Empire. During the War of 1812, for example, the Canadian militias that performed so brilliantly against the United States were principally English speaking.
(continued below).
Added to this mix, starting in the 1840s, are the Irish. Here in the United States we like to think of the "nation of immigrants" story being American, but that's a North American story, not really an exclusively American one. Canada saw a huge influx of Irish immigrants just like the US did, with their being little concern amongst the Irish about which place they could go to. In some ways, Canada being an English entity, getting to Canada was easier.
The Irish, like almost all immigrants, tended to go to places were there was cultural familiarity, and Quebec was a good location for them accordingly. It had a large Catholic population, for one thing, so the chances of being faced with the heavy prejudice towards the Irish that was present in the United States was not as great. So cities like Montreal saw a lot of Irish immigration.
In Canada, although the Irish were largely urban, they mixed quite readily with the Quebecois population, their co-religious. Indeed, this had been a hallmark of the Quebecois, who throughout their history had readily mixed with other peoples, as long as it didn't imperil their religious beliefs. Hence we see a population such as the Metis, descendant from the French and native populations. In Quebec, this occurred to with most Irish families (including my mother's) also having Quebecois ancestry quite rapidly.
Added to this, a huge number of Irish children were adopted by French families. The dreaded "Coffin Ships" were a feature of this story in Canada just like the US. In places like Montreal, the Priests would tell their parishioners when a ship was coming in and ask them to go to the docks to adopt the orphans, which they did. Irish children whose parents died en route were therefore adopted directly into French families without the formalities that would accompany this today.
(continued)
The Irish did well in Canada in general, and quite well in Quebec, which of course is not to say that everyone did well. None the less, generally they were economically successful, being an English speaking, urban population, with close ties to the French speaking Quebecois. They were effectively more or less accepted by the English, as an English speaking British minority in an English entity, and by the French as they were intermarried with them and were their co-religious. Quebec was very much their home.
Added to this, while everyone is of course well aware of the retained Irish desire for Independence, and resentment over England's treatment of their land, even in Ireland the relationship between the Irish as a British people with the English had become oddly mixed by the early 20th Century, with people being comfortable to a surprising degree with dual loyalties, both to the United Kingdom and to the concept of a more independent Ireland. While these distinctions were lost amongst the Irish in the US, they were not quite as lost on the Irish in Canada.
(more later).
Picking back up, up going to the Boer War, we find the first examples of the British Dominions supporting it in warfare, and that is instructive as to what would occur a few years later in World War One. English Canada, including many recent English immigrants, rallied to the mother country's cause. French Canada sat it out. Across English speaking Canada all sorts of volunteers signed up to go to Africa and fight, but the French basically did not, with some exceptions.
Which takes us to World War One. When World War One arrived, the United Kingdom declared war on behalf of herself and her Dominions. That is, Canada and Australia never voted to enter the war, Parliament did that for them. But this was not upsetting to the English Canada, which rapidly rose to England's support.
However, as you already know, manpower needs brought Canada to the same point that the United Kingdom arrived upon, conscription. Both the UK and Canada entered World War One with purely volunteer forces. But attrition ultimately meant that could not be kept up. The United Kingdom went to conscription first, and then Canada in 1917.
In both localities it was enormously controversial. In the UK, it was controversial as the Irish, who in fact had volunteered for the UK's military in very large numbers, hugely resented the concept of forced service, which uniquely tapped into their history and psychology as an overwhelmingly negative thing. This ultimately sparked the Easter Rebellion in Ireland, when Irish Republicans rose up against, in part, the extension of actual conscription into Ireland.
In Canada, conscription was unpopular on a broader front as Canadians had never had the concept of forced service. In Quebec, however, it was hugely unpopular.
The Quebecois had basically taken the same "leave me alone" position in WWI that it had in the Boer War. The Quebecois population was largely rural, Norman, and agrarian, with no interest in warfare in the wider world. It had no sympathy for the British, and it really had none for the French, who had historically abandoned them and whom had taken a different path with which they did not sympathize in 1798. Saving France was not something they felt they had to do, as France hadn't saved them, and the France of 1914-1918 was a decadent entity in their general sense of things.
Likewise, Irish Canadians largely acted the same way their American brothers had. Forces service did not appeal to them, and while they'd done well as a group of people halfway between the English and halfway between the French, they were not so sympathetic with England as to desire to fight for her in any great numbers.
(continued)
Which takes us to the Irish Canadian Rangers. Formed by people who were Irish Catholics who had done well in Quebec, and who had close connections with both Ireland and the United Kingdom, it showed a feeling of loyalty to the UK in its formation, but not enough of one in its targeted pool, to fill out. An English speaking unit, it did not draw, or even recruit, Franco-phones. But it also didn't attempt to recruit Anglo Canadians either. It simply couldn't fill out.
So, in the ambling and sometimes analytical spirit of this blog, how to we complete this story?
Well, one thing we can note is that after World War One, the "Englishness" of English speaking Canada started to wane in favor of a greater Canadian identity. This didn't happen overnight, but it did happen. By World War Two, the Canadians were just that, Canadians.
In part, this was because of the enormous sacrifice various regions of Canada, to include regions that would only become part of Canada in later decades, endured. This is much the same story for Australia, whose founding myth is really the Battle of Gallipoli.
For the French speaking population, the story would only change later, however. They came out of World War One as insular as they went into it. And the story would repeat itself in World War Two, where the Quebecois were largely opposed to participation in a war, which on this occasion Canada entered voluntarily. On this occasion, however, Canadians were somewhat (although only barely) more comfortable with conscription, but less sympathetic with an internal minority that was not so keen to join in the national effort.
Like a lot of agrarian regions of the Western world (Finland, for example) the aftermath of World War Two and the increasing industrialization of the world would ultimately destroy the agrarian nature of Quebec, which in the decades after the war rapidly became much more urban and much less agricultural. It was in that era of the 50s and 60s, but with political roots going back to World War Two, that many Quebecois began to re-identify with France and flex their political muscle. The result was that, ironically, much of what had distinguished them became muted or lost, as they also became more vocal about their distinctiveness. In this same era, the English speaking populations of Quebec, both English and Irish, began to feel increasingly unwelcome and, by and large moved out, creating a further irony in the case of the Irish who, in fact, were strongly intermixed with the French.
I do not have enough knowledge ready at hand to address all the points that you make. I will say that the Irish were generally on the side of the Boers in the 1899-1902 war in South Africa. John Mac Bride led a group of Irish against the British in the earlier part of that war. There was a spirit shared by the Boers and the Irish against the weight of the "Empire." Both saw themselves as opposed to the seemingly unstoppable power of the British. I'm not sure that the identity of "Canadians" has been established even in the present day.Quebec is like a foreign country amidst the rest of Canada. There is a certain very strong emotional opposition to the "large regime." Of course now the British Empire no longer exists, but it was enormously powerful up to the mid-20th century, inspiring deep loyalty... and also deep detestation.
I wonder if we can say that the Irish were generally on the side of the Boers, or that some were?
It would seem natural for them to be sympathetic to the Boers (as Americans generally were), but at the same time, a lot of Irishmen ended up fighting in southern Africa in the British forces, which were all volunteer. A mixed result, sort of. But that's part of the same story really. After all, the primary strategist for the Republicans in the Anglo Irish War, Michael Collins, was killed in the Irish Civil War by a Republican who had served in the British army in World War One.
As for the identity of Canadians, that's a good point. I think perhaps it would ave been more accurate had I said that English speaking Canadians came to identify as Canadians. The Quebecois are still Quebecois, although their world outlook has changed.
I will just put in an example that I am very familiar with--that of Deneys Reitz. Anyone who follows my blog will recognize my interest in him. He was not Irish. His mother was Norwegian and his father was German in his roots. When the Boer War broke out, the whole family immediately supported the cause of the Boers against the British. Now why exactly? I think it was a powerful form of idealism, the love of supporting a small republic against an empire. Many folks don't understand about the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, they were never part of the British Empire, they were independent republics. Well, anyway, to make a long story short, Reitz fought through the three years of the war against the British. Yet the really interesting thing was that he decided to fight WITH the British against the Germans in "German South West" (Namibia) and "German South East" (Tanganyika).It was because he was an idealist. Despite his three horrific years fighting against the "rooineks" (or you could call them the "khakis,") his sense of right and wrong led him to believe it was necessary to fight against the Germans. What's truly incredible that this guy in his mid-30s, who had already gone through years of war in South Africa, did not only believe that it was right to fight the Germans, he fought first in German South West, then in German South East, and then went to the Western Front and fought in the Albert-Bapaume sector. Sorry for the rambling here, but the bottom line is, he hated the British Empire in 1899 and put his life on the line to defeat it. Yet when WWI came along, he threw in his support for the British because he felt that was the good cause. I think some Irish folks felt the same way.
Another example of the conflicting loyalties, although somewhat the reverse of the one you provided, is that of Erskine Childers. Childers was a Protestant Irishman who enthusiastically served in the British army during the Boer War, but by World War One he was moving towards Irish nationalism as a politician, and the war pushed him over the edge into being a republican. During the early stages of the war he was simulataneously serving as a British naval officer while holding increasignly republican views. He was part of the treaty delegation that secured the Free State for Ireland, but supported the republican position during the civil war, ultimately loosing his life by way of a firing squad when being captured.
So, here we have in one person the paradox of Irish views at the time. Childers was an Irish Protestant who supported the expansion of the British Empire through his service in the Boer War, who supported home rule as a politician prior to World War One, who served in the Royal Navy early in WWI, but who became a prominent republican thereafter, and even died on the republican side during the Irish Civil War.
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