Pat Staton
2015
Preface Most accounts of the 1914-18 war, commonly referred to afterward as the “Great War,” the “war to end all wars,” as though such a disaster could or would ever be repeated, focus on the political causes and horrifying loss of life in the bombings and trench warfare. The aftermath is usually described in terms of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the devastation wrought by the worldwide flu epidemic, which added to the death toll. The contributions of, and consequences for, women’s participation in the war effort are not well documented. A number of published diaries of nursing sisters who saw service on the battlefields in France (see Bongard, Gass) and the National Film Board’s “And We Knew How to Dance” do provide some details of the daily lives of these courageous women. The objective of this book is to bring together documents, posters, photographs, diaries, short essays and brief biographies to present a range of experiences of Canadian women. “The Great War changed the lives of Canadian women as well as the men. The lives of those men who did return from war service were forever altered and they returned to a changed society. But women’s lives were changed as well. Their organizational experience had stood them in good stead; they gained new job skills and many, although not all, women gained the vote. Women, having learned to operate factory machinery, make financial decisions and run farms, small businesses and homes on their own, did not react positively to calls to return to their pre-war roles. There was a new sense of freedom in the air, characterized by simpler, more comfortable clothes, new music and new job opportunities. There would be no return to the confining Edwardian dress, all-male professions and restrictions on political participation. Though pressure was applied for women to give up their jobs to homecoming servicemen and return to their “natural” places as the keepers of the hearth, many women refused to do so, and indeed the hug
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