Artifact 1 & 1bis : Contrast in Recruitment Posters

Citations : 

Canadiens français venez avec nous dans le 150ième Bataillon : recruitment campaign. Art. Montréal, Issued by the Government, 1914-1918. Library and Archives Canada, Item ID number : 2894446. https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/Record?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=2894446&q=french%20canadian%20recruitment&ecopy=c095728

This is your flag. It stands for liberty. Ephemera. Ottawa, 1914-1918. Toronto Public Library Digital Archive, Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Accession number : 1914-1918-RECRUITMENT-ITEM-15-L. https://digitalarchive.tpl.ca/objects/338071/this-is-your-flag-it-stands-for-liberty

Label : 

When the United Kingdom declared the war against Germany in 1914, Canada also entered the fight due to its dominion status. Therefore, they needed to recruit soldiers to send them overseas. The recruitment poster on the left was used as a way to encourage Canadians to get enrolled and go fight alongside the Triple Entente, especially the United Kingdom. It portrayed Canada as a single homogenous entity and was trying to bring up this sense of collective belonging with the use of the Union Jack as a shared symbol. The sentence “This is your flag. It stands for liberty” frames the war taking place in Europe as a potential threat to freedom, including the freedom of Canadians, and therefore caters to people’s sense of duty. On the other hand, French Canadians did not have this British sense of nationalism due to their different historical background. This is why the poster on the right has a French flag and references the “Coq Gaulois” (“Gaul Rooster”), a symbol of France. Moreover, there is a stronger emphasis on the target audience of the second poster, which is directly referring to “French Canadians”. The first poster ended up being directed towards British Canadians even without specifying its target audience, which reflects a tendency to overlook French Canadians.

We can see with these two recruitment posters above that the government had to resort to different strategies in order to get both British Canadians and French Canadians to enroll. This evidence of an already-existing division between Quebec and the rest of Canada, even at the very beginning of the war, laid the basis for more political, social, and cultural tensions. The contrast in recruitment strategies reflected not just a difference in loyalty to the British Empire but also the struggle for Quebec's distinct cultural and political identity within a rapidly changing Canada.

Bibliography :

Morin-Pelletier, Mélanie. “French Canada and the War (Canada)”. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. April 20, 2016. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/french-canada-and-the-war-canada/

Campbell, Brooke. “War of Words.” Canada’s History. September 27, 2018. https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/military-war/war-of-words