End of The War
The immediate post-war period in Canada was not a time of peace. Social tensions grew as soldiers returned home to find large numbers of immigrants crowded into cities and working at their former jobs. High rates of unemployment among returned soldiers compounded their resentment towards the immigrants. Along with the soldiers, the Spanish influenza was brought back from Europe creating a mass illness within the province.
The Canadian prime minister attended the conference at Versailles and was concerned solely for his government due to the revolution that began more than a year before the settlement and that it would potentially spread to North America. Canada’s large immigrant population was thought to hold strong Bolshevist leanings. Their fears of a possible uprising led to increased efforts to control radicals and immigrants at home. Threats and incidents of strike action, which could be considered radical criticism, were thought to require prompt, harsh responses.
Read more about this topic: Winnipeg General Strike
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)