Popular Myth and Enemy Aliens

Sir Robert Borden: The war was far more divisive than the popular myth would have us believe, according to Globe and Mail. Ukrainian-Canadian immigrants, coaxed to the Prairies a decade earlier with the promise of cheap land, were rounded up and interned as enemy aliens. While the Great War did unite English-speaking, middle-class, urban Canadians behind a common cause, it was under the banner of British imperialism, not Canadian independence. The press was censored; civil rights were suspended across the country. In 1918, French-Canadian protesters in Quebec City opposed to conscription were even gunned down with machine guns fired by English-speaking troops specially brought in from Ontario. Aboriginal Canadians could not even vote – neither could women until Sir Robert Borden granted selective suffrage in order to prop up his Union government. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.