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Abstract
This article notes the dearth of reference to the South African War in the growing literature on Canada's participation in the Great War. It argues a case for assessing the military and civilian legacy of the South African War upon Canada's management and experience of the Great War, its mobilisation, leadership, behaviour and perceptions; suggesting that the South African conflict had a greater influence upon Canada's response to the Great War than historians have assumed, an influence out of proportion to Canada's relatively limited contribution to the South African War.
Notes
1. See Tim Cook, Clio's Warriors Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World Wars (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006), 4, 176, 221ff.
2. Cook, Clio's Warriors, 200.
3. W.A.B. Douglas, ‘Marching to Different Drums: Canadian Military History’, Journal of Military History 56 (April 1992); Jeff Keshen, ‘Review Essay: The New Campaigns of Canadian Military Historians’, American Review of Canadian Studies 23 (August 1993); Ronald Haycock, Teaching Military History: Clio and Mars in Canada (Athabasca: Athabasca Univ. Press, 1995).
4. Desmond Morton and J.L. Granatstein, Marching to Armageddon: Canadians and the Great War, 1914–18 (Toronto: Orpen Dermys, 1989), 1.
5. J.O. Miller (ed.) The New Era in Canada (Toronto: J.M Dent & Sons, 1917).
6. Salem Bland, The New Christianity; Or the Religion of the New Age (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1920).
7. John D. Hunt, The Dawn of a New Patriotism (Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada, 1917).
8. Arthur M. Lower, From Colony to Nation (Toronto: Longmans, Green & Company, 1946).
9. Jonathan Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997).
10. David Mackenzie, Canada and the First World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).
11. Carol Lee Bacchi, Liberation Deferred: The Ideas of the English Canadian Suffragists 1877–1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983).
12. A.M.J. Hyatt, ‘Canadian Generals of the First World War and the Popular View of Military Leadership’, Histoire Sociale/Social History (November 1979): 424.
13. Duff Crerar, Padres in No Man's Land (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995), 230.
14. Stories that Canada's Boer War soldiers had used their entrenching shovels as helmets during the Battle of Paardeberg may even have inspired Sam Hughes's secretary, to invent the Ena MacAdam helmet/shovel! See T.G. Marquis, Canada's Sons on Kopje and Veldt (Toronto: The Canada Son's Publishing Company, 1900), 183; Ronald G. Haycock, Sam Hughes: The Public Career of a Controversial Canadian (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986), 234.
15. Michael Bliss, ‘The Methodist Church in World War I’, The Canadian Historical Review 49, no. 3 (1968); David Marshall, ‘Methodism Embattled: A Reconsideration of the Methodist Church and World War I’, Canadian Historical Review 66, no. 1, 1986; R.M. Bray, ‘A Conflict of Nationalities: the Win the War and National Unity Convention 1917’, Journal of Canadian Studies 61, no. 2 (Winter 1981).
16. Crerar, Padres in No Man's Land, 189.
17. Gordon Heath, ‘A War with A Silver Lining: Canadian Protestant Churches and the South African War, 1899–1902’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Michael's College, 2004, 46.
18. Carman Miller, Painting the Map Red Canada and the South African War 1899–1902 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), 16–30.
19. Robert Rutherdale, Hometown Horizons: Local Responses to the Great War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004).
20. J. Douglas Borthwick, Poems and Songs of the South African War (Montreal: Gazette Publishing, 1901), 125.
21. Marquis, Canada's Sons on Kopje and Veldt, 21, 23.
22. Grace Morris Craig, But It Is Our War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 1981.
23. Quoted in Richard Allen, ‘Children of Prophecy: Wesley College Students in an Age of Reform’, Red River Valley Historian (Summer 1974): 17.
24. Some two-thirds of the volunteers in Canada's expeditionary force were British-born; see Morton and Granatstein, Marching to Armageddon, 1989, 10.
25. Carman Miller, ‘Chums in Arms: Comradeship among Canada's South African War Soldiers’, Histoire Sociale/Social History XVIII, no. 36 (novembre/November 1985): 359–73.
26. Ian Miller, Our Glory and Our Grief Toronto and the Great War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).
27. Other communities followed the Boer War precedent in arranging an order of procession for their troops’ departure. See Rutherdale, Hometown Horizons, 56.
28. Canon Frederick George Scott, The Great War As I Saw It (Toronto: McClelland and Goodchild, 1922), 16.
29. Kenneth Radley, We Lead Others Follow: The First Canadian Division 1914–1918 (St Catherine: Vanwell Publishing, 2006), 39–54; see, also references in Gordon Reid, Poor Bloody Murder (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1980), 34, 111.
30. The Deputy Minister of Militia and Defence, Dr Eugene Fiset, was also a Boer War veteran.
31. Although Herridge remained at home, during the Great War he served as the Presbyterian Church's co-ordinator for chaplain services.
32. Dalhousie University Library, Special Collections, Rev. W.T. Herridge, ‘A Sermon preached in St Andrews Church, Ottawa to “Strathcona Horse” previous to their departure for service in South Africa’, Sunday 11 March 1900 (Ottawa 1900).
33. Gaston Labat, Le Livre d'Or (Montreal: n.p., 1901), 128
34. Miller, Painting the Map Red, 432.
35. Susan Mann, Margaret Macdonald: Imperial Daughter (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), 78.
36. Susan Mann, Margaret Macdonald: Imperial Daughter (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), 73.
37. Susan Mann, Margaret Macdonald: Imperial Daughter (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), 74
38. John F. Prescott, ‘John McCrae’, in The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume XIV (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 678.
39. Miller, Painting the Map Red, 121.
40. Miller, Painting the Map Red, 66–69.
41. The blinded, Boer war trooper, L.W.R. Malloy who used funds from the Patriotic Fund to pursue his education in Canada and England, became something of a ‘mascot’ for the fund during the Great War.
42. See Desmond Morton, Fight or Pay (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004), 55, 65, 138.
43. McKenzie Porter, To All Men (Toronto: McClelland & Steward, 1960), 32.
44. Serge Durflinger, Je Me Souviens, L'Histoire du Fond du Souvenir 1909–1999 (Montréal: Le Fonds du Souvenir), 2000.
45. Two examples are the Royal Canadian Dragoon's regimental insignia, a springbok on a scroll and the Strathcona Horse's regimental march, ‘Soldier of the Queen’.
46. Max Aitken, Canada in Flanders (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1915), 11.
47. Miller, Painting the Map Red, 275.
48. Others included, Victor Odlum, Sam Steele, Archie Macdonnell, R.G.E. Leckie, W.A. Griesbach, A.H. King, H.D.B. Ketchum, Hamilton Gault, H.A.C. Machin and A.T. Olgivie.
49. William Hart McHarq, From Quebec to Pretoria with the Royal Canadian Regiment (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1902); E.W.B. Morrison, With the Guns in South Africa (Hamilton: Spectator Printing, 1901).
50. Jeffrey Williams, First in the Field: Gault of the Patricias (London: Leo Cooper, 1995), 59.
51. A less prominent, though colourful Boer War veteran was Robert H. Ryan, the commanding officer of the 6th Canadian Mounted Rifles. Something of a mercenary, the Nova Scotia native had served in the Boer War as a sergeant in the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, then a lieutenant in the notorious Howard's Canadian Scouts before enlisting in Russo-Japanese War and the Mexican Revolution.
52. Patrick Brennan and Thomas Leppard, ‘How the Lessons were Learned: Senior Commanders and the Moulding of the Canadian Corps after the Somme’, in Canadian Military History since the 17 th Century, ed. Yves Tremblay (Ottawa: Directorate of History and Heritage, 2000), 135.
53. Gordon Reid, ed., Poor Bloody Murder (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1980), 13.
54. Gordon Reid, ed., Poor Bloody Murder (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1980), 32–24.
55. For a study of one South African veteran's adaptation, see Craig Leslie Mantle, Learning the Hard Way (Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2007).
56. Quoted in Crerar, Padres in No Man's Land, 117.
57. Quoted in Sean Cameron, ‘Formation and Recruitment of the Nova Scotia Brigade, 1915–1916’, unpublished MA research paper, McGill University, 2006.
58. Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 268.
59. Robert H. MacDonald, Sons of the Empire: The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement 1890–1911 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 112, 117, 146.
60. Robert H. MacDonald, Sons of the Empire: The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement 1890–1911 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 82.
61. Rudyard Kipling, Traffics and Discoveries (London: Macmillan, 1928).
62. MacDonald, Sons of the Empire, 82.
63. John Mackie, The Life Adventurous: A Personal Record of Battlefield, Bush and Prairie (London: Jarrold & Sons, 1907).
64. See Carman Miller, ‘No Surrender: The Battle of Hart River 1902’, Canadian Battle Series, no. 9 (Toronto: Canadian War Museum, 1993).
65. Morrison, With the Guns, 258, 290.
66. Miller, ‘No Surrender’, 29.
67. See Desmond Morton, ‘The Canadians at Paardeberg 1900’, Canadian Battle Series, no. 2 (Ottawa: Canadian War Museum, 1977).
68. Canada, Sessional Paper 35A (1901) Report A, 17; Annie Mellish, Our Boys under Fire (Charlottetown: Examiner, 1900), 33.
69. Miller, Painting the Map Red, 441.
70. Carman Miller, ‘The Montreal Riot of 1900’, in One Flag One Queen One Tongue, eds John Crawford and Ian McGibbon (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2003), 165–79.
71. Labat, Le Livre d'Or, 128.
72. Canada, House of Commons, Debates (13 March 1900), 1848.
73. Norman Patterson, ‘The War and Canada’, Canadian Magazine (July 1902), 204.
74. For a fuller discussion of the Paardeberg ‘myth’ see Miller, Painting the Map Red, 102–12.
75. I owe this information to the personal kindness of Craig Wilcox, the author of the excellent study, Australia's Boer War: The War in South Africa 1899–1902 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002).
76. Jeffrey Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General (London: Leo Cooper, 1983), pp. 311–12.
77. Carl Berger, A Sense of Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).
78. Tim Cook, ‘Lord Beaverbrook and the Canadian War Records Office in the First World War’, in Canada and the Great War, ed. Briton C. Busch (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2003), 54.
79. NALC, Edwin McCormick Papers, ‘The Big Stirrups’, MS, n.p.
80. Jeff Keshen, ‘The Great War Soldier as Nation Builder in Canada and Australia’, in Canada and the Great War, ed. Briton C. Busch (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003), 12.
81. NALC, Andrew Miller, ‘Organization and Work of the Strathcona's Horse’, ms (1915) 15.
82. See Miller, Painting the Map Red, 365.
83. Carman Miller, ‘A Preliminary Analysis of the Socio-economic Composition of Canada's South African War Contingents’, Histoire Sociale/Social History (novembre/November 1975): 221.
84. Vance, Death So Noble, 157ff.
85. Tim Jael, The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden-Powell (London: Pimlico, 1990).
86. Harold Spender in the Manchester Guardian (9 November 1900); see too John A. Hobson, Canada Today (London: Unwin, 1906), 101, 106.
87. Sara Jeanette Duncan, The Imperialist (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971), 229.
88. Mark Sheftall, ‘For Rose and Maple Leaf: Empire, Identity and the Meaning of the First World War in Canada, 1914–1939’, unpublished paper, Association of Canadian Studies in the United States, Duke University (1999), 7.
89. With the First Canadian Contingent Published on Behalf of the Canadian Field Comfort Commission (Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915).
90. Vance, Death So Noble, 18.
91. See Robert Shipley, To Mark Our Place A History of Canadian War Memorials (Toronto, N C Press, 1987).
92. Ronald Rudin, Founding Fathers: The Celebration of Champlain and Laval in the Streets of Quebec 1878–1908 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 233–4.
93. John MacFarlane, ‘“Ready, Aye, Ready?” French Canadians and the South African War 1899–1902”, unpublished paper for the Canadian Historical Association's annual meeting, 1998.
94. Miller, Painting the Map Red, 154–5.
95. D.M. Horner, ‘The Influence of the Boer War on Australian Commanders in the First World War’, in The Boer War, Army, Nation and Empire, eds Peter Denis and Jeffrey Grey (Canberra: Army History Unit, 2000), 173–90.