In case you missed it…

This video shows Patrick Pichette, a Montreal born tech executive, speaking on a panel at the Liberal convention last weekend. Pichette studied in Quebec and then the UK moving south from Montreal to California in 2008 to serve as the President and CFO of Google - headquartered out of the United States.

Pichette took the job in 2008 and now lives in London, England.

In that clip, Pichette addresses the problem of many young, educated Canadians leaving Canada to work in the United States under USMCA (TN) visas. He says: “30,000 TNs go to the U.S. every year. You want to save yourself 5-10 billion dollars? Shut the TN program. Or, make them pay their $500,000. You wanna go to the U.S.? Give me back my money.”

Give me back my money. Yikes.

A rich quote, coming from a rich man, who was born at the tail end of the richest generation in the history of Western civilization.

It’s comments like this - ignorant, out of touch, elite and selfish that continue to further push the great divide between generations in our society.

Those generations are that of the baby boom (1945-65) and Gen Z (1997-2012).

Seems like an oddly autocratic, Trump-style policy. Odd.

Instead of making Canada a cage - why doesn’t the Liberal Party of Canada’s policy convention focus on the bigger question at hand: why does our young, professional talent want to leave?

Well - as a young professional (notice I will omit talent) - there’s two key reasons.

1. Home prices. The cost of home ownership and rent is fully and completely unreasonable and cruel especially for so many youths who are…

2. Out of work. Unemployment in Canada sits comfortably at 6.7% - 1 0.7% higher than it was in March of 2008, during the Great Recession. Youth unemployment is even higher, nearly 14%2 - 5.5% higher than than that of the Americans.

Terry Newman of the National Post said it best: “Why do our best and brightest leave? They leave for better paid jobs, more opportunities and lower taxes for themselves and for their companies if they are entrepreneurs. And now, due to inflation and expensive housing, they have even more reason to want to leave.”3

He’s right. But rich elite, hypocrites like Mr. Pichette (who left Canada himself) can’t humble themselves to grasp reality — even though it stares them in the face.

This policy proposal made by Mr. Pichette is a crystal-clear picture of the economic and cultural divide between Gen Zs and Baby Boomers.

Boomers are completely out of touch with the everyday struggles faced by Gen Zs because these struggles are so fundamentally different from those that baby boomers faced in the 1960s and 70s.

For example - let’s look at home prices.

The average price of a Canadian home in 1965 (the last year of the baby boom) was $18,500.4 Today, it’s about $689,000.

Let’s harken back to Montreal in 1962 - the city and year Mr. Pichette was born. The average price of a home? $14,000.5

The price of that same home in 2026? $657,000.6

That is a value increase of nearly 4,600%.

While Pichette’s generation sees their retirement in their home values, my generation is completely locked out of the dream of ever affording a home in the city core, or suburbs of any major Canadian city.

We saw that last April, when baby boomers overwhelmingly voted in favour of Mark Carney’s Liberal Party — the party whose Minister of Housing believes the cost of housing doesn’t need to come down.

In Canada, there’s a generational divide between baby boomers: who see their retirements and wealth locked up in their most valuable asset — their home; And gen Zs who look at their savings and see that they’re lucky if they don’t need a roommate to help them make rent.

This isn’t a “work harder” problem - it’s a market problem that disproportionately benefits an older, retired generation who has a government that caters and protects them in a grossly disproportionate way.

Of course our young talent is fleeing. Why on earth would any young professional take a mortgage on a $975,000 home in North York built in the mid-80s when they can get that same home 150-kilometres away in Buffalo for $450,000?

Even with the Canadian dollar worth only 63 cents to the to the American dollar, this home buyer would still save over $350,000 on the purchase of the home in Buffalo.

It’s obvious why any young professional would go to the US over Canada - even more so when Americans vote in a new President in November of 2028.

Then, the scenario becomes even more attractive.

Not to mention the difference in income and sales taxes between Ontario and New York State - workers and consumers pay more in tax in Ontario than they do south of the border.

Cheaper homes , even with the exchange and more money in your pocket at the end of each grocery run and pay cycle. Pretty good pitch.

Gee, Patrick. I wonder why our youth leave.

On top of the issues around home ownership is also the issue of unemployment in Canada - especially for youth (under 25).

As stated earlier in this essay (more a rant than an essay - my Fitbit thinks I need to sit down) unemployment is sitting at 6.7% in Canada today - for comparison, it peaked at 6% during March of 2008.

You may recall the Great Recession which took place between 2007-2009: this was the closest the world has been to a depression since the mid-30s.

So - young people are expected to go to school, work hard, graduate, go back to school, become a professional, graduate again, enter the job market and…make lattes? Pour coffees? Work construction? Run for the Liberal Party of Canada?

There’s no jobs here. Our economy is stagnant; unemployment is at recession levels - over double that for people under the age of 25.

No wonder graduates are applying for TNs and fleeing to the United States - there’s nothing to entice them to stay here.

Investment is fleeing Canada - and it begins with our talent.

So, people like Patrick Pichette, - rich & elite people, believe that my generation should go to school, become specialized in a field only to graduate and bum around wait for someone Patrick’s age to retire so we can apply and (maybe) get a job.

Seems pretty out of touch to me.

In Pichette’s mind, those who go to school in Canada - government subsidized education to become professionals in a specific subject should stay in Canada.

To his credit - there is a moral value here. If your country gives you a cheaper education to become professionalized in a field - you should give back to your country. Sure, I agree with that.

On principle, however, Pichette is a raging hypocrite who got his degree at the Universite du Quebec in Montreal before jetting to California for his gig at Google.

Do as I say, not as I do - right?

Instead of building a wall at OUR southern border, forcing our youth to pay a head tax if they want to leave to find work - why don’t we address the roots of the problem: home ownership and unemployment? Then we can talk.

These are problems created by a government that baby boomers overwhelmingly voted for - and when young people want to leave to live elsewhere, that same baby boomer population proposes a half million dollar surcharge to keep us here.

Make it make sense.

It’s almost like Patrick Pichette is in The Stingiest Man in Town, when Bob Cratchit asks for Christmas Day off and Mr. Scrooge says he must stay.

Mr. Pichette - since you were a guest speaker at the Liberal Party of Canada’s policy convention in Montreal last weekend, why don’t you lobby your friends to make some changes to keep young professionals here in Canada? Instead of griping from London about the mass exodus of 30,000 of them every year.

Why do the people who had all the opportunities in the world want to limit the successes of the new generations? We’re the ones funding your retirement.

Fix the problems: lower the price of homes and get our youth back to work - then we’ll talk.

Make Canada work for everyone - not just those with inflated assets and egos.

That said - while I am still supportive of regime change in Iran - the elimination of the Mullahs who brutally oppress the Iranian people and murder dissidents on foreign soil - like here, in Canada,1 I am skeptical of the reasons behind going into Iran.

Does President Trump really care about regime change in Iran? Does he care about Iran’s nuclear capabilities? Their human rights violations? The IRGC’s brutal oppression of their own people.

Let’s consider this.

Before I dive into my argument - I would like the article to note that I am attempting to write impartially and fairly. I fully support regime change in Iran and bringing down as many oppressive IRGC officials as possible in order to liberate Iran. I also fiercely reject the idea that Iran should be able to develop a nuclear weapon - this acquisition would be the downfall of humanity. I commend President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu for swiftly bringing the former Ayatollah to justice, and I hope they bring as many of his clerics to justice as possible.

I do, however, question whether these are the real reasons the Americans went into Iran or not. Let’s dive into that.

You may remember this last summer:

This video is an exchange between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In this video, a journalist asks Zelenskyy if he would be open to holding an election in Ukraine. Zelenskyy explains that he’s open to it - at which point it clicks in Trump’s head that Ukraine doesn’t have elections because they’re at war - Zelenskyy has war-time powers.

Trump jokes about what the “fake news” media would say if, in three-and-a-half years from now the Americans go to war and “no more elections.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Trump says as Zelenskyy laughs and says: “No, no, no.”

The gears turn here in Trump’s head and he realizes that if the Americans are at war, he can suspend electoral integrity.

He appears to have forgotten that that is exactly what 32nd U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Second World War.

FDR died at the beginning of his fourth term in the spring of 1945.

Trump can, and will suspend the fall midterms if he can stretch this conflict in Iran out long enough.

Unfortunately for him, the Israelis killed the Ayatollah within hours of the beginning of the war, and reports suggest his son and successor is now in coma.2

It’ll be interesting, but frightening, to see how the U.S. manages to drag this out long enough to get through November.

After a couple of weeks of careful thought, consideration and conversation on this topic, I believe that despite what Secretary Pete Hegseth may have you thinking, the Americans know exactly what they’re doing in Iran.

Over the course of this Spring, the Americans will land ground troops in Iran - just like Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ll have boots on the ground to clean up the mess left by weeks of air & drone strikes launched from over 20 American military bases in the region, not including strikes out of Israel.

The U.S. will then use this ground invasion and escalation as the conflict needed to suspend November’s midterms. This will give Trump his wartime powers to suspend such elections and hold power until the General in 2028, where he may or may not run for an unprecedented (and unconstitutional) third term.

The 22nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reads: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”3

The Constitution says he can’t run again - but the Constitution also says the Vice President has to certify the results of an election, and we know Trump tried to do away with that on January 6th, 2021.4

One might think it’s a one off, a conspiracy, or bias to assume and suppose that Trump will use Iran to suspend the midterms - but this is an individual who has put himself above the Constitution before, and he will do it again.

Not only that - he was willing to put himself above the Constitution in his first term - there’s no guard rails this time. He has nothing to lose.

He knows what he’s doing - and it’s smart. There’s no way the Americans will be out of Iran by November; They’ll be at war and there won’t be a midterm vote.

What also supports this thesis is the fact that virtually every major American polling company has the leaderless and feuding Democrats ahead of the Republicans.5

Could this be a planned excuse to suspend the very votes that will likely cost the Republicans their control of Congress? I think so.

What also catches me off guard is that Trump and Hegseth have virtually no answer for what’s going on in Iran: no idea how long the operation will be, not sure if there will be boots on the ground, unsure if Americans should be scared of terror attacks on home soil.

While it may be on brand for this administration - it’s extraordinary for a government to seemingly have no idea what is going on. It almost seems sneaky.

Could this all be a ploy? Trump’s a know-it-all, he has an answer for everything. It’s strange he doesn’t have one here.

He told the media on Friday that he had “his own” idea on how long the war in Iran would last.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wrote a very interesting article detailing 10 different answers Trump has had to questions on how long the conflict will last. These answers have ranged from “throughout the week or as long as necessary” to “until all our objectives are achieved” to “four or five weeks” to “until unconditional surrender” to “as far as we need to go” to “soon, very soon.”

All this while Hegseth told media at the Pentagon: “You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three.”6

It reminds me of the time Spencer Shay tried to get his elevator fixed but was unable to get a clear timeline.

It appears as though the Americans really have no clue what is happening — but they do.

I don’t agree with Trump on a lot of things - and despite some of the asinine things he says, I think he’s intelligent.

Calculated? No. Intelligent? Yes.

He’s thought this out - a war in the Fall can suspend the midterms. Turmoil overseas incites conflict at home (see the filed NYC bombing from early March).7

Is it unconstitutional? Yes.

Is it a gross overreach? Yes.

Will MAGA support it? Yes.

It’s smart. It’s wrong, evil even. But smart. He will do what no other President has dared.

These are the first steps to do so.

Let’s see how it plays out.

The Peace Tower houses Canada’s Memorial Chamber and Room of Remembrance,1 which is the focal point of the tower’s interior. This room commemorates Canada’s war dead — well over 110,000 Canadian soldiers who have died overseas in South Africa, Europe, Korea and the Middle East.

This room, and the Peace Tower, are symbols of freedom, liberty, justice, and sacrifice for King and Country. These are founding principles to Canada - nation-building and nation-preserving principles, acted on by good people who answered the call.

The protest that took place on Parliament Hill was a rally for Human Rights and Freedom in Iran - a protest in support of Prince Reza Pahlavi - the Shah of Iran.

Under the contour of Canada’s Peace Tower - resembling liberty and justice, Iranian-Canadians pursue their fight for freedom.

Protesters routinely chanted historic and cultural Farsi quotes of resilience and hope, with routine thank you chants to U.S. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu - the two foreign leaders who have taken military action against the IRGC after the Islamic regime butchered over 36,000 protesters earlier this year.

The Americans and Israelis began the U.S.-led Operation Epic Fury in the wee hours of February 28th - targeting IRGC political leaders, including the elimination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and military infrastructure, before moving to target Iranian oil reserves last last week.

Protesters on Parliament Hill were made up largely of Persian-Canadians holding signs depicting photos of Shah Pahlavi and President Trump standing side-by-side ''United for Freedom," "We Stand with the Shah," "Make Iran Great Again," and "Thank you, Bibi." Several protestors also held signs with the names and faces of the six2 American service members who have died in Iran in the last week and a half.

One protestor, a Caucasian woman from Ottawa held a much more simple sign that read: “Fuck the Islamic regime,” emboldened by Sharpie.

This woman sought me out and we chatted for the duration of the protest on the walk from Parliament Hill to the U.S. Embassy. She thanked me for coming out and noted that there weren't many people at the protest who “looked like us.”

She told me she was a liberal, a leftist and a feminist - which caught me off guard.

“Why are you here, then?” I asked her, slightly provocatively.

She answered that she was at the protest and had been at several protests in support of her Iranian friends - in many cases, Queer-Iranian-Canadians who had left Iran under the oppressive regime to live in peace in Canada. Canada had given her friends refuge, and she was there to support them.

I’ve often wondered about this - why more progressives and leftists aren’t in support of the Iranian people against the IRGC. I mean, doesn’t this have progressivism written all over it?

Brutally oppressed people, beaten, murdered and constantly supressed by a violent, religiously fanatic, autocratic regime that slaughters its own people?

This is a regime that hangs people on the charges of ‘homosexuality’ - where gay men are publicly flogged and gay women are stoned. Where young girls are married off in their pre-teens. Where abortion is outlawed and punishable by death.

We both shared our regrets over the lack of additional progressive-human rights protestors in attendance.

She suggested that many progressives and liberals would be turned off by the idea of a protest that in any way thanks Trump - regardless of the root of the protest.

“Trump can be a dick, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But he’s the only foreign leader who bothered to do something about this. He did the right thing. Did he do it for himself? Likely. But it was still the right thing to do.” (going into Iran.)

There were no thank-you chants to Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose own foreign policy on Iran has been a roller coaster over the last 10 days.3 I wrote about this last week: Where the Prime Minister stands on Iran, nobody knows.

What really struck me about the nature of the protest, not that it surprised me, was the tone of respect.

Lion and Sun flags flew proudly alongside American, Israeli and Canadian flags. This protest was a message of unity - of support.

A protest to sweep up the pieces of a once great nation and rebuild it.

Not to tear down and destroy; To build.

The group handed out flowers to city police officers, picked up their garbage, and played the Star Spangled Banner at the U.S. Embassy before a lengthy applause.

This is a protest where people joined with their dogs. They stopped on the sidewalks and discussed with bystanders who they are, what they were protesting for. They educated - they didn’t tear down.

There was no finger pointing, no name-calling, no political libel. No one pitched a tent on Parliament Hill when it was over either, folks packed up their signs and went home.

It was a real protest- not a riot.

There was no profanity (minus my friend’s sign - which to her credit she put it down when children were around), no calls for terror, no violence, no Nazi messaging or swastikas. Just a diaspora community supporting their Persian brothers and sisters back in Iran.

Hope & resilience - the story of a people desperate to reclaim their homeland from a violent, autocratic death cult.

Desire and the dream for a better future, for this generation and the next.

زنده باد شاه.

I pulled out my phone and checked X": “Whoa, did the Americans bomb Iran?”

“Yes,” my Dad replied. “They went into Iran this morning.” (‘In’, meaning ‘attacked.’)

The next post I saw was Prime Minister Carney’s statement on the U.S./Israeli operation in Iran - what really stood out to me was a strong, principled second paragraph of his statement: “Canada’s position remains clear: the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East, has one of the world’s worst human rights records, and must never be allowed to obtain or develop nuclear weapons.”1

“Wow,” I thought to myself. “That’s a good line.”

I spent the rest of the day “war monitoring” on my phone - feeling grateful that that the Prime Minister had maybe learned from two Canadian diplomatic disasters:

1. Canada’s recognizing a State of Palestine in September of 20252

2. Canada’s flip-flopping on who to support during the Israel-Palestine War in which different things were said to different diaspora groups here at home.

Boy, I was wrong. We didn’t learn a damn thing.

Including the statement released on Saturday - Canada has had four positions on the conflict in Iran and the Middle East in five days.

1. February 28th: The Prime Minister announces in a statement that Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.3

2. March 3rd: At a press conference the Prime Minister calls for a rapid de-escalation of hostilities and is prepared to assist in achieving this goal. Diplomatic engagement is essential to avoid a wider and deeper conflict.4

3. March 3rd (again): PMMC says at that same presser: "The current conflict is ​another example of the failure of the international order, despite decades of UN Security Council resolutions."5

4. March 4th: When speaking with the media, Prime Minister Carney walks back his earlier call for de-escalation and says: Canada “can never categorically rule out participation (in airstrikes in Iran). We will stand by our allies —— we will always defend Canadians, we will always stand by and defend our allies when called upon.”6

Which is it? Do we condemn the Americans and the Israelis, or are we sending troops to the Middle East?

These are, as the reader may note, very different approaches.

These approaches aren’t just minor political changes on grey-area policy - this is whether or not we support our allies, regardless of tariff and trade issues, in their battle to eliminate the biggest sponsor of terror in the Middle East: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the Israelis successfully neutralized Ayatollah Ali Khamenei within mere hours of the first airstrike in Iran.

Persians in Iran and diaspora groups around the world are celebrating7 the welcomed news of the Ayatollah’s death and the beginning of the collapse of the world’s most brutal regime - a regime that, mind you, killed 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents in January of 2020.

This shouldn’t be a difficult foreign policy plan to finalize. Terrorists are bad - I know this is becoming increasingly more difficult to say but it’s still true.

While terrorists are bad, we should also support our allies in freeing the innocent citizens of those terrorists from tyrannical rule and brutal oppression.

Side note: maybe firmly supporting our southern neighbours in this endeavour, even just verbally, might win us a little bit of favour in their eyes during trade and tariff negotiations.

We can make no mistake about how necessary the elimination of the Islamic Republic is. Prime Minister Carney was correct in his February 28th statement - as of now there is no need to pivot from that.

Tehran funds Hamas, they fund Hezbollah, they fund the Houthis. They just massacred nearly 40,000 of their own citizens who protested for freedom and the return of the Shah.8

The IRGC is bad, very bad. If Canada wishes to be good, we must stand against evil.

Defending evil, shielding it from the necessary consequences makes us an accessory to that evil.

This foreign policy blunder is embarrassing. It’s humiliating — perhaps only rivalled by: Melanie Joly and Ya’ara Saks holding hands with Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

Have we learned nothing from the Israel-Palestine conflict? Saying one thing to one person, and another to a different person just fans the flames of tension here at home.

We saw that conflict play out here in Canada: Jewish schools shot at, synagogues firebombed, Jewish students barricading themselves in lecture halls.

Prime Minister - pick a side, stick to it. Please, pick the right side. There is only one good side and it isn’t difficult to see.

Until that morally principled policy is selected, our government offers us no hope that they’ve learned a thing from the foreign policy blunders of Justin Trudeau and Melanie Joly.

Until then, Canada’s “new” government will look a lot like the old government - unprincipled, always wavering, never consistent, usually wrong.

Are they fans of The Who?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Canada’s Great War years of 1914 to 1918 were vital for nation-building, but they meant something entirely different for rural, agriculturally based Canadian communities. Citizens in Canadian cities celebrated and supported the war effort as it brought new jobs and economic opportunities for workers and families, but how did the war affect rural Canada, in agricultural regions like Leeds County, Ontario? This is the driving question that this paper answers because we cannot understand Canada’s Great War without first understanding the war from the perspective of small, rural farming regions like Leeds County. The thesis of this paper is simple: While Canada’s Great War years were crucial to nation-building, they also proved to be detrimental to the small, rural region of Leeds County. While families lost sons to the war overseas, mills closed, and industry fled for bigger cities, Canada became a nation. After those five years, Leeds was left with only farming and a small, poor, depleted population. To prove this thesis, it must be broken down into four central themes; First, an overview of Leeds’ war dead. If we are to understand the detriment the war brought to the county adequately, we must study the deaths of six soldiers from Leeds who were slain in the field, as well as their posthumous impact on their families and their communities. The second central theme we must understand is rural recruitment and enlistment trends in Leeds. From the commencement of the war Leeds celebrated the conflict as military enlistment was seen as noble and honourable, but by 1916 enlistment rates plummeted. Why did enlistment rates plummet in the summer of 1916? Why was farming, the biggest employer in the county, the only profession that widely abstained from military enlistment? These are key questions the second portion of this paper will answer. Third, the conscription crisis of 1917. With enlistment rates down, especially in rural areas like Leeds, the Canadian government introduced the Military Services Act. We must thoroughly examine how conscription was viewed in Leeds, especially by farmers whose agricultural production was vital to support the war effort. While farmers were exempt from conscription, their family members were not; this would ultimately solidify farming as the key source of income in Leeds County. Lastly, if we are to fully understand the damage the Great War inflicted on Leeds County, we must understand Canada’s urban and industrial boom. When combined with the pre-existing problem of rural depopulation, the urban industrial boom pulled industry, businesses, and families from Leeds County, which by 1918 left Leeds with nothing but agriculture and a poor, depleted population.

1. Leeds’ War Dead, Their Stories and Posthumous Impact:

To prove that the Great War years brought detriment to Leeds County, we must first analyze the poignance of the lives lost to the war. The stories of Leeds’ war dead provide a clearer idea of the cold, harsh reality of war as their deaths deeply impacted their small, tightly-knit communities at home. The stories of their service and sacrifice after the initial excitement of war in Leeds showcase how the perception of war in the county quickly changed from exhilaration to resentment. The stories of these six men from Athens, South Burgess, and Kitley play a substantial role in the aim of this paper, as these men enlisted to defend their homeland but never returned to that homeland. The families of these six men were left with nothing but memories, tin ribbons, and in one case, a small sum of dependency cash to replace their sons and caretakers.

When Canada entered the Great War on August 4, 1914, a wave of volunteers from Leeds, especially in Brockville, the county city, promptly offered themselves for military service. Settled in the late eighteenth century along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, Brockville was a British-rooted town with nearly 40% of its population made up of English-Canadians, full of young men eager to defend their motherland. With the city swept up with war fever, Lieutenant Colonel William Buell of the Brockville Rifles received instruction for voluntary enlistment to commence in Brockville on August 7th. Buell received such an exceptional enlistment rate from Brockville men that doctors had to prolong medical examinations to see each recruit. The city was excited for war. On August 22, Buell departed Brockville with over 70 volunteer recruits, nearly one percent of Brockville’s male population, for the Canadian Expeditionary Force’s main training base in Valcartier, Quebec - about 450 kilometers east along the St. Lawrence.

20 kilometers north of Brockville lies Athens, a small agricultural village, centered at the geographical center of Leeds County. Settled originally as Farmersville by United Empire Loyalists in the late 18th century, Athens had served the community as a critical farming community for nearly 125 years by 1914. When war broke out in August 1914, it was celebrated in Athens just as it was in Brockville, but by the summer of 1916, the perception of the conflict had changed as the small community lost several of its sons in the fields of France and Flanders. The loss of men overseas wreaked disaster and detriment on Athens as communities were small, tightly knit, and united through faith, family, and culture. In Athens, 102 of the town’s 364 men enlisted militarily by the war’s end, 11 of whom never returned. This paper will analyze four of these eleven, particularly those whose gruesome deaths deeply shocked and impacted their communities: Roscoe DeWolfe, James Mills Johnston, John Corr, and David Delos Spence.

Roscoe DeWolfe, a painter from Athens and the cornet player in the town band, enlisted in Brockville with the 77th Battalion on November 9, 1915, at the age of 29. He spent two months in action overseas before being killed in Courcelette at the Somme on October 24, 1916. Dewolfe’s body was never identified, and he was memorialized at the Canadian National War Memorial in Vimy, France. At the time of DeWolfe’s death, his attestation forms noted that his mother, Mary DeWolfe, received $94.00 in separation payments when Roscoe was overseas, meaning that she was a widow and a dependent of Roscoe’s. Once the war ended, not only did Mary DeWolfe mourn the loss of her son, but she was also left with no income, no job, no family, and no tombstone. Her son and caretaker merely disappeared overseas and never returned home. A true, harsh reality of the brutality of war: while life was lost overseas, lives were ruined on the homefront as uneducated widows like Mary DeWolfe were left to fend for themselves.

A month after DeWolfe enlisted, so too did John Corr, a 21-year-old cheesemaker in Athens who enlisted in Brockville on December 15, 1915. Corr, a native of Carleton Place, Lanark County, Leeds's county neighbour to the north, moved with his family to Leeds in the late 1890s. It was in Athens where John would take up cheesemaking in his late teens. Corr was appointed as an Ace Corporal with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles before he was gassed and killed in action at Cambrai in September of 1917, two months shy of one of the biggest British counter-offensives of the war. A Canadian Expeditionary Force coroner’s post-mortem report examined the effects of gas on Corr’s body: the report noted that his posthumous body was yellow and covered with superficial burns and frothy puss in the bronchioles and lungs. Corr also had adhesions in both his lungs and several hemorrhages in the stomach. Both his liver and his spleen were enlarged and congested, his kidneys were congested, and the blood vessels to the brain were engorged. His trachea was severely inflamed and ulcerated, and his heart was enlarged. This post-mortem exam documents the horror of the war overseas for these soldiers and their families back home in Athens. At this point in 1917, residents of Athens knew poisonous gas existed overseas and that it was a prominent part of the fight in the trenches, but what they didn’t realize was the specific effect it had on soldiers like John Corr, who slowly died over a few days as his organs steadily shut down. When he died, his mother, Rebecca Corr received her son’s will and his two gold stars, one to mark her son’s service in the war and another one to celebrate his contribution of life, a couple of pieces of tin to cover for the loss of her son. Corr’s death and his posthumous awards, two gold stars to cover his sacrifice of life, depict the brutality of the war and the trauma it wreaked on family members and loved ones on the homefront.

Athens lost not only its working class to the war effort but also its youth. 28% of the men in Athens enlisted to fight overseas, some of whom were students. James Mills Johnston was a local undergraduate who graduated from Athens District High School before heading to Queens University in Kingston, a military city bordering the County in the west. Mills Johnston put his studies as a bachelor of arts aside when he enlisted with the 46th Queens Battery C.F.A. out of the University. He quickly rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant. Though he initially served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, as Roscoe DeWolfe and John Corr did, Mills Johnston changed course with the military and joined Britain’s Royal Air Force in May 1918. While training with the RAF, Mills Johnson was killed in a training expedition at the age of 21 in Cranwell, England. He was buried at Cranwell Church cemetery in England, 130 kilometres south of Leeds, England, the namesake of the county he was born and raised in.

The final soldier from Athens that we must examine to recognize the sheer devastation and detriment that the Great War brought on this tiny community in Leeds is the war experience of David Delos Spence, a farmer from Charleston, Leeds - 5 kilometres west of Athens. Spence enlisted on June 3, 1915, arrived in France in February 1916, and joined the 5th Battalion in Verdun on February 5. On August 22, 1916, Spence was found drowned in the Meuse River, which flows north through Verdun into Belgium. Upon his death, Spence’s father, David Sr. received the $121.53 that his son was owed by the military, a small sum of money to cover the loss of his son. The war took the lives of Athens’ workers and young but also brought detriment to the families and widowed parents of its war dead.

Directly north of Athens is the township of South Burgess, the most northern municipality in Leeds County, where we continue to see the damage the Great War brought to the residents of Leeds County through the war experience of William Joynt. Joynt was a painter and sergeant with the volunteer militia’s 42nd regiment, who enlisted on September 22, 1914, at the age of 30. Upon completion of his training, he was sent to Ypres, the last free major city center in Flanders, in April of 1915. He was gassed and killed at Vlamertinge, 5 kilometres west of Ypres, during the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. It was at Ypres where the Canadian Expeditionary Force endured its “baptism of fire,” which saw them gassed heavily by the Germans at their first significant engagement of the Great War. Joynt played a pivotal role in the Leeds soldier experience as Second Ypres was the first significant action the Canadian Expeditionary Force saw during the Great War, as well as the first time that poisonous gas was used during the war. On April 22, the day William Joynt is presumed to have died, the Germans launched a cloud of chlorine gas that was six kilometres wide and one kilometre deep at French and Canadian lines, showing the brutal, evil reality of the war that Leeds’s sons faced.

Above: William Joynt of South Burgess. He enlisted at the age of 30 and was gassed at Vlamertinge (west of Ypres) in 1915.

Communities in Leeds were not spared of shock and sadness throughout any point of the war, even in the conflict’s late stages. Moreover, in the small village of Toledo, the central community in Kitley Township in eastern Leeds, the Bellamy family mourned the loss of their son, Edward, who was killed in the final eight months of the war. Edward Bellamy was the first name etched onto the Toledo cenotaph in 1921, along with the eight other men from Kitley who were killed during the Great War. The Cenotaph, one of the few in Leeds’ communities as small as Toledo, was made possible through the financial contribution of Mr. Bert Wood, the owner of the Toledo general store. Bellamy enlisted in Brockville in February of 1916 at the age of 18. He was killed just over two years later on March 28, 1918, while in France when an artillery blast hit his foxhole, a few months after he turned 20. Small communities like Athens, South Burgess, and Toledo suffered the same loss of life as urban Canada's losses throughout the war. Still, urban Canada had the population and industry to rebound from those losses, rural Canada did not. These losses of life had more profound effects in rural Leeds, where communities were small, poor, and tightly-knit. In Leeds, families were prominent, and communities were small; rural communities were often deeply connected through their British-loyalist roots and their Anglican and Methodist faith. The war years deeply affected Leeds and its small, agriculturally based population. The experiences of the young men from Leeds who died overseas in the most inhumane ways and their posthumous impact on their families and communities, allow us to see the detriment and disaster that Leeds County endured during the Great War. While Canada’s Great War years are seen as nation-building, small rural communities like Leeds County mourn the loss of their sons, husbands, and brothers, whom they never saw again.

2. Military Recruitment and the War’s Change in Perception:

The second central theme of this paper that must be understood if we are to prove the effect the Great War had on the county is Leeds’ war on the homefront. To understand the war from the perspective of Leeds County, it must be understood what the homefront looked like and how the county contributed soldiers to the war effort. Additionally, after studying the stories of Leeds’ war dead, we must also consider the change in perception of the war in Leeds. The war was celebrated at recruitment drives in early 1916, but within a few months, enlistment rates plummeted in rural Canada as Leeds’ residents steered clear of recruitment offices. In the spring of 1916, the Canadian Expeditionary Force began official recruitment in Leeds County, introducing the 156th (Leeds-Grenville) Battalion, which recruited out of Brockville. The battalion was led by Grenville County-based military leadership who were previously wounded on the Front and sent home to boost enlistment. Leading the 156th was Captain Ashmore Kidd of Burrits Rapids, about 30 kilometres east of Leeds. Kidd was wounded at Ypres and came from local military fame. His father, T.A. Kidd fought during the Fenian Raids, and his grandfather fought an American invasion at the Battle of the Windmill along the St. Lawrence. In the spring of 1916, Kidd led the 156th in a march across Leeds County with recruitment drives in small, rural communities. In mid-May of 1916, the 156th visited Elgin, South Crosby, and Delta and Philipsville in Bastard Township. In Elgin, the 156th was welcomed, and a speech was made by MPP John Robertson Dargavel and Reverend G.W. McFarlane of the local Methodist church. Before the rain hit in the evening, the 156th even took on some local children in games of football and baseball before an evening of highland dancing and music at Elgin town hall. From Elgin, the 156th marched to Delta, where they were greeted with a feast in the town square and a concert to mark the occasion.

From Delta, the 156th left western Leeds and headed east to Toledo and Frankville in Kitley Township before marching to Athens. The 156th Battalion arrived in Athens on May 22 and commenced “a day that will not be forgotten,” as coined by the Athens Reporter. The women of Athens cooked for days beforehand in preparation for the 156th, flags and decorations were strung from every possible place, and streamers lined the village streets. The community was excited about the arrival of their local troops. At 2 p.m., the Athens Band led the 156th down King Street, stopping at town hall for a formal welcome. The troops were fed dinner at 5 p.m. with more food than most villagers had ever seen. After eating, the troops were serenaded with dancing, music, and entertainment before heading south to Brockville the following day to continue their recruitment. At the time of the recruitment drive of May 22, Athens had several soldiers who had already enlisted and partook in the drive as troops. After recruiting in Brockville, the 156th headed east to train at Barriefield camp in Kingston before departing to England through Halifax on October 16, 1916, with 675 men from Leeds County, 7% of the county’s eligible male population. While Leeds supported her soldiers and embraced their service, the county grew wary of the war. To serve was courageous and noble, and the military glorified service through marches like that of the 156th Battalions’s march in May of 1916. However, enlistment rates drastically plummeted as word travelled from the front to the county. While some men refused to enlist, others, like Arthur Hawkins, were forbidden by their parents. Hawkins, a native of Athens, was taken back home by his mother when he tried to enlist as a teenager.

However, the 156th marches of 1916 did not end the push for military recruitment in Leeds County. While the 156th was training at Barriefield during the summer of 1916, Commonwealth casualties skyrocketed in France. During the summer of 1916, the Somme campaign claimed over 100,000 British casualties, including 58,000 on July 1 at France’s Somme and Pas-de-Calais sectors. After the catastrophic loss of manpower at the Somme, the Canadian Expeditionary Force was expected to prepare for substantial campaigns at the Vimy salient in April 1917 and Passchendaele in the summer of 1917. As the Commonwealth needed more men, the Canadian Expeditionary Force was back recruiting in Leeds County by January of 1917. The 156th continued recruiting in Leeds until the armistice of November 11th, 1918, with a 240-man strong battalion marching through Delta and Lyndhurst in May of 1918.

While the 156th Battalion’s recruitment drives were initially effective, ultimately, small, rural, sparsely populated regions like Leeds County could only provide so much manpower for the war effort before a fatal conclusion would be reached: the county would physically run out of eligible men to enlist. A war of attrition, like the Great War, taxed small communities like Leeds County greatly, requiring a level of enlistment that sparsely populated municipalities in Leeds could not provide. Throughout the Great War, farmers in Leeds were hesitant to join the war effort. This was evident through our first soldier case study in Athens, where three-quarters of the soldiers we looked at came from professions unrelated to agriculture and came predominantly from the trades. When Canada joined the war in August of 1914, farmers in Leeds were more worried about getting their harvest in than fighting a European war. This sentiment did not change throughout the war, and tense emotions ultimately boiled over between farmers and the Canadian government during the Conscription Crisis of 1917-18.

The Fifth Census of Canada in 1911 stated that Brockville and Gananoque were the only communities in Leeds with populations exceeding 1,000 residents. With Brockville home to 18,500 residents and Gananoque to 3,500, these statistics did not change by 1914. On April 19th, 1916, the 156th Battalion already consisted of the following men from various Leeds’ communities: 440 from Brockville, 67 from Gananoque, 43 from Elgin, 36 from Mallorytown, 30 from Delta, 27 from Athens, and 16 from both Lyndhurst and Westport. Even in sparsely populated communities, these are small numbers - roughly 4% of the men in the village of Westport enlisted to fight by April of 1916, approximately 3% in Gananoque, and 5% of the male population in the entire township of South Crosby enlist out of the village of Elgin alone. For comparison, in Toronto, where farming was not a predominant employment, nearly 40% of the city's eligible male population had enlisted to fight the war by 1918. In Leeds, the percentage of men who enlisted in various communities never rose above 10%. Leeds is situated in Eastern Ontario, which, along with the Maritimes, were two of English Canada’s weakest regions for voluntary enlistment throughout the war.

The 156th Battalion marching through Athens, Leeds in May of 1916 on a recruitment drive. Athens would lose 11 sons to the Front.

Though men in Leeds grew tentative about enlisting as the war waged on, Leeds’ residents found other ways to contribute to the war effort. In Athens, Mrs. Cynthia Yates, an 82-year-old disabled widow, knitted 309 pairs of woollen socks for soldiers on the front, all while handicapped with a broken wrist and hip. In Kitley Township, various women’s groups raised money and goods to send to Europe to support their troops, including the Women’s Patriotic Auxiliary of Toledo, which raised $303.97, including hospital goods like nightshirts, pyjamas, towels and socks, and assorted non-perishable items like maple sugar, gum, candy, and honey. These items were sent to the Red Cross in Toronto and Ottawa and ultimately shipped overseas. We see how Leeds viewed the war through the analysis of rural recruitment for the war effort. In the lead-up to the spring of 1916, the war was supported and celebrated. Enlisting and serving militarily was courageous and honourable. That changed in the summer of 1916 when casualty numbers skyrocketed, and the sentiment toward the war changed substantially among Leeds residents. Of those who did enlist and serve from Leeds, very few came from agricultural backgrounds, as many farmers saw more value in tending to the harvest and their livestock than losing their sons to a European war. This stagnant enlistment rate of farmers and rural Canadians in Leeds would ultimately lead to the conscription crisis of 1917.

3. Enlistment Plummets, Conscription Enacted:

Continuing on the theme of low rural enlistment rates in Leeds, the county struggled with the third central theme of this essay, conscription and the Military Services Act of 1917. This paper aims to prove that the Great War brought detriment to Leeds County, to do this we must understand Leeds’ perspective on Canada’s biggest political decision of the war, conscription. Despite a heavy emphasis on recruitment drives and boosting enlistment in rural areas like the 156th Battalion’s march in May of 1916, enlistment numbers plummeted at the end of 1916 and early 1917. As word made its way home of the horror of the chlorine gas that claimed William Joynt’s life at Ypres in 1915 and the attritional bloodbaths at the Somme and Verdun that claimed the lives of Roscoe DeWolfe and David Delos Spence in 1916, communities began to view the war with caution and fear, and enlistment numbers fell drastically. With enlistment rates down, the Athens Reporter published King George’s appeals to the men of the Commonwealth to enlist and support the war, “More men, and yet more are wanted to keep my armies in the field and through them to secure victory and an enduring peace,” pled the monarch.

While King George encouraged additional voluntary support, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden aggressively pressured rural recruitment in the summer of 1917. After a devastating April, the Canadian Expeditionary Force suffered over 13,000 casualties and gained only 5,000 recruits - almost all from urban Canada. On August 29, Borden passed the highly controversial Military Services Act, which pledged a total war effort for the remainder of the conflict. The Act, passed by Borden’s newly formed Union government made up of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals, forced the mandatory enlistment of healthy Canadian men between the ages of 20 and 45 and was met with fierce resentment and revolt from Leeds’s farmers. While Leeds’s trade professions had generally supported the war, farmers were hesitant to support the war with military service as their production was deemed essential during the war, and their livelihoods were tied to their families and land. From the outset of the war, a strong sense of nationalism was felt in cities across Canada, but that sentiment was not held in the agriculture industry, the chief source of income in Leeds County. While tradesmen, shopkeepers, and manufacturers from Athens and Brockville enlisted voluntarily in the early stages of the war, farmers largely remained home. During the war, agricultural production in Leeds County, for the first time since Confederation, was essential for usage outside of Eastern Ontario as Canadian agricultural exports to Britain skyrocketed. By mid-May 1916, when the 156th marched Leeds County, farmers only made up 8.5% of Canadian Expeditionary Force volunteers, showcasing how intentionally underrepresented Canadian farmers were overseas. For farmers in Leeds, there proved to be serious financial repercussions for leaving the farm to fight, forcing neighbours or family members to take over farm production, leaving risk of significant fiscal fallout, or worse, their sons going overseas to fight and not returning, leaving no one to inherit or work the family farm. Despite the risk conscription posed for rural farmers in Canadian regions like Leeds County, Borden announced that the Canadian Corps would be increased to 500,000 men strong. While farmers were exempt from conscription, their sons were not. On the eve of the Military Services Act and the December 1917 election, Borden wrote in his diary, “Our first duty is to win, at any cost, the coming election so that we may continue to do our part in winning the War and that Canada not be disgraced.” Borden and his cabinet grew more disconnected from the concerns of rural farmers in Leeds as the war continued. Borden’s commitment to aiding Britain in the war effort alienated his electoral base, hurt agricultural production, and devastated small farming communities like Leeds County.

Rural resentment and revolt over conscription for the sons of farmers ultimately boiled over in May of 1918 when the United Farmers of Ontario organized a march on Ottawa to meet with Borden to protest conscription. Borden refused to back down: farmers were exempt from conscription, but their sons would continue the fight in Europe. Nevertheless, the protection from conscription allotted to farmers in Leeds allowed farming to flourish and solidify itself as the county's chief source of income and industry. Canadian farmers, like those in Leeds County, were excused from fighting overseas because of their essential agricultural production. Their sons, however, were not allotted the same treatment and were still subject to conscription. At this time, agricultural production in rural Ontario dropped drastically throughout 1917 and 1918 as Leeds farmers lost their most extensive support network on the farm: their family members.

This protection for farmers and increased exports and production allowed hog farmers in Seeley’s Bay, George Sly, and Ernie Collinson, to modernize local pork production. Sly and Collinson revolutionized their hog farms through newly built pigpens with freshly poured concrete walls, floors, and new troughs. Additionally, on the advice of the Ministry of Agriculture, led by Minister Martin Burell, Sly and Collinson made advancements to their provender cookers to produce feed for livestock faster. After making these advancements, Sly and Collinson were paid a visit by Minister Burell, who came to Seeley’s Bay to test production himself. This exemption from conscription for farmers solidified farming as the chief source of income and industry in Leeds County. However, the susceptibility of farmer’s sons to conscription was met with hostility. While conscription preserved farming in rural parts of municipalities in Leeds like North and South Crosby, South Burgess, South Elmsley, Bastard, Kitley, and Elizabethtown, it proved devastating in parts of urban Leeds where agriculture did not play such a prominent role. In Leeds, the two largest communities, Brockville and Gananoque, based on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, were more dependent on manufacturing and labour, jobs that were not exempt from conscription, than they were on agriculture. While these labour jobs were eligible for conscription, agricultural pursuits were protected and allowed to prosper.

4. Rural Depopulation and Industrial Shift:

To properly comprehend Leeds’ experience through the Great War years, which reduced the county to a solely agriculturally based region, we must understand the impact of Canada’s industrial revolution during the Great War. Building off the theme of conscription and how the protection farmers received from mandatory military experience preserved farming, we must also understand how the Great War destroyed Leeds’ industrial sector. The critical issue for Leeds County that came out of this period was rural depopulation, which was expedited by the wartime industrial and economic boom in urban Canada. While rural Leeds residents packed up and moved elsewhere for employment opportunities, agriculture commercialized, and farms grew in size but shrank in number. This industrial boom in Canadian industry and economics forced industries to relocate from rural areas like Leeds County to nearby cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. While farming was solidified as the chief source of income and employer in Leeds, farms grew in size but shrank in number, forcing many farmers to leave Leeds. Before the Great War, rural areas in Canada were dominated by people, but that changed during the war years. The rural life of bustling agricultural communities in the north half of Leeds in communities like Lombardy, Toledo, Frankville, and Forfar declined rapidly at the beginning of the 20th century and this decline was expedited during the war years. In Southern Leeds, along the Gananoque River Frontier, prominent milling communities and small-river settlements like Lyndhurst and Delta suffered dramatic population decreases as mills began to close. The rural life that had dominated Leeds before the war ceased to exist post-1918.

Known primarily as an agricultural community, manufacturing prospered in Leeds’ more prominent communities, especially in Brockville, which had port access through the St. Lawrence and rail access through the Grand Trunk Railway. Manufacturing and factory work were significant employers in Brockville, but the Great War changed the economic structure of the city. Canada’s industrial revolution hit rural parts of the country much later than it did the urban parts. The Grand Trunk Railway, a substantial eastern-Canadian rail line with four stops in Leeds: Gananoque, Lansdowne, Mallorytown, and Brockville, expanded to boast over 55,000 kilometres of track by 1915. The Grand Trunk expansion, which extended across Canada and into several American states, was a positive addition to Brockville and southern Leeds during the war years but hurt the community post-war when industry left for bigger cities.

On the agricultural side of Leeds’ industry, though it was cemented as Leeds’ primary source of income and industry, even farming changed. During the war years, farming in Leeds evolved from a way of life to an industry in its own right; the war years saw farming in Leeds commercialize and grow in size while the number of independent farms dwindled. While farming became the chief source of income and employment in Leeds during the war years, the number of farmers decreased dramatically as rural depopulation hit Leeds hard. Commercial farming became the agricultural norm as farming became big and mechanized. Smaller farms disappeared as they were bought up by wealthier farmers whose farms grew as they swallowed up surrounding land. In Kitley and South Elmsley, Leeds’ two most rural townships, the number of farms decreased substantially as new agricultural methods developed and forced many poor farmers to flee rural Leeds in search of employment opportunities in bigger cities or try their hand as farmers in the wide-open prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta. This type of farming differed from the type of agriculture farmers had been practicing in the County for the previous 120 years. As the Canadian economy proliferated and exports to Britain surged, the amount of farmland devoted to field crops increased from 35 million in 1913 to 53 million in 1919, growth that small farms in Leeds were unable to keep up with, forcing farmers to sell their farmland or amalgamate with bigger farms. This was especially evident in South Elmsley, where debt hung over the heads of many rural farmers. As a result, smaller farmers were sold or rented out as local farmers moved to the cities for employment opportunities. Before the war, James O’Mara of Lombardy sold his farm stock and machinery along the Rideau Lake and leased his land to a bigger farm. Leading up to the war, J.W. Rutherford did the same as O’Mara, selling his equipment and stock for cash and renting his property. Chancey Blanchard of Lombardy had been buying up local farmland to expand his arable land and rented William Baker’s farmland on the eve of the War. South Elmsley’s population cratered as many farmers left the township and those who remained bought up any available land to farm. This issue of rural depopulation was not unique to Leeds but a trend occurring throughout Canada - by 1921, twice as many Canadians were employed in non-agricultural pursuits than those in agricultural fields. This decrease in farming pursuits was represented in Canada’s industrial growth: the country’s industrial sector grew by 2.2 billion dollars between 1914 and 1919, from 2.2 billion to 4.4. Even in Canada’s secondary manufacturing sector, the gross income increased from 390 million dollars to 1.1 billion dollars. The national wartime economy was on fire, but that fire burned in urban areas, leaving rural Canada, like Leeds County behind.

Industrially, the War years spurred Canada down the road of industrial and economic maturity. During this time, Canadian export value doubled, and Canada was on the path of becoming one of the world’s industrial leaders as wartime production boomed. What hurt Leeds was not simply the economic and industrial boom in Canadian factories but that Canada’s factories were primarily located in more significant rural populations. As industry and factories moved from rural areas to urban areas to meet the demand of Canada’s wartime economy, they took jobs and residents with them, accelerating the severe problem of rural depopulation.

With the critical problem of rural depopulation, Leeds saw many residents move elsewhere for industrial work. Rural depopulation had already begun leading up to the war but was spurred exponentially during Canada’s Great War industrial boom. Between the 1901 and 1911 censuses, urban areas on either side of Leeds grew rapidly: Toronto’s population grew by 58%, Montreal’s grew by 49%, and Ottawa saw a population increase of 45% leading up to the Great War. The population of Leeds County declined by a few thousand residents between 1901 and 1911, and the bulk of this decline happened in the rural municipalities of the County. Throughout the War Years and between the 1911 and 1921 censuses, the population of Athens fell from 802 residents to 726. The village of Newboro in North Crosby saw its population decline from 469 residents to 346. Ten kilometres north, in the village of Westport, the population dropped from 803 to 741 residents. In Lombardy, the sole commercial community in South Elmsley, the population crumbled in the early part of the 20th century and throughout the war years. In 1910, the Rideau Record, a local newspaper in nearby Smiths Falls, Lanark County, wrote that the downfall of Lombardy was imminent as farmers were packing up and the milling community (Lombardy) would lose its commercial role in South Elmsley. These were substantial losses for small, rural communities, and the bulk of this population decline came from workers relocating their families for new economic and employment opportunities in more significant urban areas like Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.

The experience of Brockville, the only urban settlement in Leeds, was slightly different than that of rural Leeds. While rural Leeds was devastated immediately by depopulation and the industrial boom of the war, Brockville had a slightly different experience. Brockville enjoyed a successful economy during the war years, but that economy disappeared at the war’s end. With the new expansion of the Grand Trunk Railway, rail traffic in Leeds increased dramatically as armaments and wartime products were transported across Canada to the Port of Montreal. However, once the war ended, so too did the busy transportation along the railway. The Grand Trunk had four stops in Leeds, with a substantial business located in Brockville, the far eastern railport. There was industry that remained in Brockville during the war due to its population size, but it ended quickly after the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. In 1915, Brockville had a brief excursion in the auto industry, and this included a small operation in the town that produced replacement automobile parts for Briscoe Motor Corporation in Jackson, Michigan. Brockville could keep its industry longer than rural Leeds because of its urban population, proximity to the St. Lawrence, and position on the Grand Trunk. Brockville also saw the foundation of the Brockville Packing and Provision Company, which handled farm and dairy products, cattle, and meat packaging. This went jointly with the rise of larger commercial farms in the County that saw their production increase to fund the war effort, like George Sly and Ernie Collinson’s pork production in Seeley’s Bay. The Whyte Packing Company was also founded at the turn of the century and was incorporated in 1917, and operated off the increased rail traffic provided by the expansion of the Grand Trunk. Whyte Packing, a wholesaler dealer, sold products based on consignment with local Leeds farmers for cheese, butter, eggs, meat, milk, and cream out of a three-story storage facility on the Grand Trunk line in Brockville. Additionally, in Brockville, Laing’s Produce and Storage Company was established in 1914 and specialized in the manufacture and export of butter and condensed milk, two products that were needed overseas to feed armies. These brief industrial excursions for Brockville saw the town fare better than rural parts of Leeds like Athens, Newboro, Lombardy, and Westport. Still, the industry failed to cement itself as a permanent part of the cities’ economy. Once the war ended, industry began to fade out of Brockville and nearly disappeared during the Great Depression.

From the perspective of rural depopulation, a growing demographic trend that began in the years leading up to the Great War but was expedited between 1914 and 1918. Rural depopulation, caused by the departure of industry from rural Canada, can explain Leeds's experience during the War. Residents left en masse as farming commercialized and industry fled to bigger cities to meet the high demand of Canada’s wartime economy. Even Brockville, the second biggest English community on the St. Lawrence, could keep its industry post-war. During the War Years, rural Leeds lost its population, its industry, and its small family farms, proving the thesis of this paper that the War left Leeds County with nothing but farming and a poor, depleted population.

Conclusion:

Canada’s Great War years of 1914 to 1918 were vital for nation-building, but the effects of the war were detrimental for small, rural regions like Leeds County. We’ve realized these detrimental effects by thoroughly analyzing the soldier experience in Leeds County during the war through four central themes. First, the stories of Leeds’ war dead as small communities like Athens, South Burgess, and Kitley were shaken by the loss of young men in their communities. Families like Roscoe DeWolfe’s were left with nothing as their sole dependents were killed overseas, and widows like Mary DeWolfe were left with no source of income and forced to fend for themselves with no education or employment. Second, during the first half of the war, young men from Leeds enlisted in throngs to fight overseas, but by mid-1916, rural enlistment rates plummeted. While the 156th Battalion marched across Leeds to recruit young men for the Front, many different professions enlisted to fight, except farmers, who largely remained in the fields instead of the recruitment office. Third, building off the serious issue of a lack of rural enlistment across the country, Prime Minister Borden enacted the Military Services Act in the summer of 1917, making young men liable to fight overseas if called upon by the government. Farmers were excluded from the act to protect their essential production, solidifying farming as the key source of income and industry in Leeds, as other professions were conscripted to join the fight in Europe. Finally, continuing on the topic of industry and employment in Leeds County, as Canada’s wartime economy expanded, seeing Canada become an industrial leader during the war years, industry packed up and left rural areas like Leeds and moved to bigger cities. This industrial exodus began at the height of rural depopulation, a growing issue that had started to hit Leeds leading up to the war. As farms grew in size but decreased in number, many small farmers moved to the cities for new economic employment opportunities, leaving rural Leeds communities stranded as they attempted the impossible: solve the problem of depopulation with no commercial industry. Through these four critical perspectives, we can fully grasp the thesis that while Canada’s Great War years were crucial for nation-building, they proved to be detrimental and destructive to small, rural communities like Leeds County. While Canada became a nation, Leeds was left with nothing but agriculture and a poor, depleted population.

Leeds as it looked throughout the Great War years, Grenville lies to its direct East.

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