Practical Patriotism: How the Canadian Junior Red Cross and its Child Members Met the Challenge of the Second World War

The advent of the Second World War posed certain dilemmas for the previously internationalist and peace-promoting Canadian Junior Red Cross (JRC). This article draws upon institutional sources and secondary literature around coercion and agency in children’s wartime voluntary labor to examine both the adjustments made by the JRC and children’s responses to those changes. Through strategies of avoidance, adaptation and redirection, the Canadian JRC successfully negotiated the wartime challenge to its peacetime agenda. However, although these organizational changes were important, the program’s success ultimately relied upon young Canadians’ own productivity and desire to participate.