“Noblest and Best”: Retraining Canada’s War Disabled 1915–23

"Noblest and Best": Retraining Canada's War Disabled 1915-23 DESMOND MORTON For most Canadians, the loss of 60,661 men and women was the most palpable cost of their participation in the First World War but there was another, even greater price to be paid. By September 1, 1920, 69,583 veterans, maimed in mind and body, had qualified for disability pensions for their service and more would join them. By 1929, Canada's annual pension bill stood at $43,441,621. After the interest payments on the public debt, it was the largest item in the national accounts.I Canadians had recognized the necessary burden of caring for their war-disabled and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, adding the eloquence few compatriots could match, had pledged "the noblest and best'' of the nation in solving their problems .2 Like other belligerents, Canada set out to ease the disabled's burden and her own by making them self-supporting. She did so amidst great disadvantages . Unlike France, Belgium, Germany or even Britain, Canada had no mature system of vocational education and almost no experience of re-training handicapped adults. A Royal Commission , reporting in 1913, had confirmed the primitive state of industrial education in Canada.3 Ontario's pioneering Workmen's Compensation Act was primarily concerned with insurance, not rehabilitation.4 Across Canada, crippling illness or disease remained a family catastrophe mitigated , if at all, by a patchwork of philanthropy. A conscientious employer might re-hire an injured worker as a caretaker or night watchman. The blind were widely regarded as helpless human beings. Wounded veterans surely deserved more of their country but Canadian visitors to London had regularly been shocked at the sight of maimed ex-soldiers eking out their pensions by begging.5 Canadians had also been disdainful of the successful lobbying efforts of the Grand Army of the Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 16, Nos. 3&4 (Automne-Hiver 1981 Fall-Winter) Republic in persuading Congress to steadily greater generosity to survivors of the American Civil War.6 Yet Canada's relative immunity from war left most Canadians unaware of the limitations of their own military pension arrangements. Hurriedly formalized in the wake of the Northwest Campaign of 1885, militia pension regulations had not altered in principle since the War of 1812. A lieutenant colonel who lost an arm could count on a year's pay and a pension of $1,200 a year. A private, totally disabled and in need of constant care, was pensioned at 45-60 cents a day without everi the promise of medical treatment. 7 If the maximum rate for a private - or his widow - had risen to $264 by 1914, the government had nonetheless spoken eloquently of the value it placed on the life of the country's humblest defenders. The First World War transformed the historic status of the wounded veteran as a tragic but forgettable detritus of conflict. Huge citizen armies could no longer be recruited from the least influential members of society. A society which suddenly assumed full responsibility for a soldier's welfare, including his family, could not easily relinquish it. Many recruits, certified fully fit, suffered from tuberculosis and other hidden disabilities . s Improvements in medical science and the stability of battle fronts meant that, for the first time, the great majority of wounded would survive their ordeal.9 Like most of the consequences of Canada's blithe entry into war in August, 1914, the impact of the disabled was unforeseen. In due course, the disabled would transform the role of government. Canadians would experience government-run health and hospital care, vocational training, job placement and life insurance. A government of businessmen would establish its own monopoly in prosthesis manufacture. Adjusting pensions and retraining pay to family size would become a precedent for family allowances. The problem of elderly "burnt-out" veterans became an argument for old age pensions. Programmes developed for blind and tubercular veterans would eventually be shared with their civilian counterparts. At the same time, the rush to return to "normal" conditions , to limit spending and to eliminate programmes which seemed too ambitious or costly 75 for postwar Canada meant that more promises were made to the...