[URBAN NOTE] David Wencer of Torontoist on the Women's Home Guard, Toronto

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's David Wencer reports about an early effort by women in Toronto to form a militia during the First World War.

On August 20, 1915, 100 Toronto women gathered at the home of Jessie McNab, on St. Clair Avenue, near what is now Winona Drive. Jessie McNab was well-known in Toronto women’s social circles at the time, and over the preceding months her home, known as Dundurn Heights, had been the site of numerous social events, including musical performances and fundraising drives for the Red Cross. On this particular Friday evening, the program included something a bit different: the first military drill of the Toronto Women’s Home Guard.

Toronto women were involved with the Canadian war effort right from the beginning; on the day that Britain declared war on Germany, over 300 Toronto women crowded into the downtown armouries for a lecture given by the St. John Ambulance Corps, with a view to being sent to Europe as nurses. The Toronto World reported that demand was so high that another 300 Toronto women were kept away due to space limitations at the venue.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Toronto already boasted a variety of women’s clubs and organizations based around religions, social causes, or common interests. Many of these groups shifted focus during the war towards supporting the war effort, while many new groups were formed specifically to address new needs and causes that wartime conditions created. Newspapers reveal a variety of initiatives undertaken by women during the first year of the war, including raising funds for the Red Cross, caring for the wives and children of those fighting in Europe, and gathering or making supplies for both the men at the front and displaced refugees. Although projects such as knitting socks or making jam may seem quaint or frivolous through twenty-first-century eyes, these efforts were greatly appreciated by the armed forces and vital to the war effort.

In the summer of 1915, women’s groups became increasingly involved with recruitment drives, as the armed forces were in need of new initiatives to help persuade men to enlist. In July, women helped plan and promote a large recruiting rally at Massey Hall. On August 9, women made up around half of a crowd of 200,000 that attended a Riverdale Park recruitment rally. At Riverdale Park, the Star noted “two gay young ladies, each carrying a small sofa cushion, the ends of which they had opened. And to the astonished and outraged young men standing around, the girls [were] joyously doling out the white chicken feathers that stuffed the cushions… Someone would brush past and quietly lay something white on your lapel. It did not dawn at first what the white thing was. Then when you saw, in the dim light, your single violent impulse was to crawl, on hands and knees, out of the crowd and climb a tall tree. It is a deadly method of attack.”