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| 1914
- The First World War had begun. Canada for the first time had sent over
troops to Europe as an independent nation. This sparked conscription riots
in Québéc, residents believed that the war, was Britain’s war. 1917 - A Union government of Conservatives and Liberals, nearly all from English Canada rammed conscription through Parliament. As a result French Canadians lost faith in Confederation, a movement to ensure Québéc’s sovereignty emerged.(2) 1919 - Industrial capitalism had changed the face of rural and urban environments in Canada James Shaver Woodsworth, founding father of the Independent Labor Party had organized a political front for the unjustness being carried out by new industrialists, which came to a head during the Winnipeg General Strike.(3) 1918 - Women had won the right to vote in Canada. In 1921, Agnes Macphil from the CCF was the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons. A decade later women were recognized as "persons" and therefore eligible to be senators and judges. (4) Between the 1920s and 1930s - New Métis leaders emerged most notably James Patrick, Jim Brady and Malcolm Norris who as prairie socialist activists built a political and organizational base to defend their people’s interests against the Canadian government.(5) Today, it may be contended that the image of Canadiana utopianism reflected by the Group of Seven was representative of cultural amnesia- an illusion overshadowing a culturally dualistic society. The Group of Seven rose, in this amnesic climate to represent the dominant culture. A culture that on the one hand supported preservationist ideologies of maintaining all that was good, pure and natural, while conversely condoning the practice of imperial methods of governing that cultivated xenophobic boundaries for protection. These boundaries supported divisions of class, gender, race and religion. |
