They characterize the enemy as a still imminent threat, but that they are a disorganized, weakening force that Canadians and the rest of the Allies will defeat as long as men and women keep enlisting and the war machine back home keeps productivity up.

They define Canadian citizens as those who are fiercely loyal to the British Crown and to the war effort. In times of war, those who were reluctant to fight or completely opposed were looked down upon in some cases, and in the worst cases they were viewed as possible traitors to the country.

• “Proudest Girl in the World”: This film is directed at the enlistment aged women of Canada who were without a family who relied upon them. These women served highly important roles behind the front lines.

• “Empty Rooms Mean Idle Machines” is directed at the workers of Canada, who if they are not employed or working their hardest, need to correct this immediately. Labours were needed desperately to feed the war machine.

• “Front of Steel” : This film seems to have 3 intended purposes: to portray Canada as a manufacturing world power, to portray Germany as weak and crumbling, and to help ensure all employable Canadians take part in this boom of industry and observe the comradery in the UK.

• “Women Are Warriors” is similarly focused on the young women of Canada.

• “Labour Front” is directed at Canada's workforce and seeks their help, but it also showcases the massive amount of manpower going into the Allies' war effort globally. From North America, to Britain, China, Russia, and other.

• “Keep Your Mouth Shut” from what I gather is mainly focused towards the women in the lives of soldiers who possibly could share confidential wartime information that would lead to Canadian deaths. The reason I find it focused towards this group is because of the dialogue between the woman who is telling secrets and the man that attempts to silence her before she lets something slip that she shouldn't.

The focus on technology and the innovations that came about as a result of the war is due to the fact that without them, the war could have come to a very different conclusion. While Germany had the V2 and jet-propulsion technology that made the Allies very fearful, the Allies largely had better equipment than their German counterparts. In terms of medicine, paratroopers, infantry, and naval power, the Allies were superior to the Germans. A key example would be the German 'Enigma' machine that was created as a technological marvel that could encrypt military messages in a way that even if they were intercepted by the Allies they would be of no use, as they may as well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics without a way to decrypt them. If anything they were far more difficult to decipher. But this would come to an end when the Allies were able crack the 'Enigma' code with the help of most notably, Alan Turing. This was one of, if not the most important technological breakthroughs for the Allies. Having bright minds to help the Allies war effort was crucial.

These films try to romanticize and make heroic all of those who choose to serve the nation against the axis powers. There are some shots which feature the front, but it is all very tame footage. These films do not play back like a war documentary, but as they were intended to, promotional and moral-boosting propaganda to help keep the nation's population contented to some degree. What these films lack in unbiased reporting of the war, they make up for it by showcasing how the Canadian military and government wanted the populace feel when thinking of the war and all the work that was being created for it and put into it.

The film presented men and women as almost equals in the workplace. While non-fighting age men still worked in the factories, the introduction of women to industries they were never accepted into prior is highlighted here. It would be fair to say that Canada was very proud of the 'equality' in the workplace established during the war. I hesitate to call it equality, as many women were still underpaid and under-appreciated in the workplaces. Even in terms of their military service, the importance of men and women is portrayed as basically equal; though women did not serve in combatant roles, they did make up the medical and clerical backbone of many of the nation's militaries, including Canada's.

Most of the films reinforce the idea of national unity and the importance of all the complex systems propping up the war effort; and those who support these industries.

The incorporate the demands of the strikers into the report itself. They are quick to point out that many of the demands are outside their scope of influence and that a public meeting was held as a result. One issue with the report's accuracy that arises from there being an ongoing strike during its creation is that the workers taking part in the strike were not able to be interviewed as the workers left in the camps were. The strike heightened the importance of this report's completion, but it is hard to argue that the strike did not effect its thoroughness.

In some instances they did find there to be an issue and they took the complaint seriously, such as the sanitation as Point Grey Camp. Though throughout much of this report their conclusions are that there is no real need of complaint and that what the workers are frustrated with is either inconsequential or non-existent.

From how they described their assessments (which left much to be desired in terms of detail) it would appear that they did not surprise those whom they were coming to inspect. Such inspections leave much to be questioned as how can we know that the conditions they found were a typical day in the camp or an orchestrated ruse to fool the report of the camps. If I were to sum up their work, it would be as incomplete at best. As John Sandlos also poignantly noted, it would have made more sense if the commission looked at the spending habits of the camps to see what money was being spent on what types of food for the workers.

As I said, at face value the camps seem fine and in need of only a few improvements; but if we look at the complaints themselves it is hard to argue that the camps were running smoothly. For this many different complaints to be presented and by a myriad of individuals from inside the camps there had to actually be deficiencies that led to them.

They were more than fair. Of the entire report, there were only 4-5 grievances from the workers that the investigators stated they found evidence to back up. If this was true, then why were so many men complaining of low wages, poor food and housing, and the inability to move freely? If the camps were run as well as this report suggested, then there wouldn't have been enough angered men to start a strike in the first place.

If I were to take this report at face value, I would have the impression that the camps are run quite well with relative freedom for its inhabitants and with all the basic necessities largely covered in a satisfactory manner. Though this would not appear to be the case, as the trek to Ottawa would prove shortly after this report's publication.

A logical demand to make, as these camps were set up for those who had trouble finding work. If they are meant to keep unemployed busy, you would expect them to want the men to be able to get out and look for these jobs.

So far, this is the most damming part of the report. If the washhouses at Point Grey were this bad, and its runners likely knew they were going to be inspected for such things beforehand, it just shows how little some actually cared. I feel it is safe to say that some of the inspection work they did leading up to this was likely fabricated to appear much nicer than usual. Point Grey seemingly didn't clean up in time and let the inspectors see what the camps were truly like for most who lived in them.

A rare occurrence of them admitting the camps may have at least one minor issue, that has "now been remedied". Getting a negative comment from them feels like squeezing blood from a stone.

This menu has more items on it than half of the restaurants I've ever been to. Either they somehow offered all these different food items daily, or, as I suspect, this menu is a crock of shit.

The question is, what evidence was there to support this besides the investigators just saying to themselves "well, the food is good when I'm here, so it must be this good all the time." So far, this report seems more eager to gloss over and get past these possible complaints of the workers than actually discussing them and why they might have been made in the first place.

Well, sadly they were either blind, dumb, or could see the issues and chose to ignore them. If there was no militarization and no strict rules for the men to follow, then how did the trek to Ottawa come about?

One would think that if the workers were not being treated well by their employer and their living conditions were wearing on them, that their pace and work ethic would also take a toll.

As we discussed in our discussion class, what are the chances that those in charge of maintaining these dining halls were not tipped off about such inspections beforehand? As the report finds that there is a vast array of foods offered to the men of the camp, but was this always the case; or a lie played off to the inspectors?

This came to be one of the main contentions held against the camps, is that they had 100s of rules for these, often young, men to follow. While those in control of the camps were dead set on convincing the public that life in the camps wasn;t militarized, we have to look at who was in charge of the camps. If there was any institution that would enforce military-style rules, one would assume it to be the military. The touted number of rules at the time was 470 which the men had to live by or face consequences for their actions.

As the nation would learn in the Depression-era, agriculture is not as reliable as one would think for keeping the economy sustained. As droughts and the dust bowl that consumed many of the fields of western Canada during the 1930s made clear.

Something that still goes strongly today in most governments.

Returning the vote to 'alien' citizens was right thing to do, but the right to vote was still not given to indigenous peoples (unless they wanted to lose their status). So, how great was this limited democracy even when the act was repealed?

As the war came to an end, so did the unprecedently high demand for resources and manufacturing. Not completely of course, as the 1920s would come to be the most consumer-driven and technologically advancing decade up until that point, but this still did not keep the market heightened enough to employ all of the men who returned from France.

Wishful thinking for the time. Canada would learn their lesson from the soldiers left destitute after WWI. As by the time WWII came to an end, the Canadian government ensured they and their families were supported and cared for.

It is strange to think that Canada, who was so closely tied to Britain, would have tariffs on these materials from there. These necessities' to farming one would think would be serving the same purpose if imported from the UK as they would if they were imported from the US. If anything, supporting trade with the UK would have been sensical; unless there was fears that having too many avenues to acquire farm equipment from elsewhere would have negatively effected the manufacturing economy in Canada. Though even if there were these concerns, one would think the nation's agricultural output would be higher in importance than ensuring the Canadian industries that propped up farming (fertilizer, equipment, and other types of manufacturers) were able to compete with other countries' products.

I can't remember the man's name, and no amount of searching has led me to it, but John Sandlos brought up somewhere in the course material the guy who owned much of what I think was wither the pork or beef industry by the early 1900s or so (I am sorry I can't remember the details). This was common as small farms and ranches began to be taken over by industrialized farming.

As we discussed in class with Professor John Sandlos, the complete lack of support for returning WWI veterans served a lesson to the nation that lead to the government taking any entirely different approach at the conclusion of WWII. We must also not forget the women and children left with out husbands and fathers as a result of the war. There were no social services as we would think of them today, outside of private charitable work. So, it was not only wounded and trauma-stricken soldiers who returned to a nation who did not care for them, but the more nameless and faceless dependents of those men who also suffered unimaginably.

This problem still exists today (as can be seen in the Ukraine-Russia conflict), but the main issue with interpreting any media created during wartime is that depending on what side of the conflict it originates from, there are going to be biases that one needs to understand. Sending a positive message back to civilians who are helping prop up the war effort was obviously preferred over telling people how atrocious the fighting really was, and both sides were highly aware of this in WWI.

As stated prior, these soldiers likely seen relatable moments in the comedic works their comrades were creating and spreading. The old soldier who is just fed up and tired was one that seen much of themselves in. Also, having some form of comedic relief in such dire circumstances would have been one of the only ways to lighten such a dark time.

The common understanding of an anti-hero is a character whom may have dubious moral standing but in the end the audience or reader still sympathizes with them. In this period there were common anti-hero tropes, such as 'old Bill, the soldier'. These characters were intended to show the human side of soldiers that was often forgotten or ignored. Soldiers were not always on alert or serious, there had to be downtime in which soldiers complained, goofed around with one another, or at times could be called 'lazy'. Many of these men were hardly old enough to be called such, so it is only natural that comedic characters such as these anti-heroes cropped up in the works of serving men, as their creators most definitely knew soldiers like their characters, or perhaps they were casting their own short-comings and gripes onto these characters.

These posters depict the heroic, patriotic soldier who is standing as the last line of defense between the world as people knew it in Canada or a Canada that has been overrun by Germans. They stress the need for men to enlist, but they also show how those who have joined already will be great heroes remembered for generations to come. They were attempting to show the most romanticized and fantastical storyline possible without taking away from the severity of the conflict itself.

They promote ideas of masculinity and present one joining the war effort as reassurance of their manhood. As seen in the "Artillery heroes at the Front say..." poster, it uses the term "man's uniform" as if to say those who do not don this uniform are not truly men if they are able-bodied but not willing. The same could be said of the "It's your duty, lad" poster. Race is usually showcased through these posters in a way that they hoped would attract men of those particular groups to enlist. As seen in the Irish Canadian Rangers poster, green is the only color. It also plays on masculinity as the one soldier who is jumping into line is dressed and appears younger and more 'boy-like'; whereas all the soldiers in line are drawn to look stoic and battle-ready. It is suggesting the transformation from boy to man by joining the fight.

All the men are drawn looking as heroic and enthusiastic as possible. Many of the poster pose a question instead of making a demand to the viewer. Such as using "Will you join" so and so regiment or "Are you going to let them fight alone?". These messages were used in order to garner a stronger reaction out of the young men they targeted, as one would likely see they questions and then ask them of themselves. Or at least feel they were doing a disservice to their nation and manliness by not taking up arms as well.

Words to live by.

Singing a dirty version of a well-known song would definitely help keep the laughs going through the long days and nights; as it has with me and my friends.

If you have never faced down machine guns and enemy shellfire and watching people torn to pieces or a bloody mist would definitely set you apart mentally from the rest of society. How can onw put in words the fear that many of these soldiers faced? As virtually none of us will ever be in such a harrowing situation ourselves.

Even in the depths of the greatest conflict in history up until that point, it still matters who you know almost more than what you do in some cases.

It is understandable that many Canadians (and especially French Canadians) may have felt somewhat disconnected from the conflict. As those young enough to fight were likely born in Canada and would have maybe felt less loyalty to the British Crown and the war they were now involved in. Secondly, the idea that the war would quickly end was a fairytale that was quickly dispelled as the war carried on into late 1915 and 1916. It is understandable that the flow of volunteers would not last long once word of how hard the fighting was flowed back to Canada.

The words that stand out most for me are "men", "man", and "wages". The labour market at this time was certainly a 'man' world' and thus many of the responses have to do with men. Wages being mentioned as often as they were is sensical when discussing working conditions, but it is clear that workers had much to say in regards to either good pay or bad pay they were receiving. As one would assume, those with the most experience in their field, and likely the highest pay, often complained of their wages the least.

If I were to sum how the women spoke of their fellow workers, it would be that they were very critical of those who try to enter the industry with little to no experience. The complaint that seemed most common was that girls do not learn the trade well enough to work independently. It also feels as though the women are more critical of other women in the workplace than the men.

The work of men was often presented as arduous, whereas the work of women was often seen as an extension of the work they would be expected to carry out at home; for instance, seamstresses. One interviewee makes it seem as though women are more reluctant to work long hours when compared to men. It is clear that both genders are not regarded with the same amount of respect in the labour force.

I feel that the interviewees may have been more open to the questions they were being asked if they were interviewed by one person as opposed to multiple. Having more people to answer to could have made some more reluctant to state more controversial opinions during their responses.

Some of the questions posed by the interviewers seemed to be trying to garner a particular response or were intended to pry deeper than they may have appeared to the interviewee. Such as when the anonymous interviewee discussing unions is asked whether they antagonize the relations between employer and employee ("It is claimed by some people that workmen’s organizations antagonize the interest of employers and I want to know if it has in your trade?"). It is hard to say that the commissioner was opposed to unions, but them asking the interviewee again whether he thinks they beneficial seems to suggest they were hoping he would have something negative to say of them.

One of the anonymous interviewees discusses unions and the benefits of laborers being a part of a union. It is fair to say that this person was fearful that their employer or future employers would find out about their comments.

I felt that the interviews could have delved deeper into the actual work itself. I found that many detailed wages, hours, and employment opportunities, but were lacking on the minutiae of the jobs themselves.

For the era the work seems relatively normal. 9-10 hour workdays. Though it seemed that experienced workers were the ones who had reliable employment while those who were less experienced were often in temporary positions/perpetually seeking employment.

For some industries, the effects of their work being seasonal meant that they were at risk for being unable to provide for themselves nearly every year.

Seeing "good" as large as it is would give on the idea that many workers were pleased with their work an pay. Though we can also notice the word "better", which would imply many were suggested that things could be better.

Many children did not complete their education. Many were forced to work by their parents as school does not pay the bills while you are attending it. His job, while not a dangerous occupation, it is quite jarring for us today to see a child start work at his age (12 or so). It being in the tobacco industry would have been nothing alarming at the time, as children that age were often smoking (even today children start this habit at such a young age).

Longer than many employers offer now.

A logical conclusion for one to come to, but it is clear the interviewer is concerned with alcohol consumption that could come with men being paid on their one day off before the lord's day.

Maybe they did not want to give their group too much formality by calling it a union, but my impression is that they did not want any of the negative connotations that came with being a union.

This shows at least attempts to communicate between employers and employees, and as the person notes, these discussions were friendly to their recollection. Though them not being present does not weight in favor of this being entirely accurate.

It is positive to see a wage raise, as some employers of this time were very reluctant to raise wages at all. Though a 12.5% increase over 15 years is relatively small.

While these types of governmental sources give us a good idea of the conditions and what workers faced, but any such study can never avoid abstracting the situation they are assessing. Those interviewed give use a valuable resource to reflect on, but there are obviously voices that were not heard in this inquiry.

Riel's main defense from the insanity allegations was that if was so insane, he would not know it regardless. He tries to assert that his mission to him was sane, and that was what mattered most.

While the devotion to God that Riel expressed was not uncommon in this era, for him to bring it up in his testimony this much it does make one wonder how cognitively sound he was. As noted by Professor John Sandlos, during the rebellion's most heated moments Riel was wandering around with bible in hand reciting hymns. I also feel that his mentions of God were his way of persuading the jury to view his actions as the will of God and not the acts of a traitor to the nation.

Riel did not want to appear to the public as insane as it clear he did not want to tarnish the message, which he and the Metis who were part of the rebellion, were attempting to get across. A valiant effort for someone who is fully committed to their cause, but it was also the nails in his coffin. There was a good chance Riel would have lived out the rest of his natural life if he had come out as insane, but little chance he would get out of the death penalty if he chose not to. Eastern Canada was fed up with Riel and his execution was their way of creating one less problem from themselves in their endeavors to expand west.

I think that this is not a point that has to be argued. One merely has to look at how much it made yearly by mining companies alone, besides all of the 'renewable' resources like the fisheries of the Atlantic.

Still today, the nation of Canada relies heavily upon the extraction of non-renewable resources as a massive part of its economy. For some parts of the nation (Alberta and Newfoundland), it is among the most lucrative industries one can involve themselves in. We have not move away from using natural resources that we cannot replace as a crucial part of our foundation.

This is a notable difference that can be found between Canada and the US in the mid-late 1800s and early 1900s. The US had started to establish national parks and nature conservations. While if compared to the nature conservation of today, those of the early US would look quite crude and lacking in many ways, at least there were governmental efforts seemingly interesting in protecting some aspects of nature. Canada for many years after Confederation would focus itself more on resource extraction and less on placing areas aside for protection. There was a more clear cut financial motive behind the creation of national parks in Canada, such as Banff. Which became a massive tourist destination and source of income for those involved.

The 1866 Fenian Raids would only come to agitate and expound on this fear that was held leading up to Confederation. While it is quite clear that Canada's economy and societies would have not been as advanced as they were by the mid-1860s without their mostly friendly relations with the US, much had occurred in the decade to cause concern. The end of the Civil War, a conflict in which Britain aligned itself with the Confederate South, it was understandable why some worried that the North would revolt against the British territory that Canada was.

It is clear that this state of geographic isolation has long plagued Canada and for centuries in many respects it led to Canada staying closely tied to Britain and heavily dependent on the US. While we possess some of the world's greatest natural wonders and resource deposits; much of the nation is arduous to settle in. The further north one goes, the more cold weather and less food they are likely to find. It could be said that the effects of this are still being felt today, especially in the northern regions of our nation.