Collection search - Walks, John - Interview

Record information – Brief

1

Walks, John - Interview

Item number (ISN):

379053

Series title:

[The Great War and Canadian Society]

Hierarchical level:

Item (Accession level)

Date:

1974-07-29 ?

Item number (ISN):

379053

Type of material:

Sound recordings

Found in:

Archives / Film, Video and Sound

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Record information – Details

Fonds/collection:

THE GREAT WAR AND CANADIAN SOCIETY PROJECT

Accession:

1975-0098

Media:

Sound

Part:

2 of 2

Production date:

1974-07-29 ?

Production company:

Opportunities for Youth

Production credit:

interviewer, Lori Rotenberg

Description:

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Interview of John Walks of Toronto, age 77, who was born in 1897 in Paisley, Bruce County. He talks about: his family background; his parents; his siblings; the family farm in Bruce County; the local school; trouble between the Roman Catholics and the Orange Lodge; farm chores; the 4-H club; how the members of the farm community helped one another to build barns and do other work; the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Paisley; temperance; bars in Paisley; the lack of money to buy liquor; Prohibition; doctors issuing prescriptions for alcohol; changes brought about in Canada in 1914 when the First World War began; patriotism among the mostly British population in Canada; people joining the militia; formation of local battalions in 1915; training for officers; the war effort in Bruce County; the sense that the war was far away; the slow realization by rural areas that the war was on; daily rural mail delivery and telephone service; newspapers his family read; politics and voting; midwives and doctors; wells and outdoor toilets; the intensification of recruiting at the end of 1915; his joining the army; training in England; routine tasks such as rifle cleaning; living conditions in the military camps; the relationship of soldiers to the officers; military discipline; the machine gun corps; adjusting to life in the army; training in the use of machine guns, Lewis guns and hand grenades; how farm boys adjusted easily because they were used to taking orders, especially from their fathers, and were used to outdoor life; conscription; exemptions from conscription by some farm boys; the alienation of Quebec due to conscription; Sam Hughes’ request for officers who spoke English; boys getting exempted from conscription if they voted Conservative; people who did not want their sons to be conscripted because they needed them to help them run their businesses; the shortage of farm labour during the war; efforts to recruit young men who worked on farms; competition among battalions to get recruits by using gimmicks such as a sportsmen’s battalion and a non-alcoholic battalion; his decision to enlist because other people were doing it, he was at loose ends and it was something to do; his mother being upset when he enlisted; his father’s pride when he enlisted; attitudes in the army about conscripts; going on leave to Edinborough; prevalence of venereal disease among the soldiers; alcohol use among soldiers; going to English villages to drink; the opening of wet canteens for the soldiers so that their behaviour could be monitored; the wet canteen and the dry canteen in camp; how the canteen run by the Salvation Army was better than the canteen run by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA); efforts to keep disease under control; regular inspections for venereal disease; soldiers and prostitutes; prostitution in France; punishment of soldiers; meeting people from all ranks of life when he was in the army; life in Whitley Camp where a fight broke out among the troops; little dissension among the ranks; religious tolerance among the troops; how being in the army gave him greater insight on Canada because he met people from all parts of Canada; his adjustment to civilian life after the war and how he was lonely for the first 3 months in Toronto because he was used to being around a lot of people; the Armistice; sending the troops back home after the war; bottlenecks because there were not enough troop trains in Canada; getting an allowance to get back to your home in Canada; riots in England by soldiers; attitudes about the Germans; getting letters from home while he was overseas; getting money to buy new clothes when he got home after the war; soldiers getting their old jobs back in most cases; the generosity of Eaton’s, which paid employees who were serving in the military on half-salary during the war; his decision to study science at university in a special course for veterans; and the start of Khaki colleges in England.~He also talks about: veterans going back to jobs in factories and on farms; his decision to go back to school because he did not know what else to do; and postwar life in Canada; working on the railways while he was going to university; going to work on railways in northern Ontario after he graduated from university in 1923; pressure from the university to repay his loan; going to work as an engineer for Brazilian Traction in Brazil for 30 years (from 1925 to 1955), working on the street railway system in Brazil; the poor working conditions on the railways in northern Ontario; the lack of maintenance on railways in Canada during the war; replacing railway bridges; railway work gangs made up mostly of immigrants from Russia, Ukrainians, Poles and Germans; their wages; boarding cars equipped with some beds and mattresses to accommodate workers; his not talking much about the war to his family after he came back; reports in Canada about the war; Sir Arthur Currie and his efforts to keep the Canadian army together; praise for other officers such as Andrew MacNaughton, Morrison and Raymond Brutinel; the Canadians as more advanced in machine gun combat than the British; his realization that when he did return from the war and talk to his family about his wartime experiences, they did not understand; veterans talking about the war among themselves; a woman being aghast when she heard him say that he slept in a cow stable one night, lucky to have a roof over his head; his not joining the Canadian Legion when he was in Canada but joining the British Legion while he was in Brazil; the effect of the war on Canadian unity; Canada coming out of the war a different country; the realization by the average Canadian soldier that at Vimy Ridge Canada had grown up, and had come out of the war as a nation; how Canada had a colonial attitude in 1914 but not by 1918; the kindness of the British people to the Canadian soldiers during the war; meeting people from all over the British Empire during the war; the treatment of British immigrants to Canada before the war; problems with British immigrants because of negative attitudes to children sent from Dr. Barnardo’s Homes and arrogant attitudes by other immigrants who treated Canadians as colonials; veterans coming back with greater respect for British people because of how well they were treated in England during the war; the Great War Veterans’ Association; various veterans’ organizations formed after the war; his not joining any veterans’ associations in Canada and not wanting to separate himself from civilian life; a munitions factory in Bruce County; munitions factory workers; the formation of the Canadian Forestry Corps and how its members were better treated than soldiers in France; his parents’ retirement from farming and how anxiety over the war aged his mother; the church as a social centre in the rural community; how the prosperity of the war years did not reach much into the rural areas; installing electric lights on the farm as the biggest change that occurred in rural life; the economic boom of the period 1925 to 1927, when people were investing in the stock market; urban prosperity and the increase in home ownership; back to comments about life in the army, where he adjusted to discipline because he was used to it in his family as one of the younger members; and the importance of army discipline.

Language:

English

Notes:

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1. The interviews took place in 1974 and resulted in the publication of a book entitled "The Great War and Canadian Society" edited by Daphne Read - copyright 1978 - New Hogtown Press, Toronto.~2. Release forms, data sheets, and summary analysis/transcripts are available in binders labelled Opportunities for Youth - War and Canadian Society in VSA's audio-visual section.~3. Finding aid misspells the date of recording as 1974-07-39.~4. Part of a series of recorded interviews with elderly citizens who lived in Canada during the period of World War I. The interview material consists of their opinions and observations about the war, the war years, and the effect on Canadian society during and after WWI.~5. The interviewee signed an agreement giving consent for a recording of this interview to be placed in the Public Archives of Canada for the purposes of historical research and also signed a publication agreement allowing any transcribed portions of the interview to be used in the book under the condition that no full names, addresses or phone numbers would be published.~6. Subject description is based on information found in the fact sheet, deposit agreement, publication agreement and summary analysis.
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Conditions of access:

Open

Consultation copy number:

A1 2007-06-0012
A1 2007-06-0013
A1 2007-06-0014

Restrictions on consultation:

No Restrictions / Pas de restrictions

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With written permission of Copyright Owner / Avec la permission écrite du détenteur des droits d'auteur

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Date modified:: 2024-07-04