Eight Cantleys and one Cantlie
in the First World War

Story by Stephen J. Thorne
Of 619,636 Canadians recruited during the First World War, there were 7,432 Smiths and 148 Smyths, 2,965 McDonalds and 1,646 MacDonalds, 2,342 Johnsons and 1,532 Johnstons. There were 1,797 Stewarts and 294 Stuarts, 1,220 McLeans and 310 MacLeans.

There were just eight Cantleys and one Cantlie. According to their service records posted online by Library and Archives Canada, some were born overseas, yet they hailed from a wide swath of their adopted Canada, enlisting in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Manitoba. From bridge-builder to prospector to railroader, they reflected the core trades and values of a growing, developing country of fewer than eight million people.

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Provisional government declared in Saskatchewan

In the 1880s, the Canadian Prairies were a political powder keg.

Bison herds were gone, land had been signed away in treaties and indigenous peoples were starving. The Métis wanted title to their homesteads and farms, whose boundaries were ignored by government and railway surveyors. After poor harvests in 1883 and 1884, farmers were desperate. Settlers, encouraged to buy land along the rail route expected to run from Winnipeg to Edmonton, felt misled at best, cheated at worst, when the line was built instead to Calgary through Regina, commonly known as Pile of Bones until 1882.

They all felt their pleas for help went unheard in seats of power to the east.

The Métis called on Louis Riel to help. Fifteen years earlier, his successful resistence resulted in The Manitoba Act, which preserved the French language, some land for the Métis, and created the province of Manitoba.

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March 22, 1944

The Canadian Army reaches its greatest strength—495,804,
including 74,391 conscripted men and 15,845 women.

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