Conservative. He took issue with almost anything said by a timid or fervent Liberal. Father’s position on the war could not be explained on this basis, however, given the proposed formation of a union government between the ruling Conservatives and the opposition Liberals. On the subject of war, there was, at least in the early days, no dissonance between the positions of the two parties.
A second explanation for Father’s contrarian nature, though it was not as obvious to me as a child, was my Father’s conscious or subconscious need to take positions that varied from the consensus view of our town’s “establishment.” It was, I came to understand, his way of showing that he was not actually inferior to its rarefied members, something he was truly afraid of being; that he had a superior intellect, something he was not actually confident he had. This too did not account for Father’s position on the war, for though he was not afraid of taking contrarian positions, this did not extend to being seen as treasonous or in any way unpatriotic.
The final reason for his often-contrary positions was his concern for our family economy. Though Father had for most of his career been a successful dentist, the method by which his patients paid for his services (sometimes with cash, often with goods or services in lieu, and sometimes not at all) meant that our family had to be careful with its funds. His significant loss of income for much of 1913 and early 1914 when his business was being boycotted meant that he had to be particularly careful. The amounts he and Mother had put aside for a rainy day were entirely depleted during that period that we ironically referred to as the “drought.”
Thus, Father was unlikely to support any public policy that would require a larger outlay of funds on taxes. For that reason, he had years earlier opposed the purchase by the taxpayers of the local electricity supplier. It was for that reason that he still opposed plans to divert the Etobicoke Creek out of the downtown area, even though that watercourse, which ran along the main street of our town, caused at times hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. It was his stated reason as well for opposing the war.
“It’s going to cost us millions of dollars,” Father said that night at Aunt Rose’s dining room table, shortly after we began our end of day meal, something we then called “tea.” After swallowing a large mouthful of mutton, he expounded on his view. “Millions! Colonel Sam said last Saturday that Canada is getting ready to ship twenty thousand men overseas—and that we will send five times that if required. Twenty thousand.” Colonel Sam Hughes was Canada’s Minister of the Militia and Defence. He was known affectionately by most Canadians as “Colonel Sam.”
“Do you know how much it’s going to cost to transport, shelter, feed, and equip those men?” Father asked. “That’s before counting the amount we will have to pay them and their family members in benefits. And what if another twenty, thirty, or fifty thousand follow them? Our population is not even eight million. Can you imagine how much each taxpayer is going to have to pay to foot that bill? We can’t afford it.”
Mother, who sat kitty-corner to Father, nodded in agreement as he spoke. As was the case with most matters at this time, Mother’s views on the war echoed Father’s. Though Father liked to take contrarian views, he liked it best when others, having heard those views, came to share them, either because, in the case of his wife and children, they should, or in the case of all others, because he had persuaded them to do so. Father was rarely disappointed by Mother, who always agreed with him, or at least appeared to. When it came to his reticence about the war, Mother adopted a similar stance.
“I disagree,” my Uncle William said, putting down his knife and fork. Father and Uncle William rarely agreed on anything political, my Uncle William being both a Liberal (he had previously sought election as a Liberal Member of Parliament for our area) and, though no longer a resident of Brampton, still a member of its establishment. Uncle William was a former mayor of our town, a position previously held by both of Father’s brothers-in-law, but despite Father’s ambitions, never a position held by him. Uncle William resigned as mayor of Brampton in 1907 in order to take an executive position with the Maple Leaf Milling Company in Winnipeg—an act that displayed so little confidence in the future of our town that Father never truly forgave him.
“We’re already paying most of those costs,” Uncle William said. “Colonel Sam is going to send men to England that we’ve already trained and equipped.” Uncle William was referring to Canada’s volunteer militia and our small standing army.
“You know that won’t be enough,” Father responded. “Colonel Sam has promised twenty thousand men. Our force is not that large. Even those that are equipped and trained will need more equipment and more training. They will need transportation and lodging, and we will have to pay them a wage. The British parliament approved $525 million today as an emergency fund for its war costs. Canada won’t get away with spending less than $50 million. And we will spend even more if we increase the number of our troops beyond twenty thousand.”
“Well, I doubt we will need more men than that,” Uncle William replied. “Dublin has committed to sending a hundred thousand Irish soldiers. Add that to Britain’s own and those from France, and that will be more than enough for a short war. This war is going to be over before Thanksgiving.”
My Aunt Rose disagreed with both men. The youngest of Father’s sisters, she was attractive, with thick light brown hair wound loosely at the top of her head. Never lacking in confidence or determination, she had acquired further measures of both in the four years that she had been a widow. She sat at the end of the table closest to the kitchen, opposite to Father. Though Aunt Rose never let her brother assume a role as head of her household, she had during her widowhood allowed him to sit in a location at the dining room table commensurate with that position.
“Jethro,” she said, first addressing Father, “we can’t escape our responsibilities to Britain. When it comes to foreign affairs, we are Great Britain. Once Parliament is recalled later this month and the new union government convenes, they will make that very clear. And the cost? Yes, it will cost us financially—not so much as you fear, Jethro, but more than you will allow, William. Surely, no one is saying that this war will be over by Thanksgiving, William. Christmas. That is what they are saying. Christmas.”
“It’s true, William,” said his wife, Charlotte. “Christmas is what they are saying.” It was an amazingly short number of words to be uttered on a subject about which I knew she felt strongly. Over the past month, Aunt Charlotte had let it be known on a number of occasions that she firmly supported the position of Great Britain and that Canada should be prepared to support the mother country in its time of need, no matter the cost.
As for the young people at the table, we fell into two categories: those who enthusiastically supported the war and wanted to immediately enlist, and those who supported the war but had no intention of enlisting. The first group included my Turner cousins, Roy and Bill, and my other male cousin, John Darling.
“Father,” Bill said, “please don’t say that the war will be over by Thanksgiving or even Christmas, Aunt Rose. You know I can’t enlist until next spring. Unless…” He turned to his Father “…unless you will allow me to seek a deferral of my law studies for a year?” Bill was then twenty years old. His tuition for the coming school year had already been paid. Aunt Charlotte and Uncle William repeated what was obviously a mantra, that Bill had to complete the first year of his studies before he could enlist.
“Uncle William,” John said, “please don’t say that the war will be over by Thanksgiving or even Christmas, Mother. You know I can’t enlist for another year. Unless…” He turned to his Mother. “Unless you will allow me to enlist, though I am only seventeen?”
Aunt Rose laughed lovingly at her son. “John Darling, there are not too many things you can be sure of in this life, but there are two things I think we can be quite confident of: one, I will not be consenting to a minor child going to war;
