the gas, and defeated the Germans, earning themselves a victory at Ypres, their first successful takeover during the war.Casualties in the battles of World War One were very high. Before long, there were no longer enough volunteers to replace those killed or wounded in battle. The government decided that conscription would be needed. This led to a split between Anglophone and Francophone Canadians. Many Quebeckers opposed any Canadian participation in the war. They saw the war as a British affair that had nothing to do with Canadian interests. In Quebec, there was organized opposition to conscription, which at times led to violence. Many English-speaking Canadians viewed such opposition as unpatriotic.Francophones weren’t the only ones opposed to conscription. In Ontario and Manitoba, farmers opposed the conscription of their sons as the argued that the war effort would suffer worse if there were no young men to help with the harvests. Other people refused to fight because of their religious beliefs. Those people were known as conscientious objectors. Though it was legal for these people to avoid military service, they were often insulted by other citizens and called cowards. This was the beginning to the hard feelings between English Canadians, and French Canadians.Back on the home front, the war was responsible for a booming growth in the economy. Many new factories were opened, and existing factories switched their production to war goods. Agricultural production increased greatly as Canada sent food to Europe. The war was very expensive, as it cost Canada nearly 3 billion dollars. The debt caused by the war totaled almost 150 million per year. Canadians helped to pay for this by buying war bonds, and when this was not enough, the government introduced the first income tax in Canada. Women were also very important in the war, they not only took over jobs of the men who had enlisted in the armed forced, but th...
