Historians have rightly considered the period from 1914 to 1939 as the time when Canadian Indigenous soldiers and veterans of the First World War faced unique challenges because of their legal status as Indians. But their acceptance of the idea that Indigenous veterans were victims of discrimination has led them to overlook the unique nature of these Indigenous peoples identities as Indians and veterans. The prevailing assumption is that Indigenous veterans were not an influential group politically, socially, or culturally and Indigenous veterans political awakening occurred only in the mid-1940s.

This study contends that Indigenous veterans relationship with the state in the interwar period was more complicated than previously thought. Their war service created a fundamentally different and important legal relationship with the state from other soldiers or Indigenous peoples. Military service suspended soldiers Indian status temporarily, and this experience created a new set of expectations for Indigenous men upon their return home. As veterans, they expected material benefit and recognition for their sacrifices, and support for killed or wounded soldiers and their families. These expectations did not fit with government officials understanding that Indigenous men returning from the war would re-integrate into their communities as Indians and wards of the state. 

The dissertation offers an overview of Indigenous war service in the context of debates over status and citizenship, and then sketches how these debates informed developments in soldiers demobilization, re-establishment, re-integration, and restoration. Through the examination of Indigenous soldiers service records, pension and Soldier Settlement case files, and government records, this work argues that Indigenous soldiers and veterans experience from 1914 through 1939 should not be seen primarily as victims of the state, but rather as a group whose complicated identity of Indian and veteran, and as citizens, began to coalesce.

'A Flag that Knows No Colour Line': Aboriginal Veteranship in Canada, 1914-1939

This thesis focuses on the Merchant Navy’s redress campaign and appraises shifting government attitudes towards the mariners in veterans’ legislation. It traces the wartime experience of the mariners and discusses their postwar treatment. By examining the factors that contributed to the mariners’ initial exclusion as veterans, this study sheds light on the complex process whereby the state evaluates and then reassesses what is owed to those who serve. It demonstrates that concepts of “veteranhood” are fluid, and, that in the case of the Merchant Navy, once neglected wartime narratives can be reincorporated into the nation’s military past. In the case of the Merchant Navy, renewed public engagement with Canada’s social memory of its involvement in two world wars helped the merchant seamen find an audience willing to validate their claims. This study of Merchant Navy redress serves as an exploration into the nature of the state-veteran relationship.

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"The Kiss of Death Bestowed with Gratitude": The Postwar Treatment of Canada's Second World War Merchant Navy, Redress, and the Negotiation of Veteran Identity

Ex-combatant political engagement in post-conflict Côte d’Ivoire

Problematizing Solutions: A Case Study of Claims about Campus Safety in an Era of ‘School Violence’

More than a million Canadians enlisted during the Second World War, and soon after September 1939 Ottawa was confronted with the first members of a new generation of veterans. A cabinet committee on demobilisation and rehabilitation was formed in December 1939 and, on 1 October 1941, 'The Post-Discharge Re-establishment Order' (PC 7633) was issued. This provided out-of-work and training benefits and extended the country's new unemployment insurance scheme to those who served. The principal architects of PC 7633, though veterans of the Great War, rejected the approach to demobilisation favoured by the Canadian Legion, which wanted those for whom work was not available kept in uniform, on the government payroll, until jobs could be found for them. PC 7633 gave the government the high ground in the evolving wartime debate over veterans' affairs and laid the foundation for the set of benefits known from 1945 as the Veterans Charter.

'A Great Stride Forward': The Post-Discharge Re-establishment Order (PC 7633) of 1 October 1941

The programme of benefits created in Canada for veterans of the Great War made a clear distinction between pensionable and non-pensionable ex-servicemen. In 1930, the discretionary War Veterans' Allowance was introduced. This was payable (subject to various eligibility criteria) to those, pensioners and non-pensioners alike, who were no longer employable. As the Great Depression of the 1930s deepened, the Canadian Legion, the country's largest veterans organisation, demanded further assistance. In response, in March 1935 the government appointed a committee of inquiry headed by Justice J.D. Hyndman. Based on its recommendations, the Veterans' Assistance Commission was established in 1936. But its recommendation that a national programme of assistance be provided for all out-of-work veterans with overseas service was refused by Ottawa. A limit was set on veterans' benefits in the 1930s that was acknowledged in the Veterans Charter, Canada's programme for those who served in the Second World War.

Peter Neary

Papers

'Without the Stigma of Pauperism': Canadian Veterans in the 1930s

'A Great Stride Forward': The Post-Discharge Re-establishment Order (PC 7633) of 1 October 1941