A Popular History of The Great War/Volume 1/Page 91


CANADIAN LIBERALITY


came from England that there was likely to be distress among the poor in the Motherland, it sent over a gift of 1,000,000 bags of flour of 98 pounds each.

A great outburst of public and private generosity was witnessed. Provinces, cities, banks, business organizations, and individuals vied with each other in the extent of their gifts for the empire. Less than eight weeks after war was declared a list was drawn up of what had been offered and given. Among the provinces, Alberta gave half a million bushels of oats to England, and her civil servants set apart five per cent. of their salaries up to £300 a year, and ten per cent. beyond that, for the Patriotic Fund. British Columbia gave 25,000 cases of tinned salmon, Manitoba 50,000 bags of flour, New Brunswick 100,000 bushels of potatoes, Nova Scotia offered 100,000 tons of coal (afterwards changed to £20,000 in cash), Ontario 250,000 bags of flour, Prince Edward Island 100,000 bushels of oats, also cheese and hay, Quebec 4,000,000 pounds of cheese, and Saskatchewan 1,500 horses. Then the cities made their presents: Montreal, 30,000 to the Patriotic Fund and a battery of quick-firing guns; Ottawa, £10,000 to the Patriotic Fund and £60,000 for a machine gun section; Toronto, £10,000 and other gifts. Calgary sent 1,000 men for the Legion of Frontiersmen. These were typical cases.

"At the same time the women of Canada were building, equipping, and maintaining a women's hospital of a hundred beds to supplement the British naval hospital at Haslar, near Portsmouth. In less than three weeks they raised close on £60,000, partly as presents to the War Office for hospital purposes, and partly for their own hospital. The Canadian Red Cross raised vast sums. The individual gifts of many rich Canadians were on a princely scale. Thus, Mr. J. K. L. Ross, of Montreal, presented £100,000 to the Patriotic Fund, paid the cost of carrying the 5th Royal Highlanders to England, and gave a steam yacht. Mr. Hamilton Gault, another millionaire, raised and equipped at his own cost a regiment — Princess Patricia's Light Infantry — soon to win wide fame. Crowds of rich men came together and raised hundreds of thousands of dollar's to purchase machine guns and armoured motor cars. The Canadian Pacific Railway gave £20,000, and the men on the line gave another £20,000, in addition to promising one day's pay monthly during the war.

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