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The following is excerpted from The Chronicle Herald's Looking After Our Veterans Began a Century Ago by Henry Roper.
On to Civvy Street is a comprehensive treatment of an important and timely subject. Twice in the last century Canada had to deal with the problem of re-integrating huge numbers of servicemen and women back into civilian life. Over 600,000 Canadians enlisted between 1914-18 and 1,081,865 served in the armed forces during the Second World War.
Responsibility for demobilization lay with the federal government, which, in Peter Neary’s words "not only led Ottawa into many new activities but in the process transformed constitutional practice."
By the standards of the time, the government acted generously after the First World War. It awarded pensions to the widowed (including those in common law relationships); the wounded received payments related to their level of disability. A new department created in 1918 ran hospitals across the country, but the physically unscathed had limited access to rehabilitation training. Able-bodied veterans were awarded a one-time gratuity, possible preferential consideration for positions in the federal civil service, or assistance in settling on a farm.
However, the policy of one-time payments did little to prepare returning servicemen to hold a job, or to alleviate the labour unrest and economic dislocation that followed the end of the war.
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