This study examines men who volunteered for active service during the Great War but were rejected as "unfit." In doing so, it explores the following issues: (1) the mechanisms by which the Canadian military adjudged an individual unfit to serve; (2) the difficulties faced by medical authorities when attempting to adjudge an individual's suitability for service; (3) how the military's construction of what characterised (un)fitness for service evolved during the Great War and what caused this evolution; (4) the clashing concepts of military fitness held by the Canadian military authorities, Canadian medical professionals, and lay people; (5) the implications of being labelled unfit for rejected volunteers and how these men reacted to being so labelled; and (6) how some individuals used claims of medical unfitness as a means to resist enlistment pressures or counter family members' attempts to enlist.
This exploration highlights a group of individuals who have been overlooked in Canada's Great War historiography: rejected volunteers. It offers a new vantage point from which Great War historians might survey and reconceptualise a number of ongoing areas of research which include, but are not limited to, recruiting; manpower mobilisation; the growth of the post-war veterans' rights movement; civil-military and periphery-centre relations; agency and resistance; and how the war impacted on, and was understood by, Canada's civilian population. Furthermore, it examines the factors that informed early-twentieth-century Canadians' perceptions of disability, and, more broadly, what constituted disability.
This study is founded on a research infrastructure of three interrelated databases. These databases contain information drawn from the attestation papers, service files, and, in some cases, personal correspondence, of 3,400 rejected volunteers. 3,050 of these men were rejected at Valcartier Camp in August-September, 1914, and represent 60 per cent of the total number of men---5,081---rejected at Valcartier during the formation of the First Contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The remaining 350 individuals were discharged as medically unfit to serve in England in 1916. The information contained in these databases enabled the description of physical and social characteristics of these men, as well as a close analyse of their reasons for rejection. In addition, they also allowed the tracing of multiple enlistment attempts; the examination of individual medical examiners' views regarding certain impairments; and the creation of personal histories---some extending well beyond 1918---for a number of these individuals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/29920 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Clarke, Nicholas (Nic) J |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 368 p. |
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