The First World War and the Canadian Economy

The crisis of the First World War necessitated radical state intervention in the Canadian economy [see The Wartime Economy]. In 1915 the British government appointed Ontario businessman and philanthropist Joseph Wesley FLAVELLE chair of the Imperial Munitions Board (IMB), established to control all British wartime contracts in Canada:

“The IMB served as the umbrella agency that organized and supervised the greatest industrial effort Canada had ever seen.… By 1917 more than 600 Canadian factories, employing more than 250,000 workers, were producing almost 100,000 shells a day. Canada that year supplied between a quarter and a third of all the ammunition used by the British artillery in France and more than half the shrapnel. The demand evolved from orders for steel shells to contracts for other components, complete rounds of ammunition, and eventually the supply of airplanes and ships. By the war’s end, the IMB and its predecessor had spent $1.25 billion producing 65 million shells, 49 million cartridge cases, 30 million fuses, 35 million primers, 112 million pounds of explosives, 2,900 airplanes, 88 ships, and other assorted supplies.”

To learn more about the wartime economy, please consult the following biographies.