Besides these collective efforts, there was scarcely a community that did not furnish examples of self-denying generosity by individuals or groups, some of whom could not afford the sacrifice. The shareholders of an Ontario fire insurance company voted its entire dividend of $50,000 to the Patriotic Fund. Near Vancouver an old lighthouse keeper raised flowers and sold them to tourists, raising therefrom nearly $1,000, which he presented to the Fund. Among contributors who found their highest gratification in denying themselves in order to help the Fund were the Gaspe fishermen, lumberjacks from the Quebec bush, cheese makers, road makers, Indians, and an Eskimo. Nearly $12,500 was sent in by Indians on the reserves. From Herschell's Island, within the Arctic Circle came a gift of $20 from the Eskimo Chikchagalook. Canadianized people of German birth and descent were equally liberal.

The "million a month" which the Fund organizers aimed at was approached by voluntary individual generosity like the instances cited and countless others. The nation-wide support given to the Fund constituted a free-will offering of the whole people standing behind its soldiers. It was a people's own movement, close to their hearts, and was successfully conducted without Government control or participation, an achievement in which the Fund's executives took pride, as efforts had been made to bring it under federal supervision.

CHAPTER XXV

REMAKING MEN

By the close of 1919, Canada had 20,000 ex-soldiers—blind or maimed or otherwise disabled—under training in the arts of peace. They were mostly men who labored under such handicaps from the effects of wounds and other ordeals of war that they could not resume their former occupations. The Department of Soldiers' Civil Reestablishment took them in hand after their discharge from hospital treatment and fitted them, by vocational training, for new callings that made them economically independent. Meantime, the men drew pay and allowances from the Government ranging from $60 to $150, according to the number of their dependents. The expenditure on this work of rehabilitating damaged men was regarded as a national investment, as it encouraged the disabled soldier to become a worker and producer.

Every ex-soldier, burdened with a disability to follow the calling he pursued before he joined the colors, became entitled to vocational training, free of charge, in any trade or profession of his own choice in which his disability would not be a handicap. Universities, technical and agricultural schools, and plants of leading manufacturers—where industrial training could be acquired under actual shop conditions—became centers of instruction. Provision was then made for both theoretical and practical knowledge, which was imparted in conjunction. Similar training was also carried on in hospitals and convalescent homes where the condition of the patients permitted.

Vocational training was a new field of Government work, a sort of uncharted sea, and until disabled men began to flow back from the battle front the Canadian Government had little information upon which to build a working policy. But the situation suggested its own solution. The first obvious need was convalescent hospitals, and a chain of such institutions duly appeared from coast to coast. Then the employment bureaus came into being, and the recovering patients, equipped with the vocational reeducation which the Government instituted, made the hospitals sources of supply for the labor market.

What was the status of a disabled man during the stage of convalescence and rehabilitation? He was taken in hand to be refitted for civil life. The Canadian Government therefore decided that he was no longer a soldier, to be supported with his dependents during his period of training on military pay and allowance. He became a discharged man and his maintenance was provided for as a civilian. The Government recognized that the duty of replacing a man in civil life as a useful member of the community was not a military function. To succeed as a civilian he had to be demilitarized, for the reason that while in service a soldier or sailor sank his individuality and lived under orders; his return to civil life required his restoration as an individual subject to the obligation, like other civilians, of making his way by his own initiative. The demilitarization of a disabled ex-service man, who, anyway, had only belonged to the army during the war period, was therefore regarded as an important duty of Government. In undertaking his reeducation, it "staked" him for resuming a civilian pursuit, and in doing so placed him on a footing very different from his previous army status. The course of reeducation given to a disabled man nevertheless remained a reward of valor, but it was also a recognition of the needs of a nation at peace, which required that discharged men should be restored as far as possible to the fullest usefulness as civilians.

Another element in vocational retraining was its formative purpose. A man was not "made over" in the sense of giving him a new occupation. His tuition was not complete enough for that. It rather directed him toward a new field of industry by equipping him with the groundwork, and he had to have the will to succeed and to overcome his handicap if his actual reeducation and replacement in a suitable civilian position was to be accomplished. The way was smoothed for his doing so by the avoidance of any compulsory scheme of reeducation. A man himself "elected" his course, though many disabled men needed guidance to protect them from choosing some line of work by caprice or impulse. In such cases a disabled man's vocational advisers endeavored to direct his choice in the light of all the information that could be drawn from his educational and industrial history. The essential thing kept in mind was that a man's previous education and experience should not be "scrapped" but rather made to form a foundation or background for his new occupation. Hence, a disabled man was trained when practicable for some new branch of his former occupation or for some allied or related occupation.

The problem was not confined to rehabilitating a man lacking a limb or eyesight. The blind, in fact, were few, compared with men suffering from other injuries, while the war cripple for the most part was a sound man in other respects. His physique survived his deficiency of limb; hence he was not broken in health and his condition revealed nothing of the invalid. More than that, only a small proportion of the disabled men invalided home were suffering from the loss of a limb. Out of nearly 30,000 who returned to Canada up to June, 1918, less than 1,500 had undergone a major amputation.