A survey of the first groups of returned disabled men, moreover, revealed that most of them were able to return to their former occupations.
The difficulty was not one of numbers; it related to the individual. From the point of view of its complexity, the success of the project of providing vocational reeducation for new occupations was dependent on the disabled men's response to the service proffered. Their immediate need was interesting occupation, as far as medical requirements allowed, while undergoing convalescent treatment in a hospital. A wide range of opportunities for occupational work developed during this hospital period, and its value to the patient was manifold. From the therapeutic standpoint alone, any kind of occupation was serviceable to the mind and body. It was also disciplinary in that it protected disabled men from moral and social deterioration—a danger always present during long periods of idleness—and it was of additional value to the institution itself as a check on the tendency to spoil returned men by overattention, active and interesting pursuits having been found to be the best antidote to such an inclination.
The field of diversions was wide; a patient could easily absorb himself in some task to the extent of his energies. The hospitals provided classrooms for general educational work; commercial training workshops for arts and crafts; a variety of mechanical and other occupations, outdoor work in gardening and poultry-keeping.
A number of men who started training courses in new callings did not continue them. Some were ambitious men whom the new training had readily stabilized for civil life and who had found positions before completing their courses. Others were released during the summer months for intensive farming to meet the urgent demand for greater food production. The clerical work of the military department also absorbed a large number, interrupting the pursuit of their commercial studies. A recurrence of their malady invalidated others and necessitated hospital attention, and beyond these were a proportion of unstable men of restless temperament who could not readily resume civilian occupation.
Over and above these were disabled men here and there who displayed an unwillingness to study for new callings, fearing that overcoming their handicap would mean a curtailment of pension by increasing their earning power. Injured French and German soldiers had revealed a similar indisposition to undergo vocational retraining lest their pensions be withdrawn. The Canadian Government took an indulgent view of this feeling and adopted a new army regulation providing that no deductions should be made from the amount of pension awarded owing to a pensioner undertaking work or qualifying himself in a new industry. As already indicated, a man was pensioned because of his disability in the open labor market, and was not determined by his earning capacity. As it worked out, his earning power in many cases was greatly improved by his vocational reeducation—to his own advantage, but even more so to the advantage of his country.
The Canadian Government was early in the field in taking steps for the rehabilitation of the disabled, having provided working solutions to the problem long before the Interallied Conference considered the subject in 1918. The task grew beyond the scope of the Military Hospitals Commission, and a permanent ministry was found necessary. Especially as the work, following demobilization, also embraced caring for the undisabled discharged soldier in search of opportunity for reemployment. Free employment offices were opened in every center from the Atlantic to the Pacific and thither thousands of requests came from ex-soldiers for information as to channels open for obtaining positions. The result was some 200,000 or more interviews, and the reinstating of nearly 35,000 men up to September, 1919, out of 53,000 applicants. This scheme of reestablishing uninjured men in civil occupation following their demobilization had its beginning in a questionnaire sent to all Canadian troops abroad, asking them to state their intentions regarding employment on their return to Canada. The questionnaires were distributed from Ypres to the Vosges Mountains, from the Rhine to the English Channel, and throughout England and Scotland. Within two weeks of the signing of the Armistice a complete survey of the employment situation was obtained and transmitted to Government agencies in charge of the dispersal areas in Canada.
It was all part of a publicity campaign for enlightening the troops as to what the Government was prepared to do for them to facilitate their reinstatement in civil life. Lectures were delivered to them in camp, thousands of specially prepared pamphlets were distributed among them, while the Government's plans were otherwise made known through advertisements in newspapers and periodicals which circulated among the troops, as well as by means of moving pictures. Government representatives also accompanied men on homeward transports and dispensed information regarding the outlook for employment in the field that appealed to them.
With the help of the Labor Department the free employment offices were established in eighty-nine cities and towns. Each office had a special representative of the Information and Service Branch of the Department of Soldiers' Civil Reestablishment, who was at the service of all demobilized soldiers seeking employment. He "connected the wires," opening up communications with employers of labor and inducing them to favor ex-soldiers in filling vacancies on their staffs. Once in employment, the demobilized soldier was not lost sight of. The department kept in touch with him, in order to be assured that every man had been satisfactorily reestablished in civil life. The governing element behind these endeavors to restore every ex-soldier to the place where he belonged as a civilian was to make him again a producing power in the national life of the Dominion. Success could not have been achieved without public cooperation.
Another function of the department was the tendering of free medical service. All ex-soldiers who fell ill from any cause, within a year after their discharge from the army, received free treatment. Any recurrence of illness arising from war injuries entitled ex-soldiers to the same aid. Maimed men needed artificial limbs; they got them free. The disabled, returning from the front, required further treatment; the Government hospitals gave it. There were tubercular and insane patients; many medical and surgical cases of other categories; while other patient were treated in clinics. Patients under treatment in hospitals for disabilities due to war service always received adequate pay and allowances for their dependents.
The postwar calls on the medical service of the department were very great. In June, 1918, the number of military patients numbered only 1,200. By September it had reached over 10,000.