Charitable Organizations

This booklet was printed by the Salvation Army for use in wartime church services in Toronto. It includes many songs, both religious and patriotic, as well as prayers and Bible verses.

J.H. Hathaway of the Y.M.C.A. provided assistance on a troop train from Halifax to Toronto following demobilization. The group travelling on troop train No. 8 was so grateful for his service that they sent Hathaway a letter with their signatures, and he also received praise from the Y.M.C.A.

This calendar, produced by the Canadian Red Cross Society, generated  proceeds for the care of "sick and crippled" children in Canada, as well as to help the efforts of the Junior Red Cross War Fund for Children overseas.

During and after the First World War, thousands of British war brides crossed the Atlantic to start new lives in Canada. During the Second World War this phenomenon continued, with thousands more newly-wedded women made the same journey to Canada.

The Canadian Red Cross Society Sarnia branch presented this life membership certificate to Mrs. J.B (Alice) Pardee on 12 March, 1918. Born in 1874, Mrs. Pardee lived to the age of 87, and was buried in 1961 with her husband, Boer War veteran, John Pardee in Sarnia, Ontario.

Volunteers for the Canadian Red Cross Society's branch in Walkerton, Ontario, pose for a group photograph during the First World War. Such volunteer organizations were essential to the war effort, raising millions of dollars for all sorts of supplies. 

This meeting announcement was sent to members of the Winnipeg Women’s Rifle Association in late September 1915. The association was involved in training women in various fields beyond shooting, and in local recruitment drives.

The Brotherhood Continental Relief Fund was used by the Christian Men’s Federation of Canada and the Brotherhood National Council of Great Britain to build homes for those affected most by the conflict in Belgium and France.

If you (unfortunately) became a Canadian prisoner of war during the Second World War, your prisoner's parcel sent by the Canadian Red Cross would have been wrapped in a paper that looked just like this one here. 

This is an in-depth report of the wartime volunteering activities and efforts led by the Red Cross in Nova Scotia in 1940. It is particularly notable for the emphasis on the role of women in assisting with the organization's initiatives, as well as references to children as both volunteers and beneficiaries of the Red Cross.