Events

Ottawa's May Court Club is the oldest women's volunteer organization in Canada, established in 1898. During the Second World War, one of the club's meeting was devoted to a talk on the efficient utilization of human resources, through Selective Service.

The First World War was barely six months old when a French doctor embarked on a speaking tour in Canada to describe crimes committed against civilians by German soldiers advancing through France and Belgium.

This concert, which featured something called a Biscuit Tin Solo by Sergeant A.E. Blake, was one of the first events organized in Toronto by the Great War Veterans' Association.

The most famous of Canada's First World War concert parties, the Dumbells were a favourite with military audiences during the war, and civilian audiences after. Their 1918 show featured a sketch called Vimyology, which looked back on the war from the year 2017. Its patron was Major-General Louis Lipsett, who would be killed in action in October 1918.

This booklet, printed on board the ship, would not have been out of place on any peacetime sailing. However, the men and women of the 86th Machine Gun Battalion, the 224th Forestry Battalion, No. 8 Stationary Hospital, and the 4th Division Ammunition Sub-Park were going to war, not on vacation.

In June 1918, the 85th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, held a gala dinner and musical evening while the unit was out of the front lines. The unit would spend most of the rest of the war in action.

The Canadian hospital at Granville, which provided orthopedic treatment to the wounded, remained in operation until September 1919, long after most Canadian soldiers had returned home.

A police unit of the Royal Canadian Air Force celebrated the end of the Second World War in Europe in style - with a dance and buffet.

It was only 1942, but high schools students in Arthur, Ontario, decided to begin their evening's dance program with a Victory Dance.

A Canadian soldier serving in Italy saved this theatre program as a souvenir of a leave spent in Naples, where he saw a production of Puccini's "The Girl of the Golden West" - performed with the permission of Allied military authorities.