His advisors back in Ottawa were urging him to come home because they sensed that the country "was full of strange unrest, and noisy with extraordinary complaints" (Creighton, 1970, p. 158). Economic and social pressures pent up by the war were now being released into society. The example of the Russian Revolution, the brave new worlds and peaceful utopias of wartime oratory and idealism, had bred in many an unquestioning belief that peace would bring a different and far better Canada in which government would do vastly more for them than it had ever done before (Creighton, 1970, p. 158).
In the post-war period, ordinary Canadians wanted an end to privations, unequal sacrifice, and grossly contrasting benefits of prosperity (Creighton, 1970). These demands were loudest amongst the working class. Among the demands being made were those for a right to collective bargaining, improved wages for all Canadians, and an end to the grossest examples of social privilege. Similar demands were being made in the United States, where the ferocity of the opposition made up of the elite made the responses of their counterparts in Canada look quite tame indeed, and in Britain where the budding Labor Party was enjoying some success.
In July of 1917, violence had erupted between the strikers and local police with the result that 23 foreign workers were arrested (Bumsted, 1994). Those immigrant workers from enemy countries were sent to an internment camp at Cochrane, Ontario. The rest were charged in the Winnipeg courts. Despite these repressive measures the workers had won a limited victory, the construction workers union was recognized and working conditions gradually improved.
By the fall of 1918 the industrial situation in Winnipeg had deteriorated again. There had been a brief General Strike during the month of May. Enemy aliens were once again singled out by the business community as the source of unrest.
