Monday marks the 100th anniversary of the day that Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, a conflict that over the following week would mushroom into the First World War.
Since the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo a month before, tensions in Europe had been escalating. Once Austria-Hungary moved against its small neighbour, events cascaded quickly toward a global conflict, with armies mobilizing and countries declaring war to support their allies or defend themselves.
A week later, on Aug. 4, German troops invaded neutral Belgium, and Great Britain declared war on Germany. That meant Canada, too, was at war.
In Victoria, far from the centre of the British Empire, hundreds of men eagerly answered the call to arms.
Today, reporter Richard Watts looks back at what the first days of war meant to the young city and its people.
A the age of 23, Blayney Edmund Scott was the middle son of a notable Victoria family, a star rower, rugby player and titled boxer. So in August 1914, when Canada followed Great Britain into war against Germany, Scott would have had nothing personal to gain by enlisting in the army. His reputation was sterling and he had a secure job with the family business manufacturing explosives on James Island.
Nevertheless, Scott enlisted in November of 1914. His younger brother, Gilling, enlisted the same day and his older brother Matthew the following year.
Blayney served in the infantry, artillery and later as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps. He was wounded several times, decorated and survived the war.
But he died in 1919 in Victoria. His health never recovered from his war injuries.
For Victoria’s Yvonne Van Ruskenveld, a member of the Old Cemeteries Society and keen local historian of the First World War, Blayney Scott has become a representative for the young men who enlisted without question in 1914.
A 1919 newspaper account of Scott’s funeral — coffin carried on a gun carriage to Ross Bay Cemetery, a low-flying plane swooping down to drop a wreath, with a banner reading “Well done” — first inspired her to learn more.
Van Ruskenveld noted one Victoria newspaper even referred to him as a “fine figure of a man.”
“He [Scott] just seemed like a really great guy,” she said.
From a modern, 21st-century viewpoint, the notion of young men like Blayney Scott and his brothers enlisting, without second thoughts, seems unthinkable. But 1914 was different from today, and Victoria was unique. And nobody predicted the deadly stalemate of trench warfare that came to characterize First World War combat.
Historians like Jim Kempling, of the University of Victoria, describe Victoria as community that saw itself as a far outpost of the British Empire. People then would have followed world events, such as those in the Balkans, but likely with even less interest than most modern Victorians devote to the Middle East.
So few people betrayed much concern when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, the germ of the First World War.
Nevertheless, when a resulting series of arcane alliances were invoked and ultimately prompted the British Empire to declare war on Germany on Aug. 4, Victoria simply followed.
“It wasn’t even a matter of debate or even controversial,” Kempling said. “The empire was at war, ‘full stop.’”
He is one of the driving historians behind UVic’s minutely detailed website, A City Goes to War. Its featured records, pictures, letters and news accounts offer glimpses of the First World War as it affected Victoria.
Kempling also said Victoria was about two years into an economic downturn after several years of steady growth. There had also been substantial immigration, mostly by young men, resulting in a gender imbalance, with men outnumbering the eligible women.
So the idea of putting on a uniform and getting a paid trip back to the U.K. was likely attractive for many young Englishmen.
About 6,000 men enlisted in Victoria over the course of the war.
Victoria was also a small city, about 35,000, and the army and navy were big features of community social life.
Militia or reserve soldiers regularly camped at the Victoria fairgrounds near Willow’s Beach for summer training. Fort Rodd Hill was still an active gun emplacement protecting the harbour.
All classes, but especially the upper and middle, joined or supported reserve regiments, like the 5th Field Artillery or the 88th Fusiliers. Military band concerts were a regular feature of community entertainment.
Kempling noted military participation was, however, restricted to white, Anglo-Saxon men.
“The racial prejudice in Victoria at that time was pretty staggering by contemporary standards,” he said.
For example, he noted records in other parts of Canada reveal strong enlistment and storied war service by First Nations, notably the Mohawk.
But evidence of B.C. native war participation is hard to find.
It was in 1910 that the Songhees people had been moved away from downtown Victoria to Esquimalt. Anti-potlach laws were still being enforced across B.C.
Also, antipathy and suspicion of all Asians was rife in Victoria around the start of the First World War.
For example, a 1913 story in the Victoria Daily Times, to be found on the City Goes to War website, highlights the arrival of 56 “Hindus,” along with Chinese and Japanese workers on ship Panama Maru.
The following year, in May 1914, the infamous Komagata Maru incident occurred in Vancouver. Sikhs, 376 of them, were denied entry and sent back to India.
Chinese, many of whom had built the railroads, were simply not welcomed into Victoria society, Kempling said.
He also noted that in 1916, a contingent of Japanese soldiers was being raised in B.C. for what was by then an army growing desperate for recruits. But the men had to travel to Calgary to enlist. They were turned away in B.C.
Simon Sobolewski of the Victoria Esquimalt Military Re-enactors Association, which attempts to live history by dressing and acting as people from the past, said Victoria was one of the last enclaves of British imperialism.
For whatever reason, large numbers of veterans had settled in Victoria. They were from the Boer Wars, about 1880 to 1902, colonial service in India, Afghanistan and even Mexico’s revolutionary conflicts.
So the 88th Fusiliers, one of Victoria’s militia regiments, had a large contingent of soldiers with real military service behind them. When war was declared, they didn’t hesitate to sign up.
“It’s a time when you can still look someone in the eye and talk, with a straight face, about honour and duty,” Sobolewski said.
“Nineteen-fourteen is like the last gasp of Victorian imperialism,” he said.
Sobolewski noted the day after war was declared, the band of the 5th Field Artillery held an impromptu concert and picnic in Beacon Hill Park. A table for recruiters just happened to be there.
“It was all: ‘The war will be over by Christmas, so put on a uniform,’” he said. “There were bands, women kissing you on the street, men clapping you on the shoulder and buying you drinks.”
“In a way you were lulled, even reassured, into thinking the Empire still needed you,” Sobolewski said.
Now, even the living relatives of people like Blayney Scott can find it difficult to comprehend the 1914 way of thinking.
Megan Scott, owner of Ivy’s Bookstore in Oak Bay, whose grandfather, Gilling Scott, Blayney’s brother, survived the war and lived until 1989, finds it a little tough.
After all, her grandfather rarely spoke about the war, so her best clues come from letters written home by him and his brothers.
“Did you ever consider what a great privilege it is to be British-born,” wrote the Victoria-born Matt Scott in one letter written in 1916, proving feelings from 1914 remained strong.
“We look back at it through 21st-century eyes, but when I read their letters it seems as though they were quite happy to be there,” Megan said.
“I’m just glad to think we are still interested in them and still discussing what happened,” she said.