The "Minorities at War" project enables learners to diversify their historical inquiry into the First World War. Using primary documents, including military personnel records, war diaries, and census records, learners will explore the experiences of Black and Indigenous soldiers and women who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Project participants will develop the necessary skills to work with sets of primary evidence and to employ the Concepts of Historical Thinking. Learners will work through evidence to build a biographical summary of each service person’s military experience, using a similar research approach used by historians.
Working as a historian of 1914-1919 minority experiences requires many considerations, including the deciphering of cursive writing, learning the historical nomenclature found in military and census records, and becoming familiar with the history of Canada and the First World War. It is especially important to explore continuity and change questions related to the inequality experienced by individuals of colour and women in Canada. As a part of the research process, educators and learners encounter how the Concepts of Historical Thinking intersect and how layering evidence and connecting it with reliable published sources generates a product that reveals much about each service person’s experience. By extension, learners are encouraged to consider how each individual’s military service is remembered and commemorated.
The project includes an interactive platform and data portal that harnesses the information gathered by learner participants and their peers. The data portal enables educators and learners to develop an inventory of a service person’s military experience and personal information, collating it to examine patterns that emerge from the data. In this way, learners contribute to the development of the historical record as the data compiled will be made available to researchers and community members.
This project leverages Library and Archives Canada’s recent digitization of over 600,000 military personnel files. It is curriculum relevant and supports necessary conversations about inequality, racism, and the value of inclusion happening across Canada. The results will help raise awareness for community partners and the general public about the historical contributions of Black and Indigenous soldiers and Nursing Sisters in the First World War.
Working with personnel files is a very rewarding experience, though it is not without its challenges. On the surface they can be difficult to read and interpret. Through a close reading, these personnel files often raise questions that connect to complex themes and big ideas.
Each military personnel file you and your students encounter presents an opportunity to ask questions and draw together big ideas and themes from Canadian history, and to make connections between past and present. Sometimes, these connections prompt difficult conversations about anti-Black racism in Canada and systems of oppression that continue to affect Black communities today. These conversations need not be overwhelming. We encourage you to consider the personnel files as a tool to help engage and guide your students through these necessary and important conversations.
Canadian historical awareness of the segregated No. 2 Construction Battalion can create a perception that Black soldiers did not serve in front line units and were only employed as labourers. The evidence assembled here reveals that a large proportion of Black soldiers served in non-combat roles, often with the Canadian Forestry Corps. However, many Black soldiers also served in front line infantry, engineer, and even some artillery units across the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) and contributed to all types of war-related work. Comparing labour units with front line units offers an opportunity to consider how different types of service were perceived and how they contributed to the overall Canadian war effort.
There are two things to keep in mind as the learners in your classroom investigate the ways soldiers contributed to the war effort. First, Black volunteers were frequently rejected by commanding officers when they attempted to enlist in infantry battalions and other combat units, due to anti-Black racism and misconceptions about their ability to perform as soldiers. Second, while Canadian history highlights the achievements of infantry units and other front-line contributions, labour units were a critical component of Canada’s war effort as they provided the construction material, road work, and transportation necessary to keep the Canadian Corps effective at the front. Both types of service contribute to our overall understanding of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and to our understanding of how Black soldiers navigated military service.
Black Canadians were regularly conscripted for military service in the last years of the war. The war ended before many finished training in Canada, but many conscripted Black Canadians reached Canadian bases in the United Kingdom and a few even saw service at the front line in France. The conscription question remains one of the most significant controversies emerging from Canada’s First World War due to the division it created between French and English Canada. Black communities were also divided by conscription. The prevalence of anti-Black racism barred many Black Canadians from volunteering for the CEF in the first years of the war. When conscription was introduced in 1917, many Black Canadians felt that they should not be obligated to serve when they were previously denied the opportunity to volunteer because of their race.
Military records unfortunately do not capture instances where individuals were denied enlistment due to anti-Black racism, nor do conscription records provide insight into a recruits prior attempts to volunteer. However, we encourage you to work with learners in your classroom to explore how conscription affected Black communities differently than white communities.
A key question emerging when working with Black soldiers’ personnel files is how to identify diverse people of the past. Personnel files do not always explicitly state a soldier’s racial or ethnic background. Sometimes it is recorded as a detail in their medical history, sometimes it is written on their attestation form, but often, the personnel files provide no certain evidence of a soldier’s racial or ethnic background. In those instances, what records and information can we use to determine a soldier’s racial background?
The personnel files contained in the Black CEF soldier database have been verified by our research team. They have all been confirmed as to belonging to soldiers from Black Canadian communities or Black communities from other parts of the British Empire. However, we encourage you to engage your students with this question, asking them to search for clues in the personnel file that might indicate their soldier’s race, and have them explore other primary sources to verify their soldier’s identity. Clues in the personnel file can vary. For example, some CEF soldiers were born in the British Caribbean colonies with much larger Black communities, however those colonies also contained white settlers, so place of birth does not guarantee race. Students should nonetheless explore records to see where their soldier’s family came from and when they immigrated to Canada. Another clue to consider is a soldier’s present address. In many provinces, Black communities formed around specific cities or settlements. Nova Scotia’s Preston area and Ontario’s North Buxton or Oro are two locations known that have large Black communities in the early 20th century. Exploring this avenue is especially helpful when working with personnel files connected to your local area. Family descendants may still reside in the area. Whatever clues your students uncover, you should encourage learners to consider how Black peoples arrived in this country, highlighting the legacies of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the African diaspora.
Movement is a defining feature of Black Canadian history. Movement is a defining feature of Black Canadian history. People arrived in Canada in a variety of ways, including: as enslaved individuals brought here by white French or British settlers, enslaved and free peoples moving as part of the Loyalist resettlement in Canada, peoples moving as they sought freedom prior to, during, and after the American Civil War, the northern migration of peoples fleeing the oppression of Jim Crow segregation, the (re)settlement of the Canadian prairies through land grant schemes, Caribbean immigration and its connection to railway construction throughout the Canadian west. Much of this movement was driven by conflict, colonialism, and violence that have left deep and lasting impacts on Black communities. Reflecting this, Black Canadian history is, in many ways, global, bringing together peoples and cultures to form a history that rejects simple narratives and is difficult to document in archival collections. Capturing those stories is difficult, especially if we do not feel we share the experiences of historical subjects. This might raise the question of how we as researchers and historians should try to understand those narratives, and how we can do so in a responsible way that highlights our shared humanity and recognized the legacies, and continuation of anti-Black racism in Canada.
Each Indigenous military personnel file you and your students encounter presents an opportunity to ask questions about a unique First Nation or Indigenous community, its people, its territory, and their relationship with local community and the Canadian nation, and to make connections between past and present. Records that speak to Indigenous experiences carry legacies of colonialism and violence that cannot be ignored, in the spirit of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action. We hope to highlight several areas in which to engage your students in these important conversations as they work through Indigenous personnel files.
One key component that emerges from some of these personnel files is the connection between military service and the residential school system. This connection highlights the intersection between individuals, their military service, and their families. Some soldiers were once students at residential schools, and some were recruited while still living at a residential school. In other cases, an Indigenous soldier might have siblings, or even their own children, residing in a residential school. Cases where the connection with residential schools is explicit offer an opportunity to encourage your students to research further into the history of residential schools in Canada.
Some connections to residential schools are less explicit and emerge by examining other documents. For example, census records will frequently identify students in residential or day schools as “inmates.” This might lead you and your students towards investigating the census further to identify the school, and the Indigenous communities with connections to that school.
Even if personnel files and other record groups do not explicitly reveal a residential school connection, one still might exist. We encourage you to pose questions to your students prompting them to think about the broad impacts of the residential school system. For example, the Canadian Expeditionary Force considered literacy in English a valuable skill, and it was a necessity for soldiers to advance into positions of leadership. Considering where and how an Indigenous soldier at the rank of Lieutenant was educated is an important component of understanding their military experience.
If you or your students wish to pursue research into the residential school system further, whether in connection with an Indigenous personnel file or more generally, you can find additional resources HERE to support that investigation.
Sometimes a personnel file indicates that a soldier either deserted his post or was discharged for a specific reason. In some situations, that represents the whole story. Soldiers did desert their post, and sometimes they were medically unfit for service. When the personnel file belongs to an Indigenous soldier, there are other explanations to consider. The most frequent explanation is that band or community leaders would petition for the release of Indigenous soldiers because the community itself decided it did not support the war effort. This occurred before and after conscription was introduced. Because of their status as wards of the Canadian state, it was broadly understood that Indigenous individuals could not be compelled to serve but when these individuals were discharged, they were often recorded as being unfit for service or as deserters. It is unclear why these soldiers were labelled as deserters or unfit for service when they were legitimately discharged from service. Unfortunately, it is hard to identify when a soldier was simply labelled a deserter versus when they did desert. Occasionally, the personnel file indicates that a petition was made on their behalf for release, but this will not always be the case.
Similarly, a soldier discharged for being medically unfit or undesirable might also raise questions if the reason for their medical unfitness or undesirability is not listed. Perhaps the soldier was rejected for legitimate reasons, but there is always the possibility that they were rejected because of their Indigeneity. Again, there are no satisfactory ways to tell the difference between these possibilities. However, by simply pointing out that there are multiple ways to interpret the personnel file, you are encouraging your students to think critically about historical evidence and ask questions even when they do not have an answer.
As with any primary source, these personnel files have limitations that are important to recognize. First, the files cannot speak to how an individual made sense of an experience. They can tell us where and when a soldier enlisted, the units they served with, and the battles they fought but they cannot tell us what compelled them to enlist, if they got along with their fellow soldiers, or how they felt during the battles. While it is tempting to make inferences along those lines, the personnel files themselves cannot support that type of historical investigation.
The Indigenous soldier personnel files found in the "Minorities at War" project database have a second limitation that is important to acknowledge: most personnel files belong to Indigenous persons recognized as being “Status” Indigenous peoples. The database of personnel files contains names from a variety of sources. Some names were submitted by community organizations or family members. A significant number were identified by searching through document collections held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC) including collections that contain letters from Indian Agents which tracked Indigenous soldiers under their jurisdiction. The soldiers located in the LAC collections are considered status Indigenous peoples as non-status peoples fell outside the jurisdiction of the Department of Indian Affairs. As such, our database has limited capacity to investigate the differences experienced by status versus non-status Indigenous peoples during the First World War.
The concepts of status and non-status Indigeneity are colonially constructed categories meant to divide Indigenous peoples and arbitrarily confer power to Canadian government structures to aid in solving the so-called “Indian problem.” These categories have historical and present-day implications for Indigenous peoples in Canada as we continue to undo systems and legacies of colonial violence. By noting that our database contains records primarily of individuals identified as status Indigenous peoples, we hope to challenge the continued perpetuation of these constructed categories while also recognizing the very real implications that such categorization has on Indigenous peoples in Canada.
The primary documents used to support the "Minorities at War" project, including the personnel files, raise questions around who owns records, who can access records, and who should tell stories about the people of the past. While organizations like Library and Archives Canada have specific legislative rules around the access and use of records, we encourage you and your students to consider your role in constructing historical narratives. Some document collections, like those compiled by the Department of Indian Affairs, were compiled without the consent of the individuals captured in those records. Other collections, like personnel files and war diaries, contain information that the individual consented to give, and perhaps some information they did not consent to give. It is also unlikely that individuals expected their military personnel files to be made available for projects such as this at the time they enlisted.
Wrestling with what this means for us as we construct narratives is an important part of understanding the power we hold as historians and researchers. You may come across information about individuals that is potentially traumatic, to both you as a researcher and to members of Indigenous communities. You may also find out something completely new about an individual, something that no other records capture or a detail that has been lost to time. While the urge is often to make note of every detail and piece of information about a soldier, it is sometimes necessary to pause to consider the implications of that information, and the best way to disseminate the information. When questions arise from working with records concerning Indigenous peoples, we recommend that you speak to Indigenous peoples from that community to seek guidance on how to proceed with your students. You can find further information about the importance of fostering community connections HERE
Working with Nursing Sister personnel files raises some unique questions for researchers that connect to complex themes and big ideas, such as gender, health, race, and class. Each file you and your students encounter presents an opportunity to look for connections between past and present and to think more deeply about the importance of considering gender in our study of the Canadian First World War experience and in the Canadian military of the past, present, and future.
As with any primary source, these personnel files have limitations. First, the files cannot speak to how an individual made sense of their experience. They can tell us where and when a Nursing Sister enlisted, the hospitals they served with, and the periods they nursed through, but they cannot tell us what compelled them to enlist, if they got along with their fellow Nursing Sisters, or how they felt during those periods. While it is tempting to make inferences along those lines, the personnel files themselves cannot support that type of historical investigation.
The Nursing Sister personnel files found in the "Minorities at War" project database have a second limitation that is important to acknowledge: most Nursing Sisters were from a middle to upper-class background, and few, if any who served with the CEF, were women of colour. There are a few factors that help explain why this was the case. Nursing schools could prove prohibitive due to the financial costs associated with attending them. The vast majority were in large cities so women would often have to move to attend school, and then focus on sustaining themselves while paying fees and other living costs.
Another factor is the extreme selectiveness of nursing schools in Canada. To be eligible for enlistment as a Nursing Sister with the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC), women required a diploma from a three-year nurse training program in Canada or in the United States. The nursing programs in Canada were highly selective on who they accepted into their programs. Many program administrators believed that women of colour did not embody the values associated with white womanhood: gentility, compassion, purity, and civility. Women of colour who wished to attend a nursing program often had to travel to the United States to find a school that would grant them admission.
As women working within traditional male spheres, and as an organization that prized and protected white womanhood, the Nursing Sisters sit at a fascinating intersection that brings together questions of power, gender, and race as themes. As an organization, and as individuals, the Nursing Sisters simultaneously faced inequalities due to their gender while also contributing to the oppression of women of colour by enforcing strict racial boundaries.
This tension only grew when the Nursing Sisters eventually introduced a rank structure that included rank of Lieutenant/Nursing Sister, Captain/Matron, and Major/Matron-in-Chief. Women of these ranks oversaw the work of general Nursing Sisters and formed a command structure within the Nursing Sisters. These ranks carried with them status as officers within the CAMC, placing the Nursing Sisters in an interesting position as both women and officers. Their authority extended over the wards and hospitals in which they worked, including any male patients or orderlies found within those units, but, unlike the male medical officers, Nursing Sisters and Matrons were unable to make military decisions. They were also only to be referred to as “Sister” or “Matron” and never as “Lieutenant” or “Captain” in keeping with British nursing tradition and contemporary ideas on gender and nursing work.
While all the medical records contained within the personnel files are publicly available and are not subject to any privacy restrictions, questions concerning the ethics surrounding the use of such files that contain private and sensitive information for research purposes are entirely valid. The subjects of these medical files did not give their consent for these files to be made public decades after they were first written. In the case of Nursing Sisters, they were the ones who would note some of this information in the patients’ files, thus being the creators of some of this information. They, too, however, would become the subjects of their own medical files, which you and your students may examine as you work through these personnel files.
The questions then become who did give permission for this information to be released, and if the subject of the information did not give their consent, how should researchers approach these files? Medical files provide a great resource when studying the health and care of soldiers and Nursing Sisters alike, offering information not just on the treatment of illness and injury, but can also grant historians insight into other concepts related to health and wellbeing, such as the role that gender, race, and class played in a doctor’s view and treatment of their patients. Despite the value of these records, great care should be taken when using this material for research purposes as the information being used is someone’s private and personal information. As you and the learners in your classroom work with these files, we encourage you to question how historical records are created, and who has a voice in deciding to release those records to the public.
A considerable amount of information contained in the service files and circumstances
of death cards is unique to each enlisted individual. For assessment and evaluation
purposes this facilitates a differentiated process and product approach when assessing
and evaluating student work.
Students working with evidence will find that many potential layers of assessment and
evaluation emerge. To address the complexity, adopting a triangulation of assessment
and evaluation is recommended based on teacher-student conversations as a
component of student learning, teacher observations of students working as a part of
the process and the product that demonstrates a student’s understanding of their
research findings. There are many approaches to triangulation classroom practice. We
encourage teachers to contact their school board curriculum consultant to determine
which approach has been adopted.
You can use the following links to search through either soldiers or nursing sisters and build a suitable set for your students based on any number of suitable fields (i.e., birthplace, province, battalion, name, etc.). As the teacher, you can decide whether you'd like to focus on the stories from one group (Black soldiers, Indigenous soldiers or Nursing Sisters), or let students decide on an individual to research.
These lists of names represent working lists generated from the personnel files and attestation papers that are available through Library and Archives Canada. They are not exhaustive nor representative. Errors and omissions do occur. This lists below are living documents containing names of individuals who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the Great War We recognize the harm caused by racist and discriminatory practices in the CEF during the Great War, we do not wish to perpetuate that harm in our work.
We have made the lists public because all the names have corresponding attestation/personnel files through Library and Archives Canada, and we wish to encourage any interested party to explore these files. Educators are encouraged to develop class sets from the attached lists while following the steps included in our guides and on this website. When working with the files of Black and Indigenous soldiers, educators and learners are encouraged to reach out to community members and also follow the antiracism guidelines on this website.
For family and community members, please reach out to us if you have questions or concerns about how your family member, a community member or community is depicted. If one of your ancestors served but is not included, or if you have additional information, please reach out to us.
The data entry portal provides students with a way to save their research as they progress through the investigation.
Each field is saved automatically and can be edited as many times as needed.
There are separate entry points for each of the different modules:
Nursing Sisters
Black Soldiers
Indigenous Soldiers
In order for students to login in to the data entry portal, they will need a common Access Code.
You can request one here:
When you request an Access Code for your class, all of the information saved inside the data entry portal will be connected directly to you as the teacher.
The Teacher Portal tracks all student activity, progress and inquiry questions they answer, which gives the teacher a quick overview of each student's work.
When you request an Access Code, you will be given directions on how to enter the Teacher Portal.
The amount of time classes typically spend researching files varies from one class to another. It is recommended that the service file is used as an entry point into primary source evidence and the themes that emerge can be explored by individual students or discussed as an entire class. The Big-Six Historical Thinking Concepts can be investigated with great detail using the service file as a starting point.
Some teachers use the service file exploration as a part of their culminating activty. Others choose to do an intensive two week approach, while others revisit it over the course of an entire semester.
Does the reason a Black man over a century ago enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force differ compared to today? (Continuity and Change)
Which battle is the most significant from a Canadian perspective? (Historical Significance)
Why do we see an increase in anti-Black sentiment and organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, grow in Canadian society after the culmination of the First World War? (Cause and Consequence)
Why do you think Indigenous males volunteered to serve in the CEF compared to any other group? (Ethical Dimension)
Why do you believe the Nursing Sisters were given the rank of officer when they were serving in the Canadian Army Medical Corps? (Historical Perspectives)