A Battle for Reputation

In Canada at the start of World War One, there was almost no discussion of who should be given responsibility for the direction of the war effort. Sam Hughes, minister of militia and defence, rushed in and took charge. He banished Canada’s only professional troops to garrison duty in Bermuda, scrapped the mobilization plan that had been carefully developed by the permanent force and dispatched messages to more than 200 militia commanders across the country (most of whom he knew personally) asking that they recruit troops on an urgent basis and dispatch them for training to Valcartier, Quebec—at that time virtually open countryside, with no facilities to receive an influx of troops.

One of the three brigadiers chosen by Hughes to take charge of the troops at Valcartier was a militia colonel from Victoria, Arthur Currie. Hughes’s son Garnet was Currie’s second-in-command at Victoria. Currie was 38 years old, tall and strong but overweight and...