When war broke out in August 1914, Canada’s population was fewer than eight million people. The country was pulled into the conflict not by a vote in Ottawa, but by a declaration made at Westminster in London. Before it was over, more than 60,000 Canadians were dead. The scale of sacrifice was enormous for a nation so young and so small.
Between 1916 and 1918, Canada employed three official photographers to document its soldiers at war: Captain Harry Knobel, Captain William Ivor Castle, and Lieutenant William Rider-Rider. Together, they produced over 4,000 photographs. Those images were printed in newspapers, sold as souvenirs, and displayed in public exhibitions. They gave civilians at home a window into a world most would never see firsthand.
The Vimy Foundation has colorized a selection of these photographs, drawn from the vast archival collection at Library and Archives Canada. Additional images came from local archives across the country, including the City of Toronto Archives, the Glenbow Museum and Archives, the City of Vancouver, archives in Newfoundland, and the Nova Scotia Archives. Colorization brings these moments closer — the faces, the mud, the exhaustion, and the quiet moments in between the fighting all become more immediate.
Life in the trenches was grinding and relentless. Soldiers stood watch for hours, slept in cramped dugouts, and moved through narrow communication trenches under constant threat. The front line was not a single moment of battle — it was weeks and months of waiting, working, and enduring.
Death was a constant presence. Officers and enlisted men alike were buried on or near the battlefield, their funerals carried out with whatever ceremony the front allowed.
Chemical weapons made World War I unlike any conflict before it. Gas attacks forced soldiers to rely on masks, and regular drills were held to make sure those masks actually worked when needed.
Behind the front lines, Canadian pioneers kept the war machine moving. They built roads, cleared timber, and laid the groundwork for every advance. Near Vimy Ridge, that work was especially critical — the terrain had been torn apart by years of shellfire.
Communication on the battlefield took many forms. Telephone lines were run between posts and tested regularly. Carrier pigeons were still used to deliver messages when other methods failed — dispatched directly from the trenches by dedicated riders.
The wounded were treated at advanced dressing stations positioned as close to the action as safely possible. In October 1918, east of Arras, Canadian wounded sat together drinking tea while the fighting continued nearby. German prisoners were put to work carrying Canadian casualties from the battlefield.
The Battle of Passchendaele in the fall of 1917 became synonymous with mud. The terrain was so destroyed by shelling and rain that men and horses sank into the ground. Canadian pioneers hauled trench mats across the landscape just to move. In at least one documented case, Canadian and German wounded helped each other through the mud after the fighting stopped.
The Battle of Amiens in August 1918 was one of the most significant Canadian operations of the entire war. Tanks advanced alongside infantry, and prisoners streamed back from the front, some of them wearing gas masks. Soldiers paused to fill water bottles and, later in the push, to collect free coffee at distribution points east of Arras.
General Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian Corps, became one of the most respected officers of the war. In July 1918, he briefed Canadian journalists at the front, explaining in detail how Vimy Ridge had been taken the year before — a battle that had become central to Canadian national identity.
Soldiers captured at Hill 70 in August 1917 occupied German trenches that had been taken just days before. The battle for Hill 70, fought just north of Lens, France, cost thousands of lives on both sides but was a clear Canadian tactical success.
Not all of the photographs show combat. Soldiers wrote letters home from the line, had their tunics tailored before going on leave, and read the Canadian Daily Record in the trenches near Lens. Nova Scotians returned to camp after baseball games. These moments were just as real as the battles — and the photographers captured them all.
Among the soldiers photographed was Tom Longboat, the famous Onondaga long-distance runner from Six Nations of the Grand River. He served as a dispatch runner for the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was photographed in June 1917 buying a paper from a French newsboy — the same boy who appears selling papers to Canadian troops in the line.
Women played essential roles throughout the war. Nursing sisters staffed Canadian hospitals in Britain and France, and at least one — Nursing Sister G.M.M. Wake — died from wounds received in a German air raid. Her funeral was photographed and preserved. Other nurses voted in the 1917 Canadian federal election directly from their hospital postings, one of the first times Canadian women were able to cast ballots.
Female ambulance drivers also served at the front. Voluntary Aid Detachment drivers transported the wounded under dangerous conditions, often close to active fighting. Their work was unglamorous and vital.
Back in Canada, the war effort extended deep into civilian life. Munitions factories ran around the clock. The Assembly Department of the British Munitions Supply Co. Ltd. in Verdun, Quebec, was one of many facilities supplying the front. Veterans returning from the war with injuries learned new trades through the Department of Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment.
Pack horses moved ammunition to artillery batteries across difficult terrain. The 20th Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery relied on this system in April 1917, just as the Vimy offensive was getting underway. Canadian officers also took note of the French military’s large rail-mounted guns during the same period.
Some photographs capture the humanity of individual departures. A Canadian soldier photographed in 1914 holds his young daughter before leaving for war. That single image — a father and child — stands against the full weight of what was coming.
Troops returning to camp were met by local vendors selling oranges. Soldiers adopted a dog and brought it out of the trenches, presenting it to a nurse in October 1916. Canadian forestry men took time to skate. These images sit alongside photographs of burial services and gas mask drills — all part of the same war, all preserved by the same cameras.
Military demonstrations were held at Shorncliffe, the major Canadian training base on the English coast. The Mayor of Toronto formally welcomed home the 53rd Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery after their training at Kingston. These moments of ceremony bookended the war’s violence — marking both the sending off and the return.
Christmas at the Duchess of Connaught Red Cross Hospital in Taplow, England was photographed in 1917. Wounded soldiers and staff gathered, their faces visible in color a century later. Three Canadian soldiers settled into a captured German dugout east of Arras. A messenger, unable to ride his motorcycle through the August mud, carried the machine on his shoulders.
