In 1914 when the war had just started, Canadian volunteers were plentiful and 30,000 Canadians enlisted in that year alone. At the start of the war, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden said that Canada would not need to enforce conscription. Soon, this all changed and enlistment numbers began to decrease. From July 1916 to October 1917, only 2810 Canadians volunteered for the infantry.
There are many possible causes for this drop in numbers. At the time, Canada only had a population of 7.5 million people and a sixth of Canadian men between the ages of 15 and 44 had already joined the infantry. Thousands more were in other military branches like artillery, forestry and railway units, engineers, medical corps, and Royal Flying Corps. A large portion of the people who were capable of fighting had already joined.
War had also turned out to be less glamorous than many had originally thought. People back home in Canada could feel this as food and supplies were limited and the war had dragged on for longer than originally thought. Most had expected a short war with troops returning by Christmas of 1914. New technology also brought new and more brutal ways of fighting that, for the most part, had not been foreseen.
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