4.2 First and Second World Wars

More than 6,000 Canadian First Nations, Inuit and Métis served with British forces during First World War and Second World War. A generation of young native Canadian men fought on the battlefields of Europe during the Great War and approximately 300 of them died there. When Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939, the native community quickly responded to volunteer. Four years later, in May 1943, the government declared that, as British subjects, all able Indian men of military age could be called up for training and service in Canada or overseas.