Oct 2 Notes

The Treaty of Versailles: End Of The War

-The Great War had ended on November 11th, 1918 with the surrender of Germany;

-the victorious nations met in Paris, France to make the peace treaty at the end of World War I. Since the treaty was signed at the magnificent palace of Versailles, it is also known as the Versailles Peace Treaty;

-Canada was represented as an independent nation rather than as a member of the British Empire;

-Canada had lost 60,000 soldiers in World War I.

The Treaty of Versailles: The League Of Nations

-the world would meet to discuss problems and to attempt to avoid war in the future;

-the leaders of the League of Nations had high hopes for the future;

- the League of Nations did not work very well. Some countries, such as the United States, did not join the League. The organization was not able to enforce its own rules;

The Winnipeg General Strike: Unions

-As the men who had fought in the war returned to Canada in 1919, they often found that the jobs they had left behind had been taken over by others;

-they also found that prices on goods were increasing rapidly. This condition is known as inflation;

-workers in many parts of Canada also wanted the right to a union and the right to collective bargaining;

-the purposes of a union is to obtain the right of collective bargaining;

-rather than each worker individually bargaining with the employer for wages and benefits, the union wishes to speak for the entire collection of workers, when bargaining for wages and benefits;

-in 1919, worker frustrations boiled over in the city of Winnipeg. The workers in the citys metal industries wanted the right to collective bargaining and a wage increase to $1.00 per hour;

-Then the workers in other industries went on strike to back up the metal workers. Soon the firefighters, the postal workers, the delivery people, and even the police in Winnipeg went on strike to back the metal workers. When all the workers are on strike, it is called a general strike;

The 1919 Flu Pandemic

-Many soldiers had contracted influenza, or "flu", in the trenches in Europe, and brought this highly contagious disease home to the various countries that they came from. The prefix "pan" on a word means wide. A panorama is a picture with a wide view. A "pandemic" is a disease that spreads over a wide area. The flu pandemic of 1919 eventually killed over 20 million people, including 35,000 Canadians.

Source: elearning Ontario.ca