Toronto in the First World War: Camp, Factories, Homes

During the First World War Toronto was the largest city in English Canada and the headquarters of a military district covering central Ontario. According to the City of Toronto Archives, more than 45,000 Torontonians served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force or the British Army, and 4,904 soldiers and nurses from the city died on active service. The exhibition grounds became a training camp in 1914, local factories filled munitions and aircraft orders, and the city raised money for the war on a large scale.

August 1914: a British city goes to war

Britain’s declaration of war on August 4, 1914 brought Canada in automatically because of its status as a British Dominion, according to the Government of Canada; Veterans Affairs Canada gives the same start date for the war. The City of Toronto describes the Toronto of that year as a place where more than 85 percent of residents were of British origin, and it says men rushed to enlist. By the end of the war, more than three-quarters of the city’s eligible young men had volunteered. The Toronto and York County Patriotic Fund, which supported soldiers’ families, was established in August 1914.

Exhibition Camp

In late September 1914 the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition became Exhibition Camp. CNE Heritage records that the exhibition board offered Exhibition Park to Military District Number Two as winter barracks for as long as the war lasted. In summer most troops moved to tents at Niagara-on-the-Lake, and those who stayed gave demonstrations for fair visitors, including drill, bayonet displays and charges from trenches dug on the grounds. The fair itself continued every year of the war. The City of Toronto puts the winter population of the camp at 10,000 troops in 1915 and 1916. A “receiving station” at Exhibition Park also held internees from 1914 to 1916, because residents from enemy countries (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) had to register. The longer story of the site is in the article on the Canadian National Exhibition.

Toronto was also a railway hub, and the City estimates that tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of soldiers and nurses passed through it. The University of Toronto hosted the Royal Flying Corps in Canada. Wounded veterans began to return in 1915, and military hospitals were opened for them.

Paying for the war

The city’s war effort was funded in part by public campaigns, and the City of Toronto gives figures for several:

Khaki Day, 1915: 2,500 tag sellers raised $34,000 for the Citizens’ Recruiting League.
Patriotic Fund: $9.5 million raised over four annual campaigns, with about 20,000 families (some 50,000 people) receiving relief.
City insurance: in 1915 the City took on the full risk of insuring soldiers’ lives, at a cost of $4.4 million, part of $13 million in war spending.
Victory Loans: 126,390 subscribers in 1917, over one-quarter of the population and described as a world record. In 1919 Torontonians subscribed nearly $145 million, more than one-fifth of the national total.

Factories and women workers

The Imperial Munitions Board, a British agency for all war contracts let in Canada, was led by Joseph Flavelle, whom the Dictionary of Canadian Biography says was appointed chair in November 1915. According to the City, three of its seven national factories were in Toronto, according to the City. British Acetones Toronto Limited became the Empire’s largest supplier of cordite, and British Forgings Limited became the world’s largest electric steel plant. Canadian Aeroplanes Limited built 2,951 aircraft. By the end of 1916 Toronto employed 2,500 of the 4,000 female munitions workers in Canada.

Women also changed the politics of the war. Nurses and women related to soldiers received the federal vote in the election of December 1917, which the City links to the passage of conscription. The Canadian War Museum notes that the Military Service Act, passed in late August 1917, made male citizens aged 20 to 45 liable for service, and that 93 percent of the men who registered applied for an exemption (a national figure, not one for Toronto). The City’s mobilization section dates conscription in Toronto to 1918, after volunteer numbers declined, while another part of its exhibit says the 1917 vote allowed conscription to be put in force.

Changes on the home front

Ontario introduced prohibition in 1916 (see the article on the Ontario Temperance Act), and federal prohibition followed in 1918. In August 1918 anti-Greek riots broke out in Toronto. Food and fuel shortages came near the end of the war, followed by the influenza epidemic that is described in the article on the 1918 epidemic in Toronto. The City also lists the Island Filtration Plant, the Bloor Viaduct and the Toronto Civic Guard among projects developed during the war years. The viaduct is covered in the article on the Prince Edward Viaduct. Toronto lost 86 residents when the Lusitania was sunk in 1915.

Timeline

August 4, 1914: Canada enters the war. The Patriotic Fund is established in the same month.
Late September 1914: the exhibition grounds become Exhibition Camp.
1915: Lusitania sinking, Khaki Day, the City insures soldiers’ lives, and wounded veterans begin returning.
1916: Ontario prohibition and the end of the internee receiving station at Exhibition Park.
1917: record Victory Loan and the federal vote for soldiers’ female relatives.
1918: conscription in Toronto, anti-Greek riots, and the Armistice on November 11.
1925: the permanent cenotaph is unveiled at Old City Hall.

The national picture

Veterans Affairs Canada reports that more than 650,000 men and women from Canada and Newfoundland served, more than 66,000 died and over 172,000 were wounded. The Toronto figures above come from the City and cannot be added to or compared with those national totals without care, because the City counts service in the British Army as well as the Canadian force.

Figures to treat with care

The Toronto service total of “over 45,000” is the City of Toronto’s figure. No second source with a different count was found.
The camp’s troop count (10,000 in 1915 and 1916) comes from the City alone. CNE Heritage describes the camp but gives no numbers.

Common questions

How many Torontonians served in the First World War?

The City of Toronto Archives says more than 45,000 served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force or the British Army, and 4,904 soldiers and nurses died.

What was Exhibition Camp?

It was the military training and housing centre set up on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in late September 1914. It held about 10,000 troops in the winter of 1915 to 1916.

Did the CNE stop during the war?

No. CNE Heritage records that the annual fair continued throughout the war, with trench demonstrations and drills for visitors.

Where is Toronto’s First World War memorial?

The permanent cenotaph at Old City Hall was unveiled in 1925, according to the City of Toronto.

Last verified: October 2026

Sources

City of Toronto, “WWI Commemoration,” virtual exhibit, Museums and Heritage Services
Government of Canada, “Canada and the Beginning of the First World War,” backgrounder, the Government of Canada news archive (archived page)
Veterans Affairs Canada, “10 Quick Facts: The First World War”
CNE Heritage, “CNE visitors watching Soldiers in Trench Demonstration during the Great War” (Exhibition Camp)
Canadian War Museum, “Recruitment and Conscription: Conscription, 1917,” Canada and the First World War
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, “The Wartime Economy” (Joseph Flavelle and the Imperial Munitions Board), First World War theme pages

Cite this page

APA: History of Toronto. (2026, October 23). Toronto in the First World War, 1914 to 1918. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/toronto-first-world-war

MLA: “Toronto in the First World War, 1914 to 1918.” History of Toronto, 23 Oct. 2026, https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/toronto-first-world-war. Accessed .

Chicago: History of Toronto. “Toronto in the First World War, 1914 to 1918.” Last modified October 23, 2026. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/toronto-first-world-war.

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