ABSTRACT
Just like the fictional David Mann, many Canadian men who volunteered for service during the Great War were turned away from recruiting stations for medical reasons. Between the start of the war in 1914 and commencement of conscription in 1917 (Granatstein and Hitsman 1977, 60-104), tens of thousands of men who volunteered for service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) suffered this fate. Evidence suggests that between one-fifth and one-quarter of men who volunteered to serve were turned away as unfit.2 Such numbers made rejected men a numerically significant, and noticeable, minority within Canada’s wartime population. Indeed, the significant position rejected men held in Canada’s wartime society is
also suggested by the central position that rejected volunteers held in the public consciousness during the Great War. An examination of primary source material from the Great War period reveals a plethora of sources relating to these men and the issues surrounding them. These sources include cartoons, private letters, diaries and memoirs, newspaper articles, military policy documents, and government debates and memoranda.
