Canadian World War I Posters Gallery

In World War I colour posters were used as an affordable means of mass communication by governments on both sides of the war.

The Canadian government produced many posters for recruitment drives, for fund raising through Victory Bonds, and to encourage the increase in production required to change the Canadian economy to support a war. Canadian war posters were produced at printing companies in Montreal, Toronto and Hamilton, in production runs ranging from the hundreds to 65,000. War posters were put up in just about any public place where people gathered.

In World War I, Canadian war posters were modeled on those in Britain, although they also targeted specific cultural groups, including French Canadians, the Irish and Scots. The war posters were often heavy on text with fairly passive images, although the imagery used on Canadian World War I war posters tended to get more dramatic as the war progressed and casualties mounted.