Poster · Canada · 1941–1942 · World War II

Every Canadian Must Fight

A worker stands at a soldier's shoulder, holding a magazine ready for his submachine gun. There is no enemy on the poster. There are two people fighting together: one at the front, the other on the home front.

Artist: Philip Surrey (1910–1990)
Themes: unity home front and front line mobilisation

Canada, 1941–1942. Artist Philip Surrey; commissioned by the Directorate of Public Information of the Department of National War Services.

The slogan “Every Canadian Must Fight” does not call everyone to the trenches: it says the front cannot hold without the home front. The irony is that in the April 1942 plebiscite on conscription almost three quarters of Quebecers voted “no”. Unity on the poster was more a goal than a fact.

Semper Idem · today’s parallel

“Every Canadian must fight” — today this is about us. Every Ukrainian in this war defends their home: some in the trenches, some in factories, some restoring a city's power under shelling, some donating and weaving camouflage nets. This unity is not a given but daily work, and that is exactly what someone is trying to tear apart: in March 2026 Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation found AI-generated TikTok videos in which “ordinary civilians” speak with contempt about soldiers. The device is the same, only reversed: then they drew the unity of the home front and the front line to bind them together; now they draw a rift to create one.

Where is your place in this defence?