Poster, 'Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment'

Rehabilitating Canadian soldiers

This First World War poster was created by the Canadian Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment to advertise their services, including finding employment for returned and 'honourably discharged Canadian Soldiers'. It features a border of images of men at a variety of useful and active jobs. Maple leaves and red and white roses decorate the bottom of the poster.

The new federal Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment was formed after a Cabinet Committee on Reconstruction convened in October 1917. Under the direction of Senator James Lougheed, the department established multiple branches. These branches provided medical treatment and vocational training for returning soldiers, marking the federal government's entry into heath care provision.

International War Posters in New Zealand

This item is part of a collection of First World War posters sent to New Zealand as examples of British, Canadian and American wartime propaganda. From 1917-1919, the Dominion Museum (now Te Papa) collected such war material with the help of the New Zealand High Commissioner in London and the Department of Defence.

The Museum intended to collect and display such objects in a planned national war museum in Wellington which never eventuated. Instead, the Museum toured over 100 war posters around New Zealand in the early 1920s in the context of increasing commemoration of the war during peacetime. For many, the posters illustrated important aspects of the war and the history of New Zealand's part in the war.