Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1914. Toronto had just returned to work after a tense long weekend, waiting to hear if the country was going to war.

The countdown was on: If Germany didn’t pull back from its invasion of France and Belgium by 7 p.m. Toronto time, Britain would declare war.

The closer the clock ticked to 7, the more people crowded into the streets downtown. “Policemen gave up directing traffic, which was at a standstill, and turned to crowd control,” wrote Ian Hugh Maclean Miller in Our Glory and Our Grief, a history of Toronto during First World War. “When the bells of Toronto’s Big Ben struck seven times, nothing else happened. The crowd waited. Thousands of miles away a telegraph operator in England cabled the news under the Atlantic Ocean. Fifteen minutes later, a newsboy’s announcement, ‘Get the War Cry,’ disturbed the relative calm.

“The news sank home. Then a cheer broke.”

Britain had declared war on Germany, automatically bringing Canada into the conflict by virtue of its status as a British dominion.

The crowds were orderly, wrote James Wells Ross, a local artillery reservist who was about to volunteer for service. But the atmosphere was buoyant.

“Bands played on the streets and impromptu regiments of small boys paraded with flags and drums,” he wrote in his diary.

Toronto in 1914 was an overwhelmingly British city — about 85 per cent claimed British roots, according to Miller. And it was also a military, manufacturing and business centre for the young Dominion of Canada.

“In many ways, Toronto was the patriotic hub of the country,” said Wayne Reeves, the chief curator for the City of Toronto.

It would be another two days before Britain officially accepted Canada’s offer to send troops into battle. But already on that Tuesday evening, men started lining up at the city’s armouries, ready to enlist.

Evidently there was some concern that Toronto’s military regiments hadn’t explicitly volunteered their service. But there was an understanding that they would spring into action as soon as they got the word from Ottawa, and they could be ready to mobilize within 12 hours, Col. Malcolm Mercer, the commandant of the Queen’s Own Rifles regiment, told the Toronto Star.

“My business affairs are arranged in such shape that I could leave them at any time,” said Mercer, a lawyer by trade. “Personally, I would be ready to leave in an hour.”

Some of the men who signed up for the army wanted to fight for the Empire. Others were motivated by more practical concerns.

Toronto was “in the midst of a severe recession,” Reeves said. “It was very, very important to throw in my lot with the army, get my free uniform and be able to send my pay home.”

For some who had immigrated from Britain — as more than 112,000 Toronto residents had done since the turn of the century — war service meant a free trip to the motherland.

“If you were British-born, you had been in Canada for the last 10 years, you haven’t been home, here’s a chance to have someone pay your way back to the U.K.,” said historian J.L. Granatstein.

Those who couldn’t enlist offered other kinds of support. The City of Toronto donated police horses to the artillery and gave free life insurance to employees who joined the military. Service groups, often led by prominent members of the community, launched fundraising drives to pay for medical equipment for wounded soldiers and to care for soldiers’ families.

Local businesses also got on board. John Craig Eaton, the department store owner, offered $100,000 to set up a motor machine gun battery. The Christie-Brown Co. pledged to pay the salaries of employees who served.

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“Toronto spent a lot of money on the war,” Reeves said.

Torontonians were in for a long and trying four years, but the severity of the challenge they faced wouldn’t become clear for at least another eight months, until after the bloody battle of Ypres in April 1915. For now, they were seizing the occasion to cheer for the Empire, singing “God Save the King” and waving Union Jacks in the streets.

“It was midnight before the crowds began to thin,” Miller wrote.