World War I serves as The Spoon Stealer’s pivotal catastrophe, shattering Emmeline’s family and redirecting her life. Understanding this conflict’s conditions, particularly for Canadian soldiers and their families, illuminates the losses that Crewe portrays. Canada entered WWI in August 1914 as a dominion of the British Empire. Over 650,000 Canadians served in the war, and more than 66,000 were killed, a staggering toll for a nation of roughly 8 million (“Canada and the First World War.” Veterans Affairs Canada, 29 Apr. 2024). The war’s impact on small rural communities was particularly severe, as multiple sons from the same family often enlisted together. In the novel, Emmeline watches her brothers John and Teddy depart for service while she and her mother are “furious with them” (49), reflecting the helpless dread experienced by countless families who could do nothing but wait for news. That fury, however, proves powerless against the patriotic fervor sweeping young men into uniform.

Teddy’s fate reflects one of the war’s most horrific developments, chemical warfare. Following the German army’s deployment of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, gas attacks became a defining terror of trench warfare. Canadian forces were among the first Allied troops to face large-scale chemical attacks, suffering thousands of casualties with lasting respiratory damage. These agents seared the lungs and airways, frequently causing death weeks or months later from secondary infections, such as pneumonia. In the novel, Teddy survives the initial attack but dies at a Canadian Red Cross hospital in England, a trajectory consistent with historical records. The facility corresponds to the real Duchess of Connaught Canadian Red Cross Hospital at Taplow, Berkshire, established to treat Canadian soldiers injured in France.

John’s death is also rooted in documented wartime hazards. He drowns after falling into the water at the Liverpool docks on a stormy night, a fate attributed to darkness, absent railings, and treacherous conditions. Liverpool was one of Britain’s busiest wartime ports, and fatal accidents in its poorly lit wharves were a recognized danger. The absence of a body to bury compounds the family’s anguish; Emmeline notes that her parents handle it by pretending that John is “just away,” choosing denial over acceptance of his death because they have no body to bury. This parallels what psychologist Pauline Boss has termed “ambiguous loss,” grief that remains unresolved when there is no confirmation of death (Boss, Pauline. Ambiguous Loss. Harvard University Press, 1999).

The war’s aftershocks drive the novel’s subsequent narrative. Emmeline’s mother descends into untreated grief, Martin turns to alcohol, and the family fractures under compounded trauma. Emmeline’s solitary transatlantic voyage to reach her dying brother is both a deeply personal act of devotion and a testament to the war’s reach into civilian life. The novel portrays WWI as an unhealed wound whose consequences ripple across decades and generations of a single family.