The Canadian Forces and overall civilian participation in the First World War and Second World War helped to foster Canadian nationalism; however, in 1917 and 1944, conscription crises highlighted the considerable rift along ethnic lines between Anglophones and Francophones. As a result of the First and Second World Wars, the Government of Canada became more assertive and less deferential to British authority. Canada, until the 1940s, was often described as "binational", with the 2 components being the cultural, linguistic and political identities of English Canadians and of French Canadians.