Cap Badge - Canadian Red Cross Society The founder of the Red Cross movement in Canada was George Sterling Ryerson. He accompanied the militia force sent to quell the North-West Rebellion in 1885 and used a makeshift red cross to protect his horse-drawn ambulance. In 1896 Ryerson organized a Canadian branch (Toronto) of the British Red Cross Society which raised money for the relief of combatants in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and in 1899 distributed medical supplies during the South African War. In 1909 the federal government passed the Canadian Red Cross Society Act, which established the society as the corporate body responsible for providing volunteer aid in Canada in accordance with the Geneva Convention. During WWI the society raised $35 million in relief, shipped supplies overseas, maintained 5 hospitals in England and one in France, and provided recreation huts and ambulance convoys.