The riots are believed to have been caused by delays in repatriation and by the Canadian soldiers' resentment at being used by their British officers as forced labour.

Noel Barbour writes in Gallant Protesters (1975): The mutineers were our own men, stuck in the mud of North Wales, waiting impatiently to get back to Canada four months after the end of the war.

The 15,000 Canadian troops that concentrated at Kinmel didn't know about the strikes that held up the fuelling ships and which had caused food shortages.

The most serious of these occurred in Kinmel Park on 4th and 5th March 1919, when dissatisfaction over delays in sailing resulted in five men being killed and 23 being wounded.

Seventy-eight men were arrested, of whom 25 were convicted of mutiny and given sentences varying from 90 days' detention to ten years' penal servitude.