Canada and the Great War. Western Front Association Papers (review) (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
On the world wars at home, we were conscious of just scratching the surface. In part, brevity reflected scholarship: the many issues, great and small, that generations of historians have failed to elucidate, or those on which popular myth, passionately argued, still crowd out sober judgement. In part too, we self-censored, trying not to repeat entries elsewhere in the book. Even in skimming trees we covered plenty, although arguably – especially for World War I – not quite enough. Industry, women, local history, the economy, home defence, governance, administration, and wartime politics in both wars could all stand more room than time and sheaf space easily allowed. Of the summative challenges we faced in the book, these entries were among the greatest. Résumé : Nous étions conscients d’à peine aborder le sujet des guerres mondiales au pays. La concision reflétait en partie l’état de la recherche : les nombreux sujets, petits et grands, que des générations d’historiens n’ont pu écla...
The great war and the Canadian novel, 1915-1926
1972
subject i n romantic terms, and show the war a s an opportunity f o r heroic action, by w h i c h o f i n a r y men and women can transcend the limitations of a materialist society. The war i s persistently treatecl as a l i t e r a r y experience, something t o be read about rather than directly undergone: one indication of this tendency i s the adoption of a rhetoric of chivalry which describes modern combat i n the language of knightly romance. Much of t h i s rhetoric can be traced t o wartime propaganda, which strongly influenced almost a l l Canadian war novelists of this period.
“Everything changed!” – the ramification of the Second World War on the Canadian North
Journal of Tourism Futures, 2019
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to retrace past developments that occurred in the Alaskan and Canadian North as of result of the Second World War and illustrate the ramifications of these events in the Canadian and American political landscapes as it pertains to warfare tourism. The paper also intends to initiate a discussion on how certain narratives pertaining to warfare tourism are promoted, while others are overlooked. Design/methodology/approach-This paper analyses the political, economic, socio-cultural and technological factors that resulted in tourism growth or the lack thereof in the Canadian and American Norths. Findings-Warfare tourism, like most types of tourism, is expected to grow. Through this growth comes opportunities to expand and integrate the discussion pertaining to warfare tourism in the Canadian and American Norths while also providing a starting point for discussion about potential solutions to address warfare tourism and cultural dissonance. Research limitations/implications-This viewpoint is dependent on literature reviews. Practical implications-The relationship between Indigenous peoples and other marginalized populations in the Second World War and warfare tourism is a relatively new research area. For warfare tourism to become integrated into tourism policies and developments, a willingness to address cultural dissonance and integrate populations formerly marginalized in the Second World War will be required. This paper examines how northern and other marginalized voices can be integrated in future commemoration and interpretation strategies. Social implications-The paper provides an opportunity to examine the growth and healing that can result from warfare tourism. Originality/value-This interdisciplinary collaboration conducted by a military historian, a northern historian and a tourism research researcher provides one of the first examinations of the impacts of the Second World War in North America, and the relevance of these impacts to the interpretation of warfare tourism in Canada.
Journal of War & Culture Studies
This article provides the very first history of the 'national kitchens' of the First World War, which existed between 1917 and 1919, and argues that as one of several techniques for feeding Britain they formed a popular arm of British wartime food supply policy. It outlines how the Ministry of Food tried to position the new phenomenon of state-sponsored communal dining within national cultural parameters: culinary, social, and political. It explores the functioning of the 'national kitchen' in the final years of the war and accounts for its demise with reference to a trade culture of 'fair play' which clashed with the collectivist ethic of wartime consumption. Drawing on original archival material, this piece details the main personalities and tensions within this most under-documented of wartime cultural ventures.
Invisible Immigrants: The English in Canada since 1945, by Marilyn Barber and Murray Watson
Canadian Historical Review, 2015
While the state also matters in the book's intervening chapters, these parts of the book tell stories that are more familiar to historians of food in wartime. In these chapters, Mosby also effectively places Canada's rationing and price controls, gendered politics of consumption, mobilization of domestic work and roles as part of the war effort, and cookbooks and other forms of culinary writing within the comparative frame created by the existing historiography. Rightly committed to acknowledging the diversity of experience within Canada, Mosby's research also led him to a particularly disturbing finding. According to Mosby, nutritionists identified significant malnutrition and even cases of outright hunger and starvation among First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples during the war. Rather than provide food relief, however, some researchers saw an opportunity to advance their scientific agenda. During and after the war, researchers created ''control groups'' of Aboriginal research subjects-many of them students in residential schools-who were systematically denied necessary nutrients in order to test nutritionists' hypotheses. Mosby's subsequent work with the Assembly of First Nations not only points toward the fraught historical relation of science and social inequality but also reminds us of the continued political salience of food policy and practices. Scrupulously researched and written in an accessible style, Food Will Win the War belongs on the bookshelf of every food historian and every Canadianist. It could profitably be used in classrooms for advanced undergraduate students. donna r. gabaccia,
Introduction: Canadian Perspectives on the First World War
Histoire Sociale / Social History , 2014
FEW EVENTS had more impact on Canada than the First World War. A thumbnail sketch would include unprecedented government economic intervention, new national social programmes, accelerated urbanization and industrialization, new rights and roles for women, growing autonomy from Britain, intensified integration with America, bold challenges to civil liberties, and the flowering of Canadian nationalism. For decades, the common refrain was that Canada entered the war as a colony but emerged from it as a nation. Sacrifices and accomplishments on the battlefield and massive contributions on the home front buoyed national pride and confidence. This awareness intensified Canada’s demand to stand as an equal to Britain, a conviction that led to a separate signature for Canada on the Treaty of Versailles, a separate seat for the dominion at the League of Nations, acceleration of the shift from Empire to Commonwealth, and Canada’s autonomy over its own foreign policy with the 1931 Statute of Westminster. But the First World War also brought to the fore complexities based upon factors such as region, ethnicity, class, gender, and ideology that, as never before, threatened national unity.
Corps identity: the letters, diaries and memoirs of Canada's great war soldiers
2008
The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the role published diaries, letters and memoirs of Canadian soldiers played in shaping, consolidating, and preserving the "myth of the [Great] war experience" in Canada. In Death So Noble, Memory, Meaning, and the First World War, Jonathan Vance argues that, during and shortly after the First World War, Canadian politicians, artists and historians created this myth to soften the horrible realities of the trenches. To justify and explain the deaths of more than 60,000 Canadians, the war was most often portrayed as a positive, if costly, experience that led a colony to full nationhood. At the same time, Canadian soldiers were described as backwoodsmen; natural soldiers who evinced a strong disdain for army discipline. -- Although Vance's interpretation of the Great War legacy in Canada has been well received, the role that Canadian soldiers played in the creation of this legacy has yet to be examined. One approach to this en...