On War & Society

The First World War was a literary conflict producing some of the most memorable poems, novels and plays of the twentieth century. While the Second World War left behind a striking visual record, including famous pictures such as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima and Wait for Me Daddy, the First World War is not generally remembered as a visual conflict. But the war's visual record is massive. States promoted the use of photography at the front for their historical and propaganda value. Kodak's portable pocket vest camera was promoted to soldiers, whose private albums took on greater meaning after the war as tokens of remembrance and objects of mourning. Often treated as mere visual representations of the war's textual record, historians are also now considering the history of the photographs themselves. Who took them and for what purpose? What did the photographer leave out of the image and why? As material objects, what did they mean to the owner and how they remembered their war experiences? In this episode of On War & Society, Dr. Beatriz Pichel, author of the new book Picturing the Western Front: Photography, Practices and Experiences in First World War France discusses the visual legacy of the First World War, the importance of treating photographs as primary sources, the controversies over colourisation and the future of photographic history in an age of visual abundance.

In 1965, in the coastal province of Phú Yên, US Armed Forces embarked on an effort to pacify one of the least-secured regions of South Vietnam. Often described as the “other war” to win the “Hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese, pacification was, in reality, a destructive process that relied on the means of conventional warfare to succeed. Clearing, holding, and destroying communist incursions in the provinces would win the loyalty of the South Vietnamese and therefore the war. Nearly a decade later, US Armed Forces were gone and, Phú Yên, like many other provinces, was under Hanoi's control, not Saigon's. For these reasons, historians have taken a greater interest in how pacification was conducted on the ground. In this episode, Dr. Robert Thompson explains the significance of pacification to America's defeat, his thoughts on Ken Burn's popular documentary, and some of the myths that have shaped our understandings of America's War in Vietnam.

Canada's military history in Northwest Europe has been told many times. On 6 June 1944, Canadian forces landed on Juno Beach as part of Operation Overlord, before quickly establishing a bridgehead and moving inland where they encountered, but ultimately overcame, stiff resistance. As the German Reich shrunk in the face of the Allied advance, the Canadians were tasked with liberating the Netherlands. Images of jubilant crowds greeting the  Canadians have been seared in the collective memory. If you visit Normandy today, you will find tokens of thanks in the monuments and local traditions that scatter the Norman coast. But liberation was not achieved simply through tanks, bombs, and bullets. At the sharp end were not just German forces but also civilians who found themselves caught in the path of war. Their presence presented several military and humanitarian problems. Liberation was a messy business. David Borys, producer of the Cool Canadian History podcast and author of the new book, Civilians at the Sharp End: First Canadian Army Civil Affairs in Northwest Europe, joins our program to discuss the monumental task facing Civilian Affairs, their crucial role in military operations and humanitarian aid, and the myths and realities behind the liberation of Northwest Europe.

The United States and the Philippines have been intimately bound by conflict. A US colony from 1898 to 1946, it remained an important US ally in the Pacific. In that time, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos fought and died for the United States, including against fellow Filipinos who opposed their US colonizers and against the Japanese occupation. Filipino immigrants also enlisted to serve on the Western Front in 1917, joined the US Navy in the 1920s, and served in American regiments during the Second World War. Despite these sacrifices, in 1946, US Congress passed the Rescission Act, retroactively barring these veterans from American citizenship and the benefits to which they were legally entitled. Christopher Capozzola, Professor of History at MIT and author of Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America' First Pacific Century, recently joined our program to discuss his new book, the colonization of archives, memory and forgetting, and the efforts of Filipino-American veterans to undo the broken promises of the past.

In April 1918, Canadian soldier Frank Toronto Prewett was buried alive on the Western Front. Managing to claw his way out of the earth, Prewett was reborn but with a lasting trauma that manifested in a curious way. while recuperating alongside Siegfried Sassoon and W.H.R. Rivers at Lennel House, Prewett started to act and identify as an Iroquois man. A gifted poet, his writing attracted the attention of some of the greatest literary figures of the war generation, including Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and Virginia Woolf among many others. But while these literary giants have stood the test of time, Prewett's work has only endured in a handful of anthologies devoted to North American Indigenous poets. His confusing and self-proclaimed postwar identity was only put to rest by a family member's DNA report indicating he had no indigenous ancestry. In this episode of On War & Society, Professor Joy Porter author of the new book Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett, discusses Pretwett's life and legacy, cultural appropriation, and the challenges of writing difficult histories.

The first half of Britain’s twentieth century was shaped by death. Between 1914 and 1918, over 700,000 men died in the First World War, followed by another 250,000 between 1918 and 1919 from the influenza pandemic. Over three decades later, another 380,000 were killed fighting in the Second World War as well over 60,000 civilians from German air raids. The shockingly high death toll of the Great War has often overshadowed that of the Second. Tales of hardships and tragedies left in the wake of German bombs were discouraged from the outset, and the stiff upper lip of the Blitz spirit has come to dominate popular myth. Perhaps for these reasons, scholars have been more reticent about writing an emotional history of death in Britain during the Second World War. In this episode, Lucy Noakes, Professor of History at the University of Essex discusses the reasons for this imbalance, the truths and falsities behind the myths, and the methods that make such a study possible. Whether Britons confronted loss with a quiet stoicism, utilitarian memorials or personalised inscriptions on headstones, the Second World War was nevertheless a war of emotions.

For a long time historians studying the First World War had to rely on the memoirs of soldiers, but over the last several decades, more and more letters have made their way into the archives as family members inherit and donate the written material of their relatives. These sources have initiated a new wave of scholarship devoted to identifying how civilian relationships were maintained, nurtured and interrupted by the war. But much remains to be learned. While we have long wondered about the psychological effects that war had on fighting men, what about their loved ones at home? After all, a significant number of soldiers left behind a spouse. In Canada alone, over 80,000 women were married to soldiers serving overseas. In this episode of On War & Society,  Martha Hanna author of Anxious Days and Tearful Nights: Canadian War Wives during the Great War, discusses the challenges and ethics of working with private correspondence as well as the differences between how Canadian and European wives experienced the Great War at home.

In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, five people were killed and another seventeen were injured from anthrax spores as part of a deliberate attack against members of the US media and Senate. Fears quickly spread that this was another incident of Islamic terrorism. As part of the US-led War on Terror, large sums of money and resources were mobilized in the name of biodefense and security, altering the ways in which medicine was practised on a domestic and global scale. However, it was quickly concluded that these spores originated in US labs, and the prime suspects were white male American scientists. In this episode, Professor Gwen D'Arcangelis observes how the anthrax scare and the current COVID-19 pandemic are part of a broader and ongoing history of American bio-imperialism. 

On the morning of 6 December 1917 two cargo vessells, the SS Mant Blanc and SS Imo collided in Halifax Harbour. The resulting catastrophic explosion occurred thousands of miles away from the Western Front but it was a direct result of the First World War. The war was also essential for what followed. Of the 3000 troop garrison located at Halifax, 1500 were awaiting transport to Europe and provided vital support and resources in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. In this episode, Professor Roger Sarty, a leading Canadian Naval and military historian discusses the late T. Joseph Scanlon's book Catastrophe: Stories and Lessons from the Halifax Explosion and the military history of the disaster in Halifax.

In his new book The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering and Remaking Canada’s Second World War, Tim Cook reminds us that "if we do not tell our own stories, no one else will." But the ways in which Canadians have chosen to remember the Second World War has been far from consistent. Once viewed as the necessary war, the country quickly put the conflict behind itself. Cenotaphs built in the shadow of the Great War were simply given an addendum. There was no national Second World War memorial; no major monument to commemorate victories in Normandy or the Netherlands. For many years, when Canadians spoke of the war they spoke of tragedy, blunders and mistakes. But in the twenty-first century, Canadians and veterans have since reclaimed the legacy of the war. As veterans dwindle and historians open up new avenues for understanding this contentious past, Tim Cook joins us once again to make a plea to fellow Canadians to continue the fight for their history.

David O’Keefe is the author of One Day in August: The Untold Story Behind Canada’s Tragedy at Dieppe and his most recent book, Seven Days in Hell: Canada’s Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers. Never one to shy away from public exposure, O’Keefe has also been prolific in film and television, creating and collaborating in more than fifteen documentaries. In this wide-ranging interview, O’Keefe discusses the thirty-year journey behind his research into the Black Watch snipers, the benefits and challenges of doing history on film and television and the impact that the pandemic has had on research and public outreach.

Tim Cook is a historian at the Canadian War Museum a two-time winner of the CP Stacey Award for the best book in the field of Canadian history, the 2009 winner of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, the 2013 winner of the Pierre Berton Award for popularizing Canadian history and a member of the Order of Canada. With such a long list of public and academic honours, Tim is that rare historian who has managed to find success both within and beyond the academy. With a scarcity of academic jobs and a new generation of historians embracing digital outlets to disseminate their work, Kyle Falcon discusses with Tim the importance and challenges of writing public history.

At the age of 13, Ted Barris asked his father a common question: “Dad what did you do in the war?” This began a fifty-seven-year investigation into his father’s war experiences as a sergeant medic in the US Army during its bloodiest campaign during the liberation of Europe. The book that grew out of this question: Rush To Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire shares stories of combat medics from the American Civil War to more recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I sat down with Ted to discuss his book and the one burning question that he never had a chance to ask his father: what motivates medics to rush into danger?

Henri Bourassa was a French Canadian nationalist, politician, journalist, and “one of the most…vocal voices of dissent in Canada during the First World War.” Despite Bourassa’s significance on the Canadian home front and within the international pacifist movement, his story is little-known outside of Quebec. Geoff Keelan sits down with Kyle Falcon to discuss Bourassa’s life and legacy, and how the methods of biography can help us appreciate this uniquely Canadian figure’s place amongst an international community of dissent during the First World War.

Approximately 750,000 people were killed over four years during the American Civil War, two-thirds of these fatalities were caused by disease. This staggering death count was a shock to American physicians who were unregulated, undertrained and operating in the dark. But the war also offered opportunities. In the laboratory of the battlefield, medical practitioners gained access to an abundance of cadavers as well as demand for more efficient structures of organisation and dissemination of knowledge. Historians have debated the extent that war alters medicine. In her book, Learning from the Wounded, historian Shauna Devine argues that in the case of the American Civil War, the violence had a profound and lasting influence on American medical science and practice. In this episode of On War and Society, Devine speaks with Kyle Falcon about historical myths, the politics of the body and the lessons that can be learned for new generations of medical practitioners when we place the American Civil War under the knife.

In the summer of 1937, Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King spent four days in Berlin. He arrived at Friedrichstrasse Station, home of the impressive U-bahn subway which was built in preparation for the 1936 Berlin Olympics; a year later this same station would transport Jewish children to Britain. During his time in Berlin, King visited a Hitler Youth Camp, which was later absorbed into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Before he returned to Canada, King sat face to face with Adolf Hitler at the Reich Presidential Palace. “My sizing up of the man as I sat and talked with him,” King later reflected, “was that he is one who truly loves his fellow-men, and his country, and would make any sacrifices for their good.” When King returned to Berlin in 1946, those sites that so impressed him nine years earlier were now in ruins. Today they are marked with memorials to the victims of Nazism. In his new book, Four Days in Hitler’s Germany: MacKenzie King’s Mission to Avert a Second World War, Robert Teigrob of Ryerson University, shares King’s travels through a history of Berlin before, during and after Nazi rule. In this episode of On War and Society, Teigrob sits down with Kyle Falcon to discuss McKenzie King’s four days in Berlin and the complicated moral questions that it raises about present-day diplomacy and historical commemoration.

Bankruptcy, famine in the countryside, and a starving army were just some of the crises facing Louis XIV in 1709. Eight years into the War of the Spanish Succession, the allied armies led by the Duke of Marlborough, had also managed to breach the French defences on the Flanders frontier. Threatened with the prospect of invasion, Marshal Villars and his French forces met Marlborough in the field resulting in the climactic Battle of Malplaquet, halting the allied advance and changing the course of the war. Or so this is how the battle if often remembered. Darryl Dee is not so sure. His research questions the idea that the Battle of Malplaquet, and battles in general, can ever be so decisive. In this episode of On War & Society, Darryl Dee and Kyle Falcon discuss researching and teaching the great battles in history.

On this month's episode Of On War and Society, Kyle Pritchard sits down with Dr Roger Sarty to discuss the life and career of CP Stacey. Sarty explains how CP Stacey went from being a young student with no interest in research to the founding father of Canadian military history. Throughout his career Stacey faced considerable set backs in the form of limited finances, a tight job market, a public initially hostile to his work and personal tragedy. But through his own hard work and the considerable of help from his family and fellow historians, Stacey was able to make a career as a historian, first in the army as historical officer and later as a university based historian. As a historian Stacey displayed a rare gift for understanding the demands of war, a gift which earned him the admiration of the Canadian Military. But despite his success Stacey remained a humble and deeply generous man who helped start the career of some of Canada's greatest historians. 

As Canadians, there is a sense that international collaboration has acted and continues to act as a positive force in the world today. Yet certain events serve as a reminder that the foundations of our international relationships have sometimes developed not out of cooperation, but out of aggression and intervention. The Boxer Rebellion unfolded during the high tide of imperialism at the turn of the 20th century. In response to pressure from foreign diplomatic and religious influences, the Boxers, or the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, rose as an anti-foreign Buddhist sect, taking control over large swaths of Northern China resulting in the deaths of some 200 Western missionaries and over 2000 Chinese Christian converts. The international involvement to put down the Boxer Rebellion, through an eight nation alliance which occupied and divided Beijing, not only provides a litmus test to measure the imperial ambitions of Western nations, but also speaks to what happens when our communications have broken down and civil methods for resolving international crises have been exhausted. In this episode, Kyle Pritchard sits down with Blaine Chiasson about the historical importance of the rebellion and how questions around war and empire continue to shape multilateral relations today.   Blaine Chiasson is an associate professor in Chinese History at Wilfrid Laurier University with a specialization in the history of colonization in Northeastern China. He is currently working on a history of the occupation of Beijing and Tianjin by the Eight Nation Alliance during and after the Boxer Rebellion.

The Italian Campaign during the Second World War remains a subject of controversy—whether it was “Normandy’s Long Right Flank” or a costly stalemate continues to be debated by historians to modern day. Terry Copp, director emeritus of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, believes he has found a new multinational approach to studying the Italian Campaign as he zeroes in on the late 1943/early 1944 Allied assault on the Axis Winter Line. The Winter Line was the site of many famous battles that have since become important national icons, including Ortona, Orsogna, the Rapido River and Monte Cassino. Terry insists to properly comprehend the campaign historians should look passed the national narratives and address the combat operations across the entire peninsula. 

Jewish people are traditionally depicted as victims in the Second World War literature. This should come as no surprise, as six million Jews were killed at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Ellin Bessner, in her new book Double Threat, insists that at least in the case of Jewish Canadians, they were not just victims of the war but also active players in the eventual victory of the Allies against Germany and the Axis powers during the Second World War. Canadian Jews enlisted at the same proportional rates as the rest of Canada and served valiantly and bravely in the face of an enemy that not only wanted to see them defeated in battle but exterminated from the face of the earth. References Irving Abella and Harold Troper. None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983. Ellin Bessner. Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military and World War II. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

Sometimes we find Canadians in the most unlikely of places. During the Second World War, within the crews of airmen responsible for breaching the Ruhr dams of Nazi Germany, there were thirty Canadians. In 1943, these men, along with about a hundred others, took to the skies in May 1943 aboard nineteen Lancaster Bombers to drop the now infamous bouncing bombs that would devastate enemy power plants, factories and German infrastructure after blowing up several dams. Now known as the Dam Busters, in this interview, Ted Barris discusses the deeds of these Canadian airmen and legacies they left behind. Ted Barris is a journalist and award-winning author of 18 books. He lived in Oxbow, Ontario. References Ted Barris. Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid on Nazi Germany (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2018).

As the Second World War fades from living memory, D-Day, the Allied operation whose success led to the liberation of France and the rest of Western Europe from Axis forces, continues to serve as a microcosm for the preservation of democratic values in the world today. For those who fought, D-Day has important lessons to teach about how the past is remembered and what stories we tell to future generations. In this On War and Society Special Episode, guest host Kyle Pritchard talks with producer Elliott Halpern to discuss a new documentary airing on History, formerly the History Channel, on June 1st, 2019 at 9 pm. “D-Day in 14 Stories” blends first-hand accounts with re-enactments and animated renderings of the landings and is exclusively narrated by veterans and witnesses of the Allied Invasion of Normandy. To commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the landings next month, "D-Day in 14 Stories" offers a varied account of the strategic and personal challenges veterans and others faced. Elliott Halpern is an Emmy-award winning producer. He is the owner and creative director of yap films and has produced, written and directed many outstanding feature length films for television. He has previously produced Canad's War in Colour (2005), Vimy Ridge: Heaven to Hell (2007) and Black Watch Snipers (2016). References Elliott Halpern, D-Day in 14 Stories. Documentary. Directed by Jamie Kastner. Toronto: History, Yap Films, June 2019.

The contribution of nurses to attend to the wounded was essential to military care and recovery during the First World War. Less noted is the role of the middle class and educated, though largely unqualified, women who assisted in filling in the gaps at overburdened hospitals and convalescent homes as voluntary nurses. In this episode, guest host Kyle Pritchard sits down with Linda Quiney to discuss her research on the Canadian Voluntary Aid Detachment in her new book, This Small Army of Women. Women drawn to voluntary medical service sought a mixed sense of camaraderie, patriotism and adventure. Yet many experienced difficult and mundane work as a result of hostility from professional nurses and doctors who doubted their abilities. While some continued in emerging disciplines like physiotherapy and dietetics after they returned to Canada, others found it difficult to continue in the medical field. Whether they married or continued on in another career, Linda suggests that the majority of women went back to their lives with fond memories of their time in service. Linda Quiney is a historian and serves as an affiliate with the Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry at the University of British Columbia. She is also the author of a number of articles and chapters on Canadian and Newfoundland women’s wartime voluntary work in support of the military medical services with the St. John Ambulance and Canadian Red Cross. References Ian Miller, Our Glory and Our Grief: Torontonians and the Great War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Linda Quiney, This Small Army of Women. Vancouver: University of UBC Press, 2017.

Sometimes we forget that the field of war and society encompasses so much more than Canada. Many of the guests we've had on our show study the history of war and society in Canada, but in this episode, Wilson Bell speaks about the Soviet Gulag system during the Second World War and his new book, Stalin's Gulag at War. Wilson Bell is an associate professor of history at Thompson Rivers University. He is the author of numerous articles on the Gulag, and his first book, Stalin’s Gulag at War, was published in 2018 with the University of Toronto Press. References Wilson T. Bell, Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory during the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018).

Shell shock has become a stand-in for the experience of all soldiers of the First World War. And it has also become one of the most popular topics of inquiry for historians of the First World War. Mark Humphries, associate professor history at Wilfrid Laurier University and Director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, has contributed another addition to the ever-growing literature on the topic with his new book on shell shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Looking at the experience of doctors and patients as well as the medical management system that developed overseas, he investigates how shell shock was managed and mismanaged and how the search for a solution remained elusive. References Mark Osborne Humphries, A Weary Road: Shell Shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. 

We know a lot about the urban experience during the First World War in Canada but far less about the rural equivalent. Canadian historians sometimes assume––and quite wrongly––that the urban Canadian experience of the war can stand in for the rural. But it can't. Jonathan Vance's new book A Township at War shows that the conventional narrative of the First World War in Canada did not match that of East Flamborough from 1914 to 1918. Prohibition, conscription, suffrage, enemy alien internment––these are the issues encountered time and again when writing about the First World War. But in a small rural southern Ontario community, these were not the pressing issues of the day. The issues were starkly different. Jonathan F. Vance is a Distinguished University Professor and J.B. Smallman Chair in the Department of History at Western University where he teaches military history, Canadian history and social memory. He is the author of many books and articles, including Death So Noble (1997), Unlikely Soldiers (2008), Maple Leaf Empire (2011) and A Township at War (2018). References Vance, Jonathan. Death so Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. ------. A Township at War. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018.

Since the late 1990s, Canadian historian Tim Cook has carved out a niche in the field of First World War history. In his two-volume social history of the war, he spoke of a soldiers’ culture, which bound Canadians together on the battlefields and helped them cope with the immense stress and strain of war from 1914 to 1918. This year, published with Allen Lane, Tim released The Secret History of Soldiers, a book dedicated solely to this soldiers’ culture that has become his most significant contribution to our understanding of the First World War in Canada. Tim speaks of a few of the aspects of this soldiers’ culture, including swearing, slang and material objects. At the end of the war, this culture did not necessarily disappear. In Legion halls and reunions, veterans recreated this culture in a civilian world, however temporary it might have been. Tim Cook is the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum. He is the author of 11 books, including Shock Troops, Vimy and most recently, The Secret History of Soldiers. Among many others, he is the recipient of the RBC Taylor Prize, J.W. Dafoe Prize (twice), Ottawa Book Award (twice) and the C.P. Stacey Award (twice). He was recently awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media. He is a Member of the Order of Canada. References  Tim Cook. “Battles of the Imagined Past: Canada’s Great War and Memory.” Canadian Historical Review 95, no. 3 (2014): 417–26. ------. The Secret History of Soldiers: How Canadians Survived the Great War. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2018. ------. Vimy: The Battle and the Legend. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2017. Mark Humphries. “Between Commemoration and History: The Historiography of the Canadian Corps and Military Overseas.” Canadian Historical Review 95, no. 3 (2014): 384–97. Amy Shaw. “Expanding the Narrative: A First World War with Women, Children, and Grief.” Canadian Historical Review 95, no. 3 (2014): 398­–406. Jonathan F. Vance. Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997.

Tim Cook loves to write. As many Canadian historians will attest, Tim is one of the most prolific writers in the profession––both in terms of volume and content. Since 1998, Tim has published a dozen books on the First and Second World Wars, greatly advancing our knowledge of both. But how does he do it? In this month’s episode, Tim discusses the process of researching and writing, as well as his new book, The Secret History of Soldiers, published with Allen Lane this year. In a jaw-dropping statement, Tim revealed how many words he writes per week. Tim Cook is the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum. He has published a dozen books on the history of the First and Second World Wars and is the recipient of many awards for his writing including the RBC Taylor Prize, the J.W. Dafoe Prize (twice) and the C.P. Stacey Prize (twice). He was recently awarded the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Governor General's History Award for Popular Media. Tim is a Member of the Order of Canada. References Tim Cook. At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1914–1916. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2007. ------. Clio’s Warriors: Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World Wars. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006. ------. Fight to the Finish: Canadians Fighting the Second World War, 1944–1945. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2015. ------. “‘More a Medicine than a Beverage’: ‘Demon Rum’ and the Canadian Trench Soldier of the First World War,” Canadian Military History 9, no. 1 (2000): 6–22. ------. The Necessary War: Canadians Fighting the Second World War, 1939­–1943. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2014. ------. No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998. ------. The Secret History of Soldiers: How Canadians Survived the Great War. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2018.  ------. Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008. ------. “The Top Ten Most Important Books of Canadian Military History.” Canadian Military History 18, no. 4 (2009): 65–74.  Richard Holmes. Firing Line. London: Cape, 1985. Desmond Morton. When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the Great War. Toronto: Random House, 1993. Bill Rawling. Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914–1918. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.

Military families are essential to the care of veterans in both the past and present. Yet current veteran policies and programs do not fully provide the necessary services military families require for the process of healing and recovery. For the final episode of our four-part series on the past and present experiences of veterans in Canada, two scholars, a veteran and a caregiver continue their discussion of the effects of military service on veterans’ families. Drawing comparisons between veteran and family experiences during the First World War and the present, the guests discuss current research and the challenges mental trauma places on the family dynamic. These challenges include recognizing the sacrifices of military spouses and the risk of intergenerational trauma being passed down to veterans’ children. The discussion reveals how the fears of veterans and their families have been shaped by changes in government responsibilities to the veteran community over the past century and how this history continues to inform current veteran policy and program reform. This episode in funded by the Department of National Defence. It is hosted by Dr. Geoffrey Hayes of the University of Waterloo. Panelists are Dr. Jessica Meyer, Dr. Deborah Norris, Jody Mitic and Kim Davis. Dr. Geoffrey Hayes is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Waterloo and a faculty associate of the LCMSDS. His research focuses on Canadian military history. He is the author of Crerar’s Lieutenants: Inventing the Canadian Junior Army Officer, 1939-45, published with UBC Press in 2017, as well as the co-editor of Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment (2007) and Canada and the Second World War: Essays in Honour of Terry Copp (2012).

Soldiers returning from the battlefield rarely return unscathed. Yet veterans’ families continue to be inadequately prepared for the difficulties of military life. For episode three of four on the past and present experiences of veterans in Canada, two scholars and two veterans discuss the effects of veteran deployment and eventual discharge on military family well-being. Their discussion reveals the need to listen to military family advocates to better inform policy, but also how many military families are unaware of the financial and emotional support available, and the fear of admitting vulnerability that sometimes prevents veterans and military families from receiving the therapeutic, financial and community assistance they require. This episode in funded by the Department of National Defence. It is hosted by Dr. Geoffrey Hayes of the University of Waterloo. Panelists are Dr. Jessica Meyer, Dr. Deborah Norris, Jody Mitic and Kim Davis.

Wars often time come home. Reintegration into civilian life comes with a whole new set of challenges for veterans. For the second part of our four-part series on the past and present experiences of veterans in Canada, two historians and two veterans discuss the instability of civilian life for many veterans after having served in the military. Mental trauma, both sustained on the battlefield and even after returning home, contributes to this instability, as the government and larger Canadian society fails to understand the challenges many veterans face. This episode is funded by the Department of National Defence. It is hosted by Dr. Amy Milne-Smith of Wilfrid Laurier University’s History Department. Panelists are Dr. Mark Humphries, Dr. Claire Cookson-Hills, Bruce Moncur and Marie-Claude Gagnon.

Too often we forget the casualties of war. Whether on film, in novels and even in writing history, scenes of soldiering and warfare pervade while the aftermath is ignored. Nationalism is deeply intertwined with many twenty and twenty-first century wars, making it sometimes difficult to acknowledge war’s painful legacies. Over the next few months, we are hoping to counter that narrative by bringing the historical and contemporary experiences of Canadian veterans to the fore.  This episode is part one of two on the past and present experiences of veterans in Canada. A panel consisting of two historians and two veterans discuss issues relating to mental health and trauma among Canadian veterans of twentieth and twenty-first century wars. This episode is funded by the Department of National Defence. It is hosted by Dr. Amy Milne-Smith of Wilfrid Laurier University’s History Department. Panelists are Dr. Mark Humphries, Dr. Claire Cookson-Hills, Bruce Moncur and Marie-Claude Gagnon.

Since 2014, there has been an outpouring of literature on the First World War that has moved the field in exciting new directions. Over thirty books have been released by Canadian academic presses over the past almost four years, including titles on conscription, shell shock, and the memory of the war. But before these books were published, Mark Humphries wrote an intriguing 2014 article in the Canadian Historical Review about the historiography of the First World War in Canada and where he thought the field should lead next. Among several other revealing insights, he urged future scholars to adopt a transnational approach that would challenge the exceptionalist literature that characterizes Canadian First World War history-writing. But where has the field gone since? Mark has some thoughts. Mark is the director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, the Dunkley Chair in War and the Canadian Experience and an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Wilfrid Laurier University. References Tim Cook. Clio’s Warriors: Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World Wars. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006. ------. The Secret History of Soldiers: How Canadians Survived the Great War. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2018. Patrick Dennis. Reluctant Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and the Great War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. Richard Holt. Filling the Ranks: Manpower in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918. Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.  G.W.L. Nicholson. Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War: Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1962. Pierre Nora. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations26 (1989): 7–24. Gary Sheffield. Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities. London: Headline, 2001. Hew Strachan. The First World War: To Arms. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Nearly 660,000 bags of mail were sent to Canada from soldiers in France and Belgium during the First World War. In this episode, Dr. Kristine Alexander sits down with Kyle Pritchard to discuss her research on the topic of families, children, and letter-writing during the First World War. Kristine is an associate professor in history, a Canadian Research Chair, and Director of the Institute for Child and Youth Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Her book Guiding Modern Girlspublished in 2017, examines the connections which linked girlhood with colonialism and empire in the post-war and inter-war periods. In her new research, Kristine contends that letter-writing is a valuable entry point into the study of family under wartime conditions and finds that a more critical approach to these letters reveal soldiers often defied the emotional tropes historians have assigned to them. References  Alexander, Kristine.Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. Dubinsky, Karen, Adele Perry, and Henry Yu, eds. Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2015.  Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Glassford, Sarah, and Amy J. Shaw, eds. A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012. Keshen, Jeffrey. Propaganda and Censorship during Canada’s Great War. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1996.

Billy Bishop is one of the most recognizable names in the military history of Canada. He was Canada’s top ace during the First World War, credited with over seventy victories during his career as a pilot with Royal Flying Corps. But there were many other pilots whose names have been forgotten because of Bishop’s looming shadow. Graham Broad, associate professor of history at King’s College at Western University, has uncovered the story of another ace, Eddie McKay, from London, Ontario. In this episode, Broad talks about not only the story of McKay, but also the process of researching and writing the story of McKay. References Graham Broad, One in a Thousand: The Life and Death of Captain Eddie McKay, Royal Flying Corps. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.

Discussions of the First World War in Europe are dominated by the events that transpired in France, Great Britain and Germany. But on the periphery of Europe, fascinating local, regional, national and international conflicts were also at play. The Finnish Civil War was one of these interesting, peripheral events. Fought between the socialist Reds and the anti-Russian Whites, the civil war began with a Red coup d’état and a White-led mass imprisonment of thousands of Russian army soldiers in January 1918. Few agree on who started the conflict, but the result was nonetheless tragic. More than 36,000 people were killed in just three and a half months. The legacies of the civil war were far-reaching. In the following decades, Finns left their home country in search for a new life. The political ideologies that were so stark during the Finnish Civil War remained for generations. Guest: Alec Maavara References Maavara, Alec. Finland Divided: The Finnish Civil War 1918. Finland Divided. https://finlanddivided.wordpress.com (accessed March 25, 2018).

The image of the mushroom cloud, commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, provides a stark reminder of the power and devastation of the atomic age. Aware of the horrible circumstances involving Hiroshima and Nagasaki, few may realize the full extent of nuclear weapons testing in the postwar period. Dr. Martha Smith-Norris, an associate professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan, explores this topic in her recent book, Domination and Resistance: The United States and the Marshall Islands during the Cold War. The United States seized the Marshall Islands from Japan toward the end of the Second World War and in the years that followed conducted extensive nuclear weapons and missile testing in this region of the central Pacific. Military testing in the Marshalls reinforced the US strategy of deterrence, but as Martha tell us, grand strategy and nuclear politics came with drastic consequences for the local population. Not only did the United States test nuclear bombs and missiles in the Marshall Islands, military scientists also conducted research to measure the effects of human exposure to radioactive fallout. Exposed Marshallese experienced immediate and lasting effects to their health and daily life. Testing led to the displacement of local communities and widespread ecological ruin. Martha explains this history from the perspective of the Marshall Islanders who responded to US domination with indigenous acts of resistance, acts that she argues deserve continued recognition and support. Guest host: Dr. Matthew Wiseman (@MatthewSWiseman) References Smith-Norris, Martha. Domination and Resistance: The United States and the Marshall Islands during the Cold War. Honolulu: University Of Hawai’i Press, 2016.

Post-traumatic stress order (or PTSD) remains a prominent issue within the Canadian military and has affected thousands of veterans who returned home. At the end of 2017, the Nova Scotia government announced that an inquiry will be made after a veteran shot and killed his daughter, wife and mother, then hanged himself in 2016. It is suspected that he had PTSD. Cases such as these have been featured in the media after many wars in the past, not just the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Dr. Meghan Fitzpatrick, a postdoctoral fellow in War Studies at the Royal Military College in Kingston, ON, just published a book on mental trauma during one of these past wars––the Korean War from 1950–53. She visited the studio to discuss her book, the various ways the military treated mental trauma on the battlefields of Korea, and also the costs of that trauma when soldiers returned home. At the end of the conflict, many veterans became disentangled in the politics of memory, as the conflict in Korea was not viewed as a legitimate war. It left many veterans bitter with the treatment they were given after protecting the democratic order in the world. References Fitzpatrick, Meghan. Invisible Scars: Mental Trauma in the Korean War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017.

Many have fallen down the rabbit hole of over-researching. Telling the entire story is tempting, but it is an unattainable standard. Reconstructing the past out a series of texts simply cannot measure up to the multifaceted and dynamic realities of an all-encompassing history. And so it is imperative that historians abandon this idealized goal––if not for the sake of time, at least then for one’s sanity. Dr. Geoff Hayes, an associate professor of history at the University of Waterloo, visited us this month to talk about his new book Crerar’s Lieutenants. But before we discussed its content, Geoff talked about the challenges of the project, from the initial search to the eventual discovery of a satisfactory framework, and the necessity of imposing self-limitations on one’s historical research. Crerar’s Lieutenants unfolded over a period of many years, during which several drafts of the eventual manuscript were written. And with each revision, a new story was told. It wasn’t until he began to explore the Junior Army Officer through the lens of gender and masculinity though that Geoff finally found a framework that he felt was appropriate. It was an arduous journey to the final manuscript, but a fruitful one that led him to discover the military’s ideal Junior Army Officer, and how the real-life officers negotiated these ideals while fighting on the battlefields of the Second World War. References Hayes, Geoffrey. Crerar’s Lieutenants: Inventing the Canadian Junior Army Officer, 1939­–45. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. ------. The Lincs: A History of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment at War. Waterloo: Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, 1986. ------. Waterloo County: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1997.  Humphries, Mark. “War’s Long Shadow: Masculinity, Medicine, and the Gendered Politics of Trauma, 1914–39.” Canadian Historical Review 91, no. 3 (2010): 503–31. ------. A Weary Road: Shell Shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. McGeer, Eric. Varsity’s Soldiers: A History of the University of Toronto Contingent, Canadian Officers Training Corps, 1914–1968. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

The Conscription Crisis was the central political conflict of the First World War, affecting not only the Canadian government but having an immediate impact on over 400,000 Canadians who were registered for conscription with the intention of being sent overseas. Historians have focused on national divisions between English and French, rural and urban, and the working and middle class, but what has often been lost in these debates are those most directly impacted by conscription – the conscripts themselves. With four of his own ancestors conscripted and casualties of the First World War, Patrick Dennis, in his recently released book, Reluctant Warriors, sheds new light on both the events which led to the decision of the Canadian government to enact conscription in 1917, and the vital contribution made by these conscripts during the Hundred Days campaign of 1918. Guest host Kyle Pritchard sits down with Patrick to discuss his research on the experiences of Canadian conscripts and the present-day legacies of conscription. References  Byers, Dan. Zombie Army: The Canadian Army and Conscription in the Second World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016. Dennis, Patrick M. Reluctant Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and the Great War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. Holt, Richard. Filling the Ranks: Manpower in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1918. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017. Granatstein, J.L., and J.M. Hitsman. Broken Promises: A History of Conscription in Canada. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk hit theatres this past summer. It was met with critical acclaim and made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. It is arguably one of the greatest war films Hollywood has ever produced and certainly gave its viewers an authentic portrayal of the Battle of Dunkirk from the air, the water and the beach in the spring of 1940. It was a film that as Terry Copp explains “makes your blood boil.” But what we learn from Dunkirk is more raw emotion, fear and suspense of being a soldier, a pilot or a civilian crew member sailing the waters of the British channel. What the viewers do not get from the film is the broader history of the Second World War. What led these British troops to the beaches of Dunkirk? What role did the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force play in the battle? Where were the French? Terry Copp, an eminent military historian in Canada, has been researching the Second World War for decades and has some insight into what exactly constitutes this broader historical picture. In the episode, Terry helps answers the question––what is the history of the Battle of Dunkirk? And for those interested in Terry’s new website on Montreal and the First World War, you can find it here: montrealatwar.com.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was fought in April 1917 during the First World War. Four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force attacked the German stronghold of Hill 145 on the morning of 9 April, and three days later, had successfully pushed the German army off of the ridge. Since those cold and wet April days one hundred years ago, Vimy has for many Canadians emerged as a symbol of Canadian nationhood. Ian McKay and Jamie Swift last year published The Vimy Trap: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War. Its exploration of the “childish irrationalism” of ‘Vimyism,” has been met with much praise; one recent view maintains that the Vimy Trap is a “necessary book.” But not all the reviews have been positive. Dr. Geoffrey Hayes of the University of Waterloo has concerns with the book’s arguments and approach. References Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford University Press, 1975. Mckay, Ian and Jamie Swift. The Vimy Trap: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2016.  Vance, Jonathan F. Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. Winter, J.M. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Dr. Matthew Wiseman just finished his Ph.D. on Canadian science during the early Cold War. And he is a bit concerned about the developing nuclear crisis between the United States and North Korea, as many of us are too. President Donald Trump’s fiery rhetoric has agitated Kim Jong Un and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the point where they are threatening to bomb Guam, an unincorporated territory of the United States. Matthew explains how Canada has responded to nuclear crises in the past, and how it might maneuver in this current, heated climate.  The Cold War was a pivotal event in the twentieth century, and Matthew tells us how Canada was ‘pulled’ into it following the Second World War. Although pursuing independent and separate agendas, Canada, the United States and Great Britain all looked to the Arctic as a ‘mutual interest point’ when preparing for a potential northern attack from the Soviet Union. For Canada, the Defence Research Board established a facility at Churchill, Manitoba, and began a series of human tests on military personnel and Inuk individuals in the North to test the suitability of people fighting in the cold-weather climate of the Canadian subarctic and Arctic. The tests conducted were ethically ambiguous, leading Matthew to question whether consent was given by the medical students and Inuit involved in human testing. Music by Lee Rosevere. References Wiseman, Matthew S. “Unlocking the ‘Eskimo Secret’: Defence Science in the Cold War Canadian Arctic, 1947-1954.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 26, no. 1 (2015; published July 2016): 191–223.

Who is Wilfrid Laurier University’s Cleghorn Fellow in War and Society? Mary Chaktsiris dropped by the studio this month to talk about her new position, teaching in a different environment, and her research into Toronto and the Great War. Mary became the Cleghorn Fellow in 2016, following a two-year stint at the Council of Ontario Universities. Teaching four classes at a new university this past year, Mary still finds that community-building is one of the most important parts of being a professor wherever one may be. Focusing on Toronto during the Great War-period in her dissertation, Mary insists that gender is a key component of understanding Torontonians’ responses to the war effort. In doing so, her short but stellar publishing career has been marked by challenging or as she puts it, “complicating” the literature on the First World War. Certainly, patriotism and pro-war sentiment existed in Toronto, but so did the voices of ambivalence. As she moves on as a scholar in history, Mary is now looking into the post-war experiences of veterans living in Canada. Utilizing the valuable resource of the pension records located here at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, she is beginning to understand the challenges and difficulties that many veterans encountered when they came home. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, Mary says, but many of these challenges that veterans of the Great War faced in the 1920s and 1930s continue to plague veterans of today. Music by Lee Rosevere. References Chaktsiris, Mary G. “A Great War of Expectations: Men, Mothers, and Monsters in Toronto, 1914–1918.” Ph.D. Diss., University of Toronto, 2015. ------. “‘Not Unless Necessary’: Student Responses to War Work at the University of Toronto, 1914–1918.” Histoire Sociale/Social History 47, no. 94 (2014): 293–310.

What happened to Montreal during the Great War? For the past three years, distinguished military historian Terry Copp has been researching Canada’s metropolis––Montreal––from 1914 to 1918. In our conversation, Terry discusses the various social, religious and political cleavages within the city beyond the divide between English and French-speaking populations. Although the war intensified many of these cleavages and sewed deep divisions between communities residing within Montreal, Terry is hesitant to argue that the war fundamentally changed the city. Manuscripts published in university presses are the ‘gold standard’ for those working in the field of history, but Terry has decided not to pursue his project on Montreal in traditional manuscript form. He and a student-research assistant have been creating a website for his project, which will allow him the freedom to include (and exclude) short vignettes, stories, maps and databases, which would be nearly impossible to do in a manuscript. It has given him the freedom that many scholars envy when going through the editing stages of publishing a book.  Terry is best known for his award-winning work on the military history of Canadians fighting in the Second World War. But he would not have always called himself a military historian. In the final segment of the episode, Terry discusses his decision to transition from a labour historian to an historian of the military, although he might better be described as an historian of war and society. Why he returned to Montreal for his current research project is the result of his students and their research––something that has always stimulated Terry and kept him going over his career.   References  Copp, J.T. The Anatomy of Poverty: The Condition of the Working Class in Montreal, 1897-1929. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974. ------. Cinderella Army: The Canadians in Northwest Europe, 1944–45. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. ------. Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. Gregory, Adrian. The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.  Keelan, Geoff. “Bourassa’s War: Henri Bourassa and the First World War.” PhD Dissertation, University of Waterloo, 2015.

Eric Story sits down with Dr. Alex Souchen, a post-doctoral fellow at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies in Waterloo, ON, to discuss his research on munitions dumping in Canada during the 1940s. Alex helps explain the destructive environmental legacies of munitions dumping in Canada and around the world, and speaks about the growing scientific debate surrounding these legacies. Where does the historian fit in these discussions? In a small role, perhaps, says Alex, but an essential one if we are to understand the ecological impacts of munitions dumping.  Towards the end of the conversation, Alex provides some helpful advice for soon-to-be graduating PhDs about how to market yourself as you enter the workforce and the difficult transition from academics to a profession outside of the field of history.  Music credits: Lee Rosevere