On War & Society

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