Author: Gwynne Dyer
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307361691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 is a serious contemplation of what it means to engage in major world conflicts, and the price we pay when we do. The First World War was Canada's baptism of fire, or at least the only one that people now remember. (Montrealers in 1776 or Torontonians in 1814 would have taken a different view.) From 1914 to 1918, after a century of peace, Canadians were plunged back into the old world of great power rivalries and great wars. So was everybody else, but Canadians were volunteers. We didn't have to fight, but we chose to, out of loyalty to ideas and institutions that today many of us no longer believe in. And we have been doing the same thing ever since, although we haven't quite given up on the latest set of ideas and institutions yet. In Canada in the Great Power Game, Gwynne Dyer moves back and forth between the seminal event, the First World War, and all the later conflicts that Canada chose to fight in. He draws parallels between these conflicts, with the same idealism among the young soldiers, and the same deeply conflicted emotions among the survivors, surfacing time and again in every war right down to Afghanistan. And in each case, the same arguments pro and con arise—mostly from people who are a long, safe way from the killing grounds—for every one of those "wars of choice." Echoing throughout the book are the voices of the people who lived through the wars: the veterans, the politicians, the historians, the eyewitnesses. And Dyer takes a number of so-called excursions from his historical account, in which he revisits the events and puts them in context, pausing to ask such questions as "What if we hadn't fought Hitler?" and "Is war written in our genes?" This entertaining and provocative book casts an unsparing eye over what happens when Canada and the great powers get in the war business, illuminating much about how we see ourselves on the world stage.
Author: Ian McKay
Publisher: Between the Lines
ISBN: 1771132760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
The story of the bloody 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge is, according to many of today’s tellings, a heroic founding moment for Canada. This noble, birth-of-a-nation narrative is regularly applied to the Great War in general. Yet this mythical tale is rather new. “Vimyism”— today’s official story of glorious, martial patriotism—contrasts sharply with the complex ways in which veterans, artists, clerics, and even politicians who had supported the war interpreted its meaning over the decades. Was the Great War a futile imperial debacle? A proud, nation-building milestone? Contending Great War memories have helped to shape how later wars were imagined. The Vimy Trap provides a powerful probe of commemoration cultures. This subtle, fast-paced work of public history—combining scholarly insight with sharp-eyed journalism, and based on primary sources and school textbooks, battlefield visits and war art—explains both how and why peace and war remain contested terrain in ever-changing landscapes of Canadian memory.
Author: Nancy Taber
Publisher: University of Alberta
ISBN: 1772121096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
“Despite Canada’s claim to be a gender equitable nation, militarism continues to function in ways that protect inequality.” —from the Introduction Little has been done to examine, critique, and challenge the ways ingrained societal ideas of militarism and gender influence lifelong learning patterns and practices of Canadians. Editor Nancy Taber and ten other contributors explore reasons why Canadian educators should be concerned with how learning, militarism, and gender intersect. Readers may be surprised to discover how this reaches beyond the classroom into the everyday lessons, attitudes, and habits that all Canadians are taught, often without question. Pushing the boundaries of education theory, research, and practice, this book will be of particular interest to feminist, adult, and teacher educators and to scholars and students of education, the military, and women’s and gender studies. Contributors: Mark Anthony Castrodale, Gillian L. Fournier, Andrew Haddow, Cindy L. Hanson, Laura Lane, Jamie Magnusson, Robert C. Mizzi, Shahrzad Mojab, Snežana Ratković, Roger Saul, Nancy Taber.
Author: Robert Teigrob
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442612509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482
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Book Description
In Living with War, Robert Teigrob examines how war is experienced and remembered on both sides of the 49th parallel.
Author: John Boyko
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0345808959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Forget all you think you know about the Kennedy years. With narrative flair and sparkling storytelling, acclaimed historian John Boyko explores the crucial period when America and its allies were fighting the Cold War's most treacherous battles, Canadians were trading sovereignty for security, and everyone feared a nuclear holocaust. At the centre of this story are three leaders. President John F. Kennedy pledged to pay any price to advance his vision for America's defence and needed Canada to step smartly in line. Fighting him at every turn was Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker, an unapologetic nationalist trying to bolster Canada's autonomy. Liberal leader Lester Pearson, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, sought a middle ground. Boyko employs meticulous research and newly released documents to present shocking revelations. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Canadian warships guarded America's Atlantic coast and Canada suffered a silent coup d'état. Canada was involved in Kennedy's sliding America into Vietnam. Kennedy knew the nuclear missiles he was forcing on Canada would be decoys, there only to draw Soviet nuclear fire. Kennedy's pollster and political adviser travelled to Ottawa under a fake passport to help defeat the Canadian government. And, perhaps most startlingly, if not for Diefenbaker, Kennedy may have survived the bullets in Dallas.
Author: John Pateman
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1312721308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 95
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Book Description
This is the story of the men from Thunder Bay (formerly Port Arthur and Fort William) who died in the First and Second World Wars and are buried in five local cemeteries.
Author: Philip Padgett
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1612349625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
“Well there it is. It won’t work, but you must bloody well make it,” said the chief of Britain’s military leaders when he gave orders to begin planning for what became known as Operation Overlord. While many view D-Day as one of the most successful operations of World War II, most aren’t aware of the intensive year of planning and political tension between the Allies that preceded the amphibious military landing on June 6, 1944. This intriguing history reveals how President Franklin D. Roosevelt, while on a fishing trip in the middle of World War II, altered his attitude toward Winston Churchill and became an advocate for Operation Overlord. Philip Padgett challenges the known narrative of this watershed moment in history in his examination of the possible diplomatic link between Normandy and the atomic bomb. He shows how the Allies came to agree on a liberation strategy that began with D-Day—and the difficult forging of British and American scientific cooperation that produced the atomic bomb. At its core this story is about how a new generation of leaders found the courage to step beyond national biases in a truly Allied endeavor to carry out one of history’s most successful military operations.
Author: John Hickman
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498512909
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
From Russia’s annexation of Crimea to China’s ‘nine-dash line’ in the South China Sea, it is clear that territory is as important in international politics now as it has ever been. Yet too few contemporary foreign policy makers, journalists, and scholars are able to speak coherently about territorial issues. Space Is Power: The Seven Rules of Territory challenges the intellectual conceits that human territoriality is merely a social construct, that territorial sovereignty is atavistic, that territorial annexation is always irrational, and that territorial disputes are provoked by foreign policy makers who seek to divert public attention from more important issues. Space Is Power argues that territoriality is too basic to human nature to be denied and territorial sovereignty is too important to the survival of the modern state to be ignored. The truths about territory are captured in seven rules, some of which are intuitive while others contradict conventional wisdom. Rather than anticipating the transcendence of the territorial states, this book argues that the unmistakable direction of international politics is toward encompassing ever more physical space as the territory of states.
Author: Gwynne Dyer
Publisher: Random House Canada
ISBN: 0307361705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 is a serious contemplation of what it means to engage in major world conflicts, and the price we pay when we do. The First World War was Canada's baptism of fire, or at least the only one that people now remember. (Montrealers in 1776 or Torontonians in 1814 would have taken a different view.) From 1914 to 1918, after a century of peace, Canadians were plunged back into the old world of great power rivalries and great wars. So was everybody else, but Canadians were volunteers. We didn't have to fight, but we chose to, out of loyalty to ideas and institutions that today many of us no longer believe in. And we have been doing the same thing ever since, although we haven't quite given up on the latest set of ideas and institutions yet. In Canada in the Great Power Game, Gwynne Dyer moves back and forth between the seminal event, the First World War, and all the later conflicts that Canada chose to fight in. He draws parallels between these conflicts, with the same idealism among the young soldiers, and the same deeply conflicted emotions among the survivors, surfacing time and again in every war right down to Afghanistan. And in each case, the same arguments pro and con arise—mostly from people who are a long, safe way from the killing grounds—for every one of those "wars of choice." Echoing throughout the book are the voices of the people who lived through the wars: the veterans, the politicians, the historians, the eyewitnesses. And Dyer takes a number of so-called excursions from his historical account, in which he revisits the events and puts them in context, pausing to ask such questions as "What if we hadn't fought Hitler?" and "Is war written in our genes?" This entertaining and provocative book casts an unsparing eye over what happens when Canada and the great powers get in the war business, illuminating much about how we see ourselves on the world stage.
Author: Orland French
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1460293347
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
Dear Uncle Oscar... I'm going to put a note on the back of our book to explain to readers what our correspondence inside is all about. It goes like this... A hundred years ago a German shell fell on Pte. Oscar French on Vimy Ridge and ended his life. A century later author Orland French replies to Oscar's real letters home to his mother and tells him, in his own sardonic style, how the world turned out after the horrific War to End All Wars. Letters to Vimy is an excellent and highly entertaining personal guide to the birth and growth of Canadian nationalism out of that victory at Vimy. Sources abounded for this project, including a memorable conversation with a group of elderly German tourists on the steps of the Vimy Monument. Your nephew in history, Orland French
