Valour at Vimy Ridge

Valour at Vimy Ridge PDF Author: Douglas, Tom
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459504860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Get Book Here

Book Description
A defining moment in Canadian military history. A much-needed Allied victory. A show of valour and heroism. The battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 saw Canadian troops storm a strategic 14-kilometre long escarpment that was believed to be impregnable. This was the first time in the nation's history that a corps-sized formation fought together as a unit under its own meticulous planning. Canadian troops persevered under heavy fire to take the ridge, demonstrating incredible discipline and bravery. The battle became a symbol of sacrifice for the young nation and a turning point in its role in the global theatre of war.

Valour at Vimy Ridge

Valour at Vimy Ridge PDF Author: Douglas, Tom
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459504860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Get Book Here

Book Description
A defining moment in Canadian military history. A much-needed Allied victory. A show of valour and heroism. The battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 saw Canadian troops storm a strategic 14-kilometre long escarpment that was believed to be impregnable. This was the first time in the nation's history that a corps-sized formation fought together as a unit under its own meticulous planning. Canadian troops persevered under heavy fire to take the ridge, demonstrating incredible discipline and bravery. The battle became a symbol of sacrifice for the young nation and a turning point in its role in the global theatre of war.

Vimy

Vimy PDF Author: Tim Cook
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735233179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the 2018 JW Dafoe Book Prize Longlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction 2018 Runner-up for the 2018 Templer Medal Book Prize Finalist for the 2018 Ottawa Book Awards A bold new telling of the defining battle of the Great War, and how it came to signify and solidify Canada’s national identity Why does Vimy matter? How did a four-day battle at the midpoint of the Great War, a clash that had little strategic impact on the larger Allied war effort, become elevated to a national symbol of Canadian identity? Tim Cook, Canada’s foremost military historian and a Charles Taylor Prize winner, examines the Battle of Vimy Ridge and the way the memory of it has evolved over 100 years. The operation that began April 9, 1917, was the first time the four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together. More than 10,000 Canadian soldiers were killed or injured over four days—twice the casualty rate of the Dieppe Raid in August 1942. The Corps’ victory solidified its reputation among allies and opponents as an elite fighting force. In the wars’ aftermath, Vimy was chosen as the site for the country’s strikingly beautiful monument to mark Canadian sacrifice and service. Over time, the legend of Vimy took on new meaning, with some calling it the “birth of the nation.” The remarkable story of Vimy is a layered skein of facts, myths, wishful thinking, and conflicting narratives. Award-winning writer Tim Cook explores why the battle continues to resonate with Canadians a century later. He has uncovered fresh material and photographs from official archives and private collections across Canada and from around the world. On the 100th anniversary of the event, and as Canada celebrates 150 years as a country, Vimy is a fitting tribute to those who fought the country’s defining battle. It is also a stirring account of Canadian identity and memory, told by a masterful storyteller.

Great Canadian War Stories

Great Canadian War Stories PDF Author: Muriel Whitaker
Publisher: University of Alberta
ISBN: 9780888643834
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
Canada is renowned today for its role as a world peacekeeper. However, the country also played an important role in the wars of the twentieth century. Great Canadian War Stories shows how Canada at war captured the imagination of fiction writers across the country. The stories in this collection chronicle the scope of the Canadian war efforts in the twentieth century, from Vimy Ridge to the plains of the Spanish Civil War to the skies over North Africa during World War II. This collection includes selections from Timothy Findley, Henry Kreisel, Colin McDougall, Thomas Raddell, Joy Kogawa, Earle Birney and 16 others At once terrible and uplifting, memorable and harrowing, the stories in this collection describe a seminal period in Canadian history. Great Canadian War Stories show us how Canada became a nation in the twentieth century.

For King and Kanata

For King and Kanata PDF Author: Timothy Charles Winegard
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
ISBN: 0887554180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The first comprehensive history of the Aboriginal First World War experience on the battlefield and the home front. When the call to arms was heard at the outbreak of the First World War, Canada's First Nations pledged their men and money to the Crown to honour their long-standing tradition of forming military alliances with Europeans during times of war, and as a means of resisting cultural assimilation and attaining equality through shared service and sacrifice. Initially, the Canadian government rejected these offers based on the belief that status Indians were unsuited to modern, civilized warfare. But in 1915, Britain intervened and demanded Canada actively recruit Indian soldiers to meet the incessant need for manpower. Thus began the complicated relationships between the Imperial Colonial and War Offices, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Ministry of Militia that would affect every aspect of the war experience for Canada's Aboriginal soldiers. In his groundbreaking new book, For King and Kanata, Timothy C. Winegard reveals how national and international forces directly influenced the more than 4,000 status Indians who voluntarily served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force between 1914 and 1919--a per capita percentage equal to that of Euro-Canadians--and how subsequent administrative policies profoundly affected their experiences at home, on the battlefield, and as returning veterans."--Publisher's website.

Wartime

Wartime PDF Author: Edward Butts
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459410998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
The First World War was the cause of dramatic changes in every Canadian community. What it meant to daily life becomes clear in this book about the war years in Guelph, Ontario. The first months were the easiest, as young men rushed to enlist. Once news of casualties and deaths started arriving, the atmosphere changed drastically. Mothers dreaded the arrival of the telegraph boy. Newspapers published fulsome obituaries which could not obscure the tragedy of their deaths. Tensions emerged — one compelling example being a secret military and police night-time raid on a Catholic seminary just outside the town, looking for young men hiding from conscription. With these stories, Edward Butts offers a compelling portrait of people trying to make sense of a war with little evident logic. His account helps explain why the cause of the League of Nations and efforts to ensure peace in the 1920s and 1930s were so powerful amongst Canadians who had learned about the real impact of wartime on ordinary people. Through the use of primary resources including articles from the local press, letters from overseas, and newsreels in the cinema, Butts captures the reality of the First World War for Canadians at home.

The Great Escape

The Great Escape PDF Author: Ted Barris
Publisher: Dundurn.com
ISBN: 1771024747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
One night in 1944, eighty airmen escaped a German POW compound in Poland. The event became known as "The Great Escape." Ted Barris writes of the planners, task leaders, and key players in the escape attempt, those who got away, those who didn't, and their families at home.

Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919

Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 PDF Author: G.W.L. Nicholson
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773597905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 709

Get Book Here

Book Description
Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson's Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 was first published by the Department of National Defence in 1962 as the official history of the Canadian Army’s involvement in the First World War. Immediately after the war ended Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid made a first attempt to write an official history of the war, but the ill-fated project produced only the first of an anticipated eight volumes. Decades later, G.W.L. Nicholson - already the author of an official history of the Second World War - was commissioned to write a new official history of the First. Illustrated with numerous photographs and full-colour maps, Nicholson’s text offers an authoritative account of the war effort, while also discussing politics on the home front, including debates around conscription in 1917. With a new critical introduction by Mark Osborne Humphries that traces the development of Nicholson’s text and analyzes its legacy, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 is an essential resource for both professional historians and military history enthusiasts.

The Vimy Trap

The Vimy Trap PDF Author: Ian McKay
Publisher: Between the Lines
ISBN: 1771132760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

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.

Toronto’s Fighting 75th in the Great War 1915–1919

Toronto’s Fighting 75th in the Great War 1915–1919 PDF Author: Timothy J. Stewart
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 177112184X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 722

Get Book Here

Book Description
Foreword by His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales Hospital ships filled the harbour of Le Havre as the 75th Mississauga Battalion arrived on 13 August 1916. Those soldiers who survived would spend almost three years in a tiny corner of northeastern France and northwestern Belgium (Flanders), where many of their comrades still lie. And they would serve in many of the most horrific battles of that long, bloody conflict—Saint Eloi, the Somme, Arras, Vimy, Hill 70, Lens, Passchendaele, Amiens, Drocourt-Quéant, Canal du Nord, Cambrai, and Valenciennes. This book tells the story of the 75th Battalion (later the Toronto Scottish Regiment) and the five thousand men who formed it—most from Toronto—from all walks of life. They included professionals, university graduates, white- and blue-collar workers, labourers, and the unemployed, some illiterate. They left a comfortable existence in the prosperous, strongly pro-British provincial capital for life in the trenches of France and Flanders. Tommy Church, mayor of Toronto from 1915 to 1921, sought to include his city’s name in the unit’s name because of the many city officials and local residents who served in it. Three years later Church accepted the 75th’s now heavily emblazoned colours for safekeeping at City Hall from Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Harbottle, who returned with his bloodied but successful survivors. The author pulls no punches in recounting their labours, triumphs, and travails. Timothy J. Stewart undertook exhaustive research for this first-ever history of the 75th, drawing from archival sources (focusing on critical decisions by Brigadier Victor Oldum, General Officer Commanding 11th Brigade), diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, and interviews.

Death Or Deliverance

Death Or Deliverance PDF Author: Teresa Iacobelli
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774825693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Soldiers found guilty of desertion or cowardice during the Great War faced death by firing squad. Novels, histories, movies, and television series often depict courts martial as brutal and inflexible, and social memories of this system of frontline justice have inspired modern movements to seek pardons for soldiers executed on the battlefield. In this powerful and moving book, Teresa Iacobelli looks beyond stories of callous generals and quick executions to consider the trials of nearly two hundred soldiers who were sentenced to death but spared by a disciplinary system capable of thoughtful review and compassion. By bringing to light these men's experiences, Death or Deliverance reconsiders an important chapter in the history of both a war and a nation.