Part history and part social commentary, this book examines the repatriation of Canada's WWII veterans with a collection of essays by 11 historians. Topics include the administration of the return of Canadian soldiers from Europe after VE--Day, the philosophy and benefits of the Veterans Charter, veterans' rights, educational opportunities for returning vets, and the rehabilitation of veterans with disabilities. Includes bandw photographs. Appends the complete text of Back to Civil Life, a 1946 repatriation manual. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Rehabilitating Canada's soldiers to civilian life following World War II was a massive undertaking. The Veterans Charter, the program devised by the federal government to do this, promised to provide "opportunity with security" and was one of the building blocks of the Canadian welfare state. This collection of essays by some of Canada's leading historians explores the Charter's origins, history, and benefits as well as highlights its role in the development of the Canadian welfare state and postwar society.
This essay collection traces the sustained work over the past fifty years of the foremost historian of Canadian politics in the era of the two world wars.
In the first and only examination of how the British Empire and Commonwealth sustained its soldiers before, during, and after both world wars, a cast of leading military historians explores how the empire mobilized manpower to recruit workers, care for veterans, and transform factory workers and farmers into riflemen. Raising armies is more than counting people, putting them in uniform, and assigning them to formations. It demands efficient measures for recruitment, registration, and assignment. It requires processes for transforming common people into soldiers and then producing officers, staffs, and commanders to lead them. It necessitates balancing the needs of the armed services with industry and agriculture. And, often overlooked but illuminated incisively here, raising armies relies on medical services for mending wounded soldiers and programs and pensions to look after them when demobilized. Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars is a transnational look at how the empire did not always get these things right. But through trial, error, analysis, and introspection, it levied the large armies needed to prosecute both wars. Contributors Paul R. Bartrop, Charles Booth, Jean Bou, Daniel Byers, Kent Fedorowich, Jonathan Fennell, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Richard S. Grayson, Ian McGibbon, Jessica Meyer, Emma Newlands, Kaushik Roy, Roger Sarty, Gary Sheffield, Ian van der Waag
Detailing the ways in which the Canadian government built on existing programs for veterans, Peter Neary identifies the key figures and events responsible for developing the orders and statutes that came to be known as the Veterans Charter, creating the Department of Veterans Affairs, and establishing sweeping new benefits for servicemen and women. Comparing rehabilitation programs after the Second World War with those after the First World War, Neary reveals the lasting importance of the country's new way of expressing its obligations to veterans. He shows that the measures developed to reintegrate them into civilian society became essential building blocks for the Canadian welfare state and helped pave the way for the unprecedented prosperity of the 1950s. A comprehensive study of a fundamental change in the relationship between government and citizens, On to Civvy Street is also a timely reminder of the debt the country owes its veterans.
During the Second World War, more than 4,000 civilian nurses enlisted as Nursing Sisters, a specially created all-female officers' rank of the Canadian Armed Forces. They served in all three armed force branches and all the major theatres of war, yet nursing as a form of war work has long been under-explored. An Officer and a Lady fills that gap. Cynthia Toman analyzes how gender, war, and medical technology intersected to create a legitimate role for women in the masculine environment of the military and explores the incongruous expectations placed on military nurses as "officers and ladies."
What has it meant to be a man in Canada? Alexander Ross, fur trader; Percy Nobbs, architect, fisherman, fencer; Andy Paull, residential school survivor and athlete; Yves Charbonneau, jazz musician and commune member; “James,” black and gay in postwar Windsor. Who were these men, and how did they identify as masculine? Populated with figures both well known and unknown, Making Men, Making History frames masculinity as a socially and historically constructed category of identity, susceptible to variation across time, place, and social context. This examination of historical Canadian masculinities reveals the dissonance between hegemonic ideals of manhood and masculinity and the everyday lives of men and boys. The volume showcases some of the best new work in masculinity studies. With an introduction that contextualizes the international origins of the field, Making Men, Making History is the first book to explore these themes entirely in Canadian historica settings.
