Canada through World War I

Abstract

The Great War was the world event that began the evolution of Canada from a self-governing British colony to a great independent country. However, one of Canada’s failings is its self-deprecation and modesty. Canada has produced a number of historic works documenting and analyzing Canada’s accomplishments and the individuals who made them happen. Although much was written by actual participants in the interwar years, the majority of the objective and analytical works have only slowly emerged after the Second World War when history became a respected academic discipline. This annotated bibliography gives a cross section of the Canadian Great War historiography with the majority of the work having been produced after 1980. The Canadian Army and the role of Canadians serving in the British Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service have good coverage in Canadian monographs. The one area of study that has a dearth of work is on the Royal Canadian Navy since it had a very small role in the Great War and did not come into its own until after 1939. Nonetheless, there are a number of works included that show the Navy’s fledgling accomplishments between 1914 and 1918, as well as the efforts of the British Admiralty to restrict the Royal Canadian Navy’s actions in defense of its own area of operations. This bibliography also contains works on prisoners of war, the psychological effects of trench warfare on Canadians serving at the front, the internment of enemy aliens in Canada, and effects of the war on the home front, including one French work analyzing French Quebec’s changing attitude to World War I over the length of the 20th century.