Canadian Battlefields 1915 1918

Most of the world remembers the First World War as a time when, as historian Samuel Hynes put it, “innocent young men, their heads full of high abstractions like Honour, Glory, and England ... were slaughtered in stupid battles planned by stupid Generals.” English-speaking Canadians have for the most part accepted this view and supplemented it with an imaginative version of a war in which their soldiers won great victories and forged a new national identity. Both approaches have served to promote literary, political, and cultural agendas of such power that empirical studies of actual wartime events have had little impact on the historiography. A new generation of scholars has challenged those approaches, however, insisting that the reality of the war and the society that produced it are worthy of study. This guide to the Canadian battlefields in France and Belgium offers a brief critical history of the war and of Canada’s contribution, drawing attention to the best recent books on the subject. It focuses on the Ypres Salient, Passchendaele, Vimy, and the “Hundred Day”s battles and considers lesser-known battlefields as well. Battle maps, contemporary maps, photographs, war art, and tourist information enhance the reader experience.

Revision of: Canadian battlefields 1915-1918: a visitor's guide / Terry Copp, Matt Symes, Nick Lachance. -- Waterloo, Ont.: LCMSDS, A2011.

Reproduction of the original: Over the Canadian Battlefields by John W. Dafoe

Ypres, the Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele, Amiens — to many, these are the names of battles far away and long ago. To thousands of soldiers, now gone, the battles were hard-fought and costly campaigns fraught with danger, pain, and tears. Today, these combat zones are trod by tourists in search of a connection with the past. Canadians at War follows the route of the Canadian Expeditionary Force from its first encounter with German forces at Neuve Chappelle to the site of the 1915 gas attack at St. Julien, from the Somme to Vimy and Passchendaele. In this informative guide, Susan Evans Shaw provides an historical overview of each battlefield as well as maps, photographs, and information on the memorials and cemeteries. The first book of its kind, Canadians at War fills a gap in heritage travel literature that has existed since the Armistice. Evans Shaw made her first visit to the battlefields of World War I in 2004, where she realized that there was a dearth of material for Canadians. Collaborating with photographer Jean Crankshaw, she created this book as a tribute to her grandfather, who was killed in action in 1918.

World War One, 1915, WWI, Ypres. Canada.

The third of the LCMSDS battlefield guides to concentrate on the Canadian forces in Italy, The Canadian Battlefields in Italy: The Gothic Line and the Battle of the Rivers continues the journey through the Gothic Line, Canada’s greatest battle of the Italian Campaign, and on to Ravenna, where Canadian soldiers fought doggedly against the enemy and the elements in a remote corner of the war. The guidebook offers a broad introduction to the campaigns, concise summaries of each stage of the fighting, and itineraries that allow Canadian visitors to explore the battles from the most important perspective—the physical setting itself. Three-dimensional maps familiarize readers with the landscape and features that affected the course of the battles, while contemporary photos and war art recapture the scene as contemporaries saw it.

This book examines the Canadian battles in Northern France during the First and Second World Wars. The Great War battlefields of the Somme, Beaumont-Hamel, Vimy and Arras, and the last Hundred Days campaign are examined in great detail with many never-before-published photographs and detailed maps. The Second World War section contains a chapter on the ill-fated Dieppe raid of August 1942 as well as the 1944 Pursuit to the Seine and Channel Ports battles. Published by the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies and distributed by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

"A guidebook detailing the Canadian role in the 1944 Normandy Campaign during the Second World War as well as the 1942 Canadian raid on Dieppe. The book seeks to teach the history of these campaigns, while providing up to date information on how to visit and navigate these sites of Canada's national heritage."--