National Network for Equitable Library Service

Portraits of Battlebrings together biography, battle accounts, and historiographical analysis to examine the lives of a cross-section of Canadians who served in the war, exploring key issues in the process. To what extent did new technologies challenge orthodoxy on how to wage war? How did men in the trenches cope with suffering? How did gender roles evolve under fire, and to what degree did those changes survive the return home? Contributors to this thoughtful collection consider the range of Canadians touched by war - soldiers and their loved ones, deserters, nurses, Indigenous people, those injured in body or mind - raising fundamental questions about the nature of conflict and memory. All Canadians are taught about Vimy Ridge, but that celebrated victory was just one battle among many to shape the country's experience of the First World War.These portraits of the formerly faceless men and women honoured on war memorials fill in what is often missing from accounts of the Great War. In the process, they provide a more nuanced perspective on the complex legacy of that war in Canadian history.