For residents of Windsor, the entire border-crossing experience had changed dramatically since 1914, when immigration authorities limited their interrogations to visible and undesirable racial groups, criminals, prostitutes, and people with obvious mental and physical illnesses. Now a fifth-generation Anglo-Saxon Windsor resident with family living in Ypsilanti and a job in downtown Detroit could expect the same kind of attention. All of this, of course, was designed to ensure that Canadian men of military age did their duty and to keep the people of Windsor – by that point witnesses to the work of Detroit-based enemy terrorists – safe from German American raiders and saboteurs.
From Chapter 2 of Engaging the Line
Engaging the Line is a significant contribution to North American border studies. It reveals that the intensity of Canadian nationalism varied by location, which in turn indicates Canada’s differing regional histories and diversity and duration of settler experience. Its exploration of the regional nuances of “crossing culture” also adds to our understanding of the impact of war on the home front.
Keith Regular
The Ormsby Review
Engaging the Line blends political, social, and cultural history in order to assess how global developments in the first decades of the twentieth century reshaped the boundary and relationship between the USA and Canada.
Holly M. Karibo, Oklahoma State University
International Journal
Engaging The Line is a smart, crisp account of the First World War’s impact on border life. The topic is not merely timely but compelling … Engaging The Line is likeable and meticulously researched, a warm account of an era we left behind.
Holly Doan
Blacklock’s Reporter