
Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, 1896-1921
James Wood
The citizen soldier is a central figure in Canada’s social memory of the First World War. But is the ideal of being a citizen first and a soldier only by necessity an unchanging feature of the Canadian identity?
This compelling history traces the evolution of the Canadian amateur military tradition in the turbulent years from 1896 to 1921. Before the Great War, Canada’s military culture was in transition as Canada navigated an uncertain relationship with the United States and fought an imperial war in South Africa. Gradually, the untrained civilian replaced the long-serving volunteer militiaman as the archetypal amateur soldier, setting the country down a path leading directly to the battlefields of Flanders and northern France.
Militia Myths reveals the history of a military culture that consistently employed the citizen soldier as its foremost symbol, but was otherwise in a state of profound change.Product Details
About James Wood
Reviews for Militia Myths: Ideas of the Canadian Citizen Soldier, 1896-1921
Major Andrew Godefroy
Canadian Army Journal, V. 14.1
Wood’s work expands our knowledge of the Canadian militia beyond the elite imperialists and general officers commanding. By a close study of the Canadian Military Gazette and the speeches of militia officers and advocates, he shows the complex varieties of thought regarding the role of the citizen soldier in Canadian defense. By doing so he muddies the waters of the traditional historiography surrounding imperialism and the militia in Canada. More a history of military thought than a discursive study of popular conceptions, the work will appeal to academic military historians, while leaving gendered analysis and discourse and identity studies to the social historians.
Jack L. Granatstein
H-War
This is a very good study of the development of the Canadian citizen soldier ... that makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature in the field of Canadian military history.
Matthew Tudgen
Canadian Military Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, Spring 2012