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This volume presents the original text of a groundbreaking study on professional education for the Canadian officer corps The Report of the Officer Development Board , from 1969, is commonly called the Rowley Report after its primary author, Maj. Gen. Roger Rowley, and its analysis and recommendations have been used extensively over the last forty years to help define learning needs and education strategies for officers of the Canadian Forces. Also included are three new essays that provide cont...

Covering a period that runs from the founding of the colony in the early seventeenth century to the conquest of 1760, People, State, and War under the French Regime in Canada is a study of colonial warriors and warfare that examines the exercise of state military power and its effects on ordinary people.Overturning the tendency to glorify the military feats of New France and exploding the rosy myth of a tax-free colonial population, Louise Dechene challenges the stereotype of the fighting prowes...

An extraordinary, newly discovered account from an ordinary Canadian on the ground in the crucial battles of the First World War. What was it like to be a field gunner in the Great War? Drawing on the unpublished letters and diary of field gunner Lt. Bert Sargent and his fellow soldiers, Thunder in the Skies takes the reader from enlistment in late 1914, through training camp, to the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, the Hundred Days Offensive, and home again with peace. Posted just b...

In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. Responding to a United Nations' call, Canada deployed an 8000-man brigade to the peninsula to fight as part of an American-led UN force. This comprehensive account of the Canadian campaign in Korea provides the first detailed study of the training, leadership, operations, and tactics of the brigade under each of its three wartime commanders as well as its relationship with American and Commonwealth allies. This impeccably researched analytical histo...

Historians of the First World War have often dismissed the important role of poison gas in the battles of the Western Front. Tim Cook shows that the serious threat of gas did not disappear with the introduction of gas masks. By 1918, gas shells were used by all armies to deluge the battlefield, and those not instructed with a sound anti-gas doctrine left themselves exposed to this new chemical plague.This book provides a challenging re-examination of the function of gas warfare in the First Worl...

The influence of the Royal Navy on the development of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest was both extensive and effective. Yet all too frequently, its impact has been ignored by historians, who instead focus on the influence of explorers, fur traders, settlers, and railway builders. In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of his classic 1972 work, naval historian Barry Gough examines the contest for the Columbia country during the War of 1812, the 1844 British response to the agg...

This book offers a fresh, close-up look at the First World War as it was experienced by ordinary Canadian soldiers. Over 67,000 Canadians lost their lives in WWI and 173,000 were wounded. Their sacrifice was driven by a sense of duty to the 'Mother Country'. This is the war as it was experienced by the tens of thousands of young Canadians. Reading their accounts offers a no-holds-barred picture of fighting, life in the trenches, the human cost in lives lost, and the physical and emotional after...

This ground-breaking book brings to a life a forgotten chapter in the history of Canada and Russia - the journey of 4,200 Canadian soldiers from Victoria to Vladivostok in 1918 to help defeat Bolshevism. Combining military and labour history with the social history of BC, Quebec, and Russia, Benjamin Isitt examines how the Siberian Expedition exacerbated tensions within Canadian society at a time when a radicalized working class, many French-Canadians, and even the soldiers themselves objected t...

Published by the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies The role of the Canadian Forces in asserting sovereignty is often tied to the maxim that possession is nine-tenths of the law. Surveillance capability and boots on the ground are often tightly bound to Canada s credibility in defending its sovereignty. As talk of a polar race intensifies, and new concerns arise over the continental shelf, boundaries, pollution, melting ice, and that tiny piece of rock called Hans Isla...

On the morning of April 9, 1917, troops of the Canadian Corps under General Julian Byng attacked the formidable German defences of Vimy Ridge. Since then, generations of Canadians have shared a deep emotional attachment to the battle, inspired partly by the spectacular memorial on the battlefield. Although the event is considered central in Canadian military history, most people know very little about what happened during that memorable Easter in northern France. Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessm...

Loyal Gunners uniquely encapsulates the experience of Canadian militia gunners and their units into a single compelling narrative that centres on the artillery units of New Brunswick. The story of those units is a profoundly Canadian story: one of dedication and sacrifice in service of great guns and of Canada. The 3rd Field Regiment (The Loyal Company), Royal Canadian Artillery, is Canada's oldest artillery unit, dating to the founding of the Loyal Company in Saint John in 1793. Since its cente...

From the local bestselling author of Winnipeg 1912 comes the riveting next chapter in the city's history. Winnipeg's Great War picks up in 1914, just as the city is regrouping after a brief economic downturn. War comes unexpectedly, thoughts of recovery are abandoned, and the city digs in for a hard-fought four years. Using letters, diaries, and newspaper reports, Jim Blanchard brings us into the homes and public offices of Winnipeg and its citizens to illustrate the profound effect the war had...

Between 1916 and 1918, Lance-Corporal George Timmins, a British-born soldier who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, wrote faithfully to his wife and children. Sixty-three letters and four fragments survived. These letters tell the compelling story of a man who, while helping his fellow Canadians make history, used letters home to remain a presence in the lives of his wife and children, and who drew strength from his family to appreciate life's simple pleasures. Timmins's letters offer a...