Social Studies 10 Canada's Role in Conflict Research Guide: Home

This is an annually updated presentation of Canada past and present. It is broken down into sections dealing with Canada’s culture, geography, people, history (from New France to the constitutional debates in the late 20th century), political system (including the constitution, monarchy, executive, parliament, legal and court system, federalism and the provinces, provincial governments, parties and elections), defense, economy, future and bibliography.

Canada in the Great Power Game 1914-2014 is a serious contemplation of what it means to engage in major world conflicts, and the price we pay when we do.
The First World War was Canada's baptism of fire, or at least the only one that people now remember. (Montrealers in 1776 or Torontonians in 1814 would have taken a different view.) From 1914 to 1918, after a century of peace, Canadians were plunged back into the old world of great power rivalries and great wars. So was everybody else, but Canadians were volunteers. We didn't have to fight, but we chose to, out of loyalty to ideas and institutions that today many of us no longer believe in. And we have been doing the same thing ever since, although we haven't quite given up on the latest set of ideas and institutions yet.
In Canada in the Great Power Game, Gwynne Dyer moves back and forth between the seminal event, the First World War, and all the later conflicts that Canada chose to fight in. He draws parallels between these conflicts, with the same idealism among the young soldiers, and the same deeply conflicted emotions among the survivors, surfacing time and again in every war right down to Afghanistan. And in each case, the same arguments pro and con arise--mostly from people who are a long, safe way from the killing grounds--for every one of those "wars of choice."
Echoing throughout the book are the voices of the people who lived through the wars: the veterans, the politicians, the historians, the eyewitnesses. And Dyer takes a number of so-called excursions from his historical account, in which he revisits the events and puts them in context, pausing to ask such questions as "What if we hadn't fought Hitler?" and "Is war written in our genes?" This entertaining and provocative book casts an unsparing eye over what happens when Canada and the great powers get in the war business, illuminating much about how we see ourselves on the world stage

This book shows us the relationship Britain and Canada shared at the outbreak of war. It is ideal to understand the personal relationships the two countries had in order to understand the allied connection with one another.

Wartime secrets and the men charged with manipulating Canadian public opinion are unveiled for the first time in this riveting account of media censorship by the government during World War II.
The Canadian government censored the news during World War II for two main reasons: to keep military and economic secrets out of enemy hands and to prevent civilian morale from breaking down. But in those tumultuous times -- with Nazi spies landing on our shores by raft, U-boat attacks in the St. Lawrence, army mutinies in British Columbia, and Ontario and pro-Hitler propaganda in the mainstream Quebec press -- censors had a hard time keeping news events contained.
Now, with freshly unsealed World War II press-censor files, many of the undocumented events that occurred in wartime Canada are finally revealed. In Mark Bourrie's illuminating and well-researched account, we learn about the capture of a Nazi spy-turned-double agent, the Japanese-Canadian editor who would one day help develop Canada's medicare system, the curious chiropractor from Saskatchewan who spilled atomic bomb secrets to a roomful of people and the use of censorship to stop balloon bomb attacks from Japan. The Fog of War investigates the realities of media censorship through the experiences of those deputized to act on the public's behalf.

Stretching like an armour-toothed belt across Italy’s upper thigh, the Gothic Line was the most fortified and fiercely defended position the German army had yet thrown in the path of the advancing Allied forces. On August 25, 1944, it fell to I Canadian Corps to spearhead the famed Eighth Army’s major offensive, intended to rip through the Gothic Line.
Never had the Germans in Italy brought so much artillery to bear or deployed such a great number of tanks. For twenty-eight days, the battle raged as the Canadians, with British and Polish troops advancing on their flanks, slugged into the German defences. On September 22 the Canadians finally won, opening the way for the next phase of the Allied advance. The price was high—the greatest toll in casualties suffered during the long years of the Italian campaign.
The Gothic Line: Canada’s Month of Hell in World War II Italy brings the story of what renowned military historian Jack Granatstein hails as Canada’s most momentous World War II battle to vivid life by telling the story through the eyes of the soldiers. It is a suspenseful, dramatic book that gives back to Canadians a forgotten and neglected part of their historical heritage.

Following his national best-seller, Juno Beach, and with his usual verve and narrative skill, historian Mark Zuehlke chronicles the crucial six days when Canadians saved the vulnerable beachheads they had won during the D-Day landings.
D-Day ended with the Canadians six miles inlandï??the deepest penetration achieved by Allied forces during this longest day in history. But for all the horror endured on June 6 every soldier knew the worst was yet to come.
The Germans began probing the Canadian lines early in the morning of June 7 and shortly after dawn counter attacked in force. The ensuing six days of battle between a Canadian division determined to widen its hold on the beachhead and an equally determined foe intent on eliminating Juno Beach was to prove bloodier than D-Day itself. Although battered and bloody, the Canadians had held their ground and made it possible for the slow advance toward Germany and eventual Allied victory to begin.
Holding Juno recreates this pivotal battle and the ultimate triumph of Canadian arms through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it, with the same dramatic intensity and factual detail that made Juno Beach, in the words of Quill & Quire reviewer Michael Clark, "the defining popular history of Canada's D-Day battle."

For the Allied Armies fighting their way up the Italian boot in early 1944. Rome was the prize that could only be won through one of the greatest offensives of the war. Mark Zuehlke, following his book, Ortona, returns to the Mediterranean theatre of World War II with this gripping story of courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
The Liri Valley was a long, flat corridor through miles of rugged mountains. At one end stood the formidable Monte Cassino, at the other, Rome. In May 1944, I Canadian Corps drops up this valley toward the Italian captial, facing the infamous Hitler Line -- a bastion of concrete bunkers fronted by wide swaths of tangled barbed wire, minefields, and "Tobruk" weapon pits. The ensuing battle resulted in Canada's single bloodiest day of the Italian campaign. But the sacrifice of young Canadians during the twenty-four days of relentless combat it took to clear the valley paved the way for the Allies to take Rome.
The Liri Valley is testament to the bravery of such Canadians as Victoria Cross-winning Jack Mahony, Panzer killer Private J.A. Thrasher, and the badly wounded Captain Pierre Potvin who survived more than thirty hours alone in the hell of no man's land. This book, like the battle it records, will live long in reader's memories.

A masterful retelling one of the major victories of Canadian troops over the German army’s elite division during WWII.