7 Days that Transformed the World

April 22, 1915: The Day Canada Confronted Modern Industrial Warfare.
by Keith Thor Carlson

Wednesday, April12, 6:00 p.m.
Hose and Hydrant Brewing Company
# 612 11th Street E.

Canadians enlisted en mass in the late summer of 1914.  Motivated primarily by a sense of patriotism to the British Empire, these citizen soldiers regarded themselves as defenders of civilization against German barbarism.  With God and righteousness on their side they expected the war to be short and their role to be glorious and heroic.  Informed by a distorted sense of Canada’s military prowess in the War of 1812 and an exaggerated memory of Canada’s contributions in the South African Boer War, these soldiers expected poetic glory and instead were confronted by mechanized and chemical horror.  But in challenging expectations the Great War also transformed Canada.  Canadian soldiers, the celebrated ‘shock troops of the British Empire’, ranked among the war’s most ruthless and cruel combatants.  They lost their innocence in the bloody trenches of Flanders, but back home, in the country that imposed more government censorship than any other Allied nation, returning veterans were expected to have been, and to be, Christ-like.  Canadians have struggled with conflicted memories of the Great War, and of themselves, ever since.

Bio: Dr. Keith Thor Carlson is Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan where he holds the Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History. His research examines the way people’s understandings and memories of events from the past sometimes shift and adapt over time – something scholars call historical consciousness.  He teaches a wide range of classes among which are ones that examine the Great War in Canadian history and memory.

For more information, please contact Keith Carlson