Reddit mentions: The best 20th century canadian history books

It depends on how detailed you want. There's always the dated, but still valuable, Canadian Centenary Series - I use Robert Craig Brown and Ramsay Cook's contribution all the time and it remains one of the best overviews of early 20th century Canada. The rest are of varying quality. Though, they are decades out of date in terms of the most up to date scholarship.

More recent English Canadian scholarship doesn't offer as many overviews outside of textbooks. Like I said, it's hard to find books that do English and French Canadian history together in either history since so often you find Quebec history or English Canadian history. Ramsay Cook has a lot of publications dealing with French Canadian history which often overlaps into general Canadian history, but he's an older historian from the 60-90s. For a good review of English Canadian historical writing, Carl Berger's Writing of Canadian History is the definitive work though, like other works here, a bit dated.

It's kinda the same for Quebecois literature as far as I know. I think an interesting and accessible Quebecois view of Canadian history is Histoire du Quebec contemporain (that's volume 1, there's also volume 2). It's a bit of a textbook, but hits all the major points and has a definitively Quebecois perspective on them. If you're up for a denser work, Yvan Lamonde's Histoire sociale des idees au Quebec (similarly two volumes) is a great exploration of Quebec intellectual landscapes. I've referred to it a lot as it is really frames the response of Quebecois to English Canada within their provincial context. For a good English language overview of Quebec historiography, it's worth checking out Ronald Rudin's Making History in Twentieth Century Quebec too.

Overall, I'd say most of the good comprehensive histories that examine both French and English Canada are either textbooks or decades old. Or, perhaps, in articles and specific studies of certain events or periods. Historians have moved away from larger overviews of Canadian history unfortunately - so unless you move towards more pop history, you won't find much in the academic presses.

If you have any specific areas or time periods you're specifically interested in, I'd love to provide some more detailed works. Though, to be honest, I am well read in political history and 1900-1945 Canada, so my choices here and other suggestions will reflect that.

I am not actually an historian (please don't fire me, Artrw), but rather a part-time professor in the English department at a large Canadian university.

Nevertheless, my research focus is the historiography of the Great War and the degree to which developments in same have resolutely failed to be incorporated into how my own discipline (that is, English) chooses to teach the War and its attendant literature. Virtually all of my professional and recreational reading has to do with the history and cultural memory of the War, and I sometimes find myself identifying more with the cultural concerns and realities of the 1910s-20s than I do with those of my own age as a result.

Anyway, my daily life is pretty straightforward:

• Most days I have to myself, whatever else I have to do. I live hand-to-mouth, officially below my country's poverty line, but in a manner that is still quite comfortable for all that. My needs are modest and my scope limited. I am not married, and live with a couple of housemates; my girlfriend is in a similar financial and professional situation, so we have a lot of mutual complaints and a lot of fun as well.
  
  
• When classes are in session (which I'm glad to say they will be again in a fortnight), I spend anywhere from two to four days of the week on campus. Each class I teach typically operates in two 1.5-hour sessions on different days, and I've got to have my office hours besides. Working on campus is just more efficient even apart from this, though -- none of the distractions of home, and immediate access to the library to boot.
  
  
• A fair amount of time is devoted to class preparation and presentation, and I'm sorry to say that the classes themselves typically have nothing to do with my historical focus. I've managed to sneak in some stuff from time to time, but mostly I just need to acquaint the students with other things. I love doing it all the same, though.
  
  
• Still, this may not forever be the case! While I'm teaching a delightful course on myth and fantasy this fall, I've been working on getting the department to set up a "Literature of War in English" course for the next academic year. It's a gap we've keenly felt for a while now, and I intend to fill it.
  
  
• When I'm not teaching, prepping, office-houring or marking, I spend my time working on the other projects that sustain me. My current focus is on the amazing propaganda bureaus in Britain during the Great War (Masterman's Wellington House and Lord Northcliffe's Crewe House specifically), but I have lots of other irons in the fire -- some even in fields far-removed from this one (i.e. the intersection of religious and aesthetic modernism in early 20th C. England, the works of a major Canadian humourist/economist, Ezra Pound's and Thomas Hardy's treatment of the life of Jesus in their poetry, etc.).
  
  Anyway, apart from all of this, from time to time I get to come into contact with interesting figures in Canada's literary-historical establishment. I've had some delightful beers with Tim Cook, taken tea/sherry/all sorts of hospitality with the amazing Peter Neary, and been put in the company of the likes of Jack Granatstein, Gwynne Dyer and Jonathan Vance.
  
  In all, my life is wonderful. I'm paid a living wage to do things I'd probably do for free, and in my spare time I get to interact with you lovely people. It's pretty good.

Being an Ontarian myself, I'm not as familiar with East Coast artists but I love Hey Rosetta!, Great Big Sea, and Rick Mercer.

I'm honoured to say that I read a book at a young age that described the heroic sacrifice of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Their sacrifices to King and Country will never be forgotten in my books.

Here's an interesting book on the referendum that decided Newfoundland's place in Confederation: Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Newfoundland's Confederation with Canada

Just to make it easier to find - it's spelled "Pierre Berton", not "Burton". Also, "Hostages to Fortune" was written by Peter C. Newman, not Pierre Berton (more about Newman below).

Here's Berton's list of books.

Some great foundational stuff about Canada is as /u/MonotheistThrowaway describes, in the 1812 things. There's also other stuff by him that's excellent:

"The National Dream" and "The Last Spike", about the construction of the railroad across Canada.

"The Great Depression", which of course is about the Great Depression.

"Vimy", which is about the Canadians at Vimy Ridge in 1917. It's not especially "scholarly", but it's incredibly accessible and a riveting read.

"The Arctic Grail", which is about the many attempts to find the North-West Passage. See also the Stan Rogers song about this. It's a pretty key piece of Canadian history.

There is lots and lots more in his bibliography. If you go out of your mind and decide to read all of his work, you'll probably know more about Canadian history and identity that 95% of those born here.

Peter Newman wrote similarly great Canadian history. He did a three-volume piece about the Hudson Bay Company, in the books Company of Adventurers, Caesars of the Wilderness and Merchant Princes. There's a sort of a "condensed" version called "Empire of the Bay" that might be a quicker read.

If you ever get bored of reading but you still want to learn Canada's history, check out "Canada: A People's History", an incredible series done by CBC back in 2001. That's a link to a playlist with all episodes. I can't possibly recommend it enough.

Edit to add: Welcome to Canada, friend!

Agreed. Lots of the WWII books from the 80's and 90's very much bought into the superior Wehrmacht narrative. Michael Reynolds "Steel Inferno: 1st SS Panzer Corps in Normandy" was one of the first "serious" books I read about Normandy and it really hit home on the "inferior" nature of Allied tanks, the superiority of training and leadership of the SS soldiers, and that the Allies prevailed through numbers. It wasn't Wehrby in the sense that the author had a hard-on for the SS, but it was part of the school of thought that developed from the 80's revisionist works like Carlo D'Este book "Decision in Normandy", which made the notion the Allies won purely through superior material and manpower central to its thesis.

My fourth year university seminar paper was on the historiography of Anglo-Canadian armor in the Battle of Normandy, and you can see how many of the Wehraboo idea's came out of the literature of the late 70's and early 80s, though they existed in more "military" circles prior to that (NATO really got off in the 50's and 60's on getting the former German commanders to give them tours so they could "learn their secrets" on how to defeat enemies with superior manpower and resources - apparently forgot these guys lost).

It wasn't until the 2000's you started to get books like John Buckley's "British Armour in the Normandy Campaign 1944" or Stephen Hart's "Montgomery and Colossal Cracks: The 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe, 1944-45" or Terry Copps "Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy" the reevaluated the Anglo-Canadian performance in Normandy against the Wehrmacht and SS in a better light. I'm less familiar with the historiography of the US army in WWII.

But the stuff that Wehraboo's spout was pretty mainstream only 2-3 decades ago. That is why the History Channel stuff is so bad, since the HC stopped doing serious documentaries in the early 2000's for the most part, so what HC documentaries remains on youtube tends to reflect where the school of thought was at that time. For all intents and purposes, the stuff on this subreddit is an outgrowth of the recent round of revisionism that occured in WWII history, which is revisionism against the previous round that occured around the 80's, which itself was revisionism from the post-war works (and there are different kinds of revisionism as well, for example post war works tended to be very strategic looking where as the revisionism of the 80's brought in a lot of the ground level stuff from interviews with veterans - John Kegans work "The face of battle" was really important in starting the trend of getting the experiences of soldiers recorded in WWII history books)

Thanks so much for the reply! I'll definitely look into all of that.

One of the best times I've had discussing/learning about Vimy was a couple years ago at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. I was visiting at the time, and have since moved here so I'm planning on going back. Anyway, that's beside the point. We were wandering around the museum, and came upon the Vimy Ridge area and an older man who was a volunteer came and asked if we wanted to have him guide us through. I felt like I knew a fair bit about the battle already, having read books like Vimy and spending time in libraries etc, but we decided why not eh! Wow, best decision BY FAR. Not only the way he was able to tell the story, but all the info he had along with private letters and stories that have never been published. We ended up spending over an hour and a half JUST in the Vimy area talking about it, and learning and hearing many new stories. To this day I hope I could go back and find this particular volunteer to go through again. He had a wealth of knowledge on Passchendaele as well. He had photos from a trip he'd taken out there to show what it all looked like now, most interesting being looking at the area where Passchendaele took place from the same vantage point as the giant photo on the wall in the museum.

Anyway, I ramble, but thanks so much for the reply and info. Also if you've never been I highly recommend the War Museum. Hopefully I'll get back there and find that particular volunteer.

I don't know much about Ron Paul or his beliefs, but the quote itself is fairly accurate. For proof, check out the 2400 page collection of speeches, newspaper clippings, private/public correspondence titled The Debate on The Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification. I know that many people today don't like the fact that the aforementioned quote is accurate, but it's accurate nonetheless. The real questions is...why does it even matter?

And yes, I've read the quote posted on this page:
>From the US Constitution:

>Sixth Article: There shall be no religious test for any public office or trust under the United States.

>First Amendment: Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

But I don't see how that's relevant to the quote in question...they are completely compatible.

There’s an excellent history of the RCN called In Peril on the Sea. That’s where I first came across this story, but it’s also a terrifically good source with great photos.

https://www.amazon.ca/Peril-Sea-Canadian-Battle-Atlantic/dp/189694132X

Farley Mowat And no Birds Sang

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/329554.And_No_Birds_Sang

Anything by Mark Zuehlke

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/312061.Mark_Zuehlke?from_search=true

http://zuehlke.ca/

Denis & Shelagh Whitaker Victory at Falaise: a Soldier's Story

https://www.amazon.ca/Victory-at-Falaise-soldiers-story/dp/0002000172

Tim Cook The Necessary War and Fight to the Finish

https://www.amazon.ca/Necessary-War-Canadians-Fighting-1939-1943/dp/0670066508/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486312261&sr=1-5

https://www.amazon.ca/Fight-Finish-Canadians-Second-1944-1945/dp/0670067687/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486312261&sr=1-3


Edit: I forgot My Father's Son by Farley Mowat.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/750733.My_Father_s_Son

just keep in mind sometimes Mowat takes a few liberties with the truth in the interest of spinning a good yarn. I believe it was he who said never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I just wanted to say if anyone is interested in learning more about this battle and Canada's role in it I can't recommend Pierre Burton's Vimy enough. Burton's style and passion make reading the book worthwhile, and he really gives a great understanding of the battle itself and what victory meant for Canada.

Here's the Amazon link :
http://www.amazon.com/Vimy-ebook/dp/B004H3W3T2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1343457479&sr=8-2&keywords=Vimy

This is by far the best book on the subject. You should definitely check it out if you're interested in learning more http://www.amazon.com/Park-Prisoners-Bill-Waiser/dp/1895618746/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410413597&sr=8-1&keywords=park+prisoners

The techniques come from W.E. Fairbairn, who designed the hand to hand combat curriculum for British special forces in WWII. Rex Applegate studied under Fairbairn and adopted many of his techniques. Fairbairn wrote several books, and his curriculum for the British Special Operations Executive can be found in this book.

It isn't necessarily from the "people's" perspective but Desmond Morton's "A Short History of Canada" does give light to lesser known bits of Canadian history.

http://smile.amazon.com/Short-History-Canada-Sixth-Edition/dp/0771064802?sa-no-redirect=1

Full disclosure, I had him as a professor in university and grew fond of his work. He was Tommy Douglas' second hand man in the 60s - so he does have some 'lefty' cred, I suppose.

There is a great book "Curse of the Narrows" that talks about the explosion- things that happened are amazing.

Welcome! There's also a published book that I own and it's fantastic and informative too.

Anglo/Canadian artillery in Normandy in the summer of 1944 was so efficient many German units became convinced that the Allies had a "super cannon" that was capable of automatic artillery fire. George Blackburn in his book The Guns of Normandy tells the story of a German Colonel coming across the lines with a white flag saying that he and his men would surrender on the condition that he would be allowed to witness the Canadians' "machine gun artillery" in action.

Of course, the Canadians were only using the humble 25pdr and it was their doctrine/training that allowed such massive amounts of firepower to get down range.

edit: Added hotlink to the book. It is one of the most compelling Second World War narratives I've ever read and I recommend it to anyone interested in military history.

Actually, nope! Here's the quote (go to the vimy section):

http://canadianmilitary.page.tl/First-World-War.htm


Can't pull it up cause I'm at work, but it is used in Tim Cook's amazing book (part 2/2 in his series): Shock Troops.

https://www.amazon.ca/Shock-Troops-Canadians-Fighting-1917-1918/dp/0143055933

Here is part one (at the sharp end) for anyone interested:

https://www.amazon.ca/Sharp-End-One-Canadians-1914-1916/dp/0143055925/ref=pd_bxgy_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=NG58JWQANN4YGV6KV4PM

Bloody Victory is pretty good.

First part here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgcs2kvY3eM

For books, I highly recommend George Blackburn's book, The Guns of Victory, available here:
http://www.amazon.ca/Guns-Victory-Soldiers-Belgium-Holland/dp/0771015054/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422128943&sr=8-1&keywords=guns+of+victory

I'm with /u/Str8OuttaFlavortown on this not really fitting this subreddit's rules, but it really is a compelling story. If interested, check out Curse of the Narrows by Laura MacDonald.

Kinda late but I also highly recommend this book as well:

https://www.amazon.ca/Vimy-Pierre-Berton/dp/0385658427

Believing in equality, and marching against Trump in a show of solidarity for those values, is the point - "achieving equality" happens through legislation and societal evolution. Kind of like how women had to march for suffrage, but the march didn't "achieve" suffrage. If you honestly don't understand the purpose of protest, I suggest you read "March: Book One", or "Freedom is a Constant Struggle".

For your second question: women are still paid less for the same job a man has (the discrepancy of which is even worse for women of color), women are still vastly outnumbered in positions of power (CEOs, World Leaders, etc.), and when they do find themselves in those positions, like Hillary Clinton, they are derided for everything from the pitch of their voice, to the clothes they wear, to their ability to overcome their "emotions".

And I swear to God, if you try to reply with some "but things are so much better!" line: things were also better for women after they won the vote, but it still took until 1993 for Marital Rape to be considered a crime in the U.S. "Progress" is not a road that just ends, where we all pat each-other on the back and look out at our utopia - because humans will always be imperfect, and there will always be something to improve.

The Guns of Normandy.

Follows a Canadian Army medium artillery battery from June 6th to September 30th, 1944.

The author Blackburn was one of the FOO"s ( Forward Observation Officer ) who "called the shots " by radio from the infantry forward positions. 14th Field Artillery supported the Canadian Army through the battles in June August and September og 1944.

This is a book about the soldiers on the ground, not the Generals. Its about being so tired that you fall asleep next to a 25 pounder gun firing at maximum rate, 12 rounds a minute. Or helping to hand carry 1200 rounds of artillery shells for a half a mile, in the dark, after being awake for 36 hours.

True and outright gut wrenching, as well.

link. https://www.amazon.ca/Guns-Normandy-Soldiers-View-France/dp/0771015038

Jim B.

I have not read it, but Greg Malone's book is supposed to be good ...

https://www.amazon.ca/Dont-Tell-Newfoundlanders-Newfoundlands-Confederation/dp/0307401332

I'd recommend Pierre Berton's Vimy for a detailed yet engaging account of what the battle was like for the people involved, and what the victory meant for Canada as a nation.

Get the book "Dont Tell the Newfoundlanders". It discusses how Newfoundland was treated like a playing chip by the Brits and the crooked politics that took place in her joining Canada. It is extremely thorough. If you are a newfoundlander, your blood may boil while reading it.

https://www.amazon.ca/Dont-Tell-Newfoundlanders-Newfoundlands-Confederation/dp/0307401332

Interesting book on the topic

Fire in the Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy and Its Aftermath

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894

The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche

Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Disaster of 1917

Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903

To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire


Albatross
"One late summer's day, the yacht Trashman set sail from Annapolis to Florida. On board were five young people: John, the captain; Meg, Mark, Brad, and Debbie Scaling. When the boat sailed into a gale, the eighty-knot winds shredded the sails. Forty-foot seas crashed through the cabin windows, and Trashman sank, leaving the crew adrift in a rubber dinghy. Albatross tells the story of how Debbie and Brad survived and how the tragedy changed Debbie Scaling's life forever."

have not read yet, supposed to be good:
Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival

One thing I found useful was reading biographies or histories of soldier's lived lives in combat (e.g. Vimy, Forsaken Army). Anything that gets into first hand accounts of soldiers' experiences in battles. I find how their descriptions differ from a typical armchair author is they often portray the visceral experience of combat. The whump of an explosion kicking through the window and punching them in the chest with a force that picks them off their feet and dashes them into the far wall; the nip of bullets sending shards of wood raining down soldiers taking cover behind trunks of trees. I find including those elements adds a lot of gritty action.

The other thing that comes across is battle is chaotic and fluid. People just die, and at times it almost seems random. A sea of bullets are sailing across the battlefield, and whether a soldier lives or dies comes down to if they are standing in the wrong place in the wrong time. Advances flow into retreats. People are wounded, and they scream, and they scream, and they scream. Victory is not a straight line, and neither is defeat. Adding these elements I find creates a sense of danger, especially if you've established you are willing to kill off or punish your characters.