Boys and Girls in No Man’s Land: English-Canadian Children and the First World War
Support Canada's History in other ways (more)
by Susan R. Fisher
Children leave poor historical records of their thoughts and actions, and so they are often forgotten by future historians.
Canada’s Great War from 1914 to 1918 profoundly shaped the nation, leaving 60,000 dead and 172,000 wounded in body, mind, and spirit. On the home front, soldiers’ families often suffered from their absence, death, or permanent maiming.
Susan R. Fisher’s Boys and Girls in No Man’s Land provides important insight into the children’s war that inundated the classroom, the schoolyard, the church, and almost all aspects of society. Young Canadians were pressured to serve the war effort by raising money through patriotic endeavours, to darn socks for overseas soldiers, and even to act as recruiting sergeants for older siblings.
This is a specialized academic work with a focus on the surviving literary evidence, but it is well written and, at its heart, reminds us that millions of voiceless children were deeply affected by the trauma of war. One wonders about the scars they carried forward into the war’s aftermath, and how this played out as their generation fought as adults in the next world war.
— Tim Cook (Read bio)
Tim Cook is a member of the Order of Canada and the author of eight history books, including Fight to the Finish: Canadians and the Second World War.