The War to End All War

How, after years of stalemate, did the Allies manage to win the war?

Young Canadians worked, worried, and waited during the First World War.

Colourization project breathes new life into First World War images.

A rose christening marks 100 years since the end of the First World War.

Listen to the stories of soldiers who fought at the Battle of Vimy Ridge and the loved ones back home who cherished them.

Learn how propaganda was used to sway public opinion during the First World War.

Courageous Canadian action results in mass capture of Germans during the 100 Days Campaign.

Thousands of Indigenous people served both overseas and on the home front.

Public records and family letters allow us to tell nuanced stories about Great War combatants.

Remembering the Great War through historic sites on the home front.

Q&A: Alison Nagy speaks with Tim Cook about how life in the trenches provoked a variety of creative impulses which helped Canadian soldiers cope with and endure the horrors of war.

Exhibition places First World War under a lens. 

Although a century separates us from the First World War, footage of the legendary German flying ace brings him as close as a computer screen.

When Canadian war medals are auctioned, everyone pays a price. 

The Hill 70 Memorial Project seeks to educate and commemorate overlooked First World War victory.

How training, timing, and new battle tactics helped Canada capture Vimy Ridge. 

A special digital-only edition of Kayak aimed at Grades 2–6. You will find stories about the major battles, about kids’ lives back home, and about how anger around conscription divided the country.

Fascinating histories of two very different music recordings: A popular love song from the First World War that centres around a romantic encounter involving doughnuts; and an excerpt from a classic recording of a baroque masterpiece that had originally been released for the phonograph as a monstrous 36-disc set.

July 1, 2016, marks the one-hundred-year anniversary of a devastating battle that remains seared in the collective memory of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.  

Family and Children’s Services honours First World War soldier from Sharbot Lake, Ontario, for Remembrance Day.

A legendary athlete, Tom Longboat was adored and celebrated as the finest runner of his time. But journalists of the day could never reconcile such brilliance with his First Nations origin. Yet even when their discomfort turned to slurs and condescension,Tom Longboat's dignity remained intact.

Censorship and propaganda were realities for Canadians on and off the battlefield during the First World War.

The idea that women could drive an automobile — let alone drive around the shell holes of the frontlines — was rather revolutionary at the outbreak of the Great War. But nicety was soon driven out by necessity.

How a First World War poem about poppies blossomed into an annual Remembrance Day campaign raising $14 million each year to assist veterans.

An international costume exhibition about women who served in the First World War is looking for Canadian submissions.

How a First World War Canadian army doctor came to write a poem that, a hundred years later, continues to stir the hearts of people around the world.

Soldiers’ letters show that love triumphs over battle.

In 2014, Guelph, Ontario honoured John McCrae as a physician, poet, and soldier with a provincial plaque on Remembrance Day. 

A champion of women’s rights, Nellie McClung also supported pacifism — until her eldest son signed up to fight.  

Database recognizes veterans named on school memorials.

A First World War soldier assures his mother he will return as “good a boy as when I went away.”

That tension is palpable in an impressive travelling exhibition from the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

A Canadian soldier was so keen to enlist after the First World War broke out in 1914 that he neglected to tell his sweetheart. Read his letter of explanation.

On a farm in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia are the graves of two animals who held a special place in the heart of a Canadian officer who served in the First World War.

Canada’s war memorial commemorates the animals who have served in wartime.

Few Canadians realize that much of our parks system was built with forced labour — prisoners of war, enemy aliens, conscientious objectors, and an army of jobless men.

No one knew how to treat soldiers suffering from shell shock in the First World War, so doctors tried everything including shaming, blaming, and electric shocks. 

The anti-German and anti-Kaiser sentiment that was prevalent in Canada during the First World War can be found on a wall carving on Canada’s Parliament Building in Ottawa.

The Americans have their MacArthur and Patton, the British, their “Monty.” Canadians, whether they know it or not, have Sir Arthur Currie.

As the war machine chewed up unit after unit, officials became increasingly desperate to find new recuits. A powerful tool in their recruiting arsenal was the use of propaganda to shame men into fighting.

Military historian Tim Cook explores the history of shell shock, also known as the "storm centre" of military medicine.

Throughout 2010, the Canadian Navy Centennial celebrated the rich history and legacy of the navy. Captain John Pickford spoke with editor Mark Reid about these festivities.

Book Review: The book Hunger, by Rick Blom, examines how food impacted military forces during the First World War.

Book Review: Journalist Henri Bourassa was the most hated man in Canada during the First World War — or, to clarify, the most despised public figure in English Canada.

Book Review: The internment of Ukrainians and other “enemy aliens” during the First World War is portrayed in Sandra Semchuk’s book The Stories Were Not Told.

Book Review: The year-long diary of a twenty-two-year-old First World War trench soldier.

Book Review: Edward Butts writes about the experience of Guelph, Ontario, during the First World War as well as specific events that occurred in the city.

Book Review: Rod Macleod’s new biography of Sam Steele follows the rise of one of Canada’s most famous Mounties. 

Book Review: Cyclists were an important component of operations during the First World War.

Book Review: In Mother of the Regiment author Susan Browne explores the lives of five women, fleshing out their stories with well-researched details and providing an insightful look into the times and places in which they lived.

Book Review: In Firing Lines, Debbie Marshall shares the inspiring stories of three Canadian women who worked as journalists during the First World War.

Book Review: Jonathan Vance presents how the Great War was experienced in smaller communities.

Book Review: By analyzing the 26th Battalion, raised in New Brunswick, J. Brent Wilson tracks the community of men who served in it or passed through it.

Book Review: Author Alan Livingstone MacLeod recounts the tales of hockey players who served Canada during the First World War.

Book Review: A Boy from Botwood shares Private Arthur W. Manuel’s first-hand account of the First World War, including his experiences of major battles and his time as a prisoner of war.

Book Review:  In No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton, Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon provide a rich biography of one woman who was compelled to paint the battlefields in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.

Book Review: The authors of this exhaustive and engaging new volume chose 1917 as the absolute rock bottom in Canadian history.

Book Review: In Mobilizing Mercy, a well-researched history of the Canadian Red Cross, social historian Sarah Glassford describes how, during the course of the 1914–18 conflict, the organization blossomed from a small committee of military and medical men in Ontario, with loose ties to a handful of inactive branches, into an active, accomplished national agency.

Book Review: Linda J. Quiney’s This Small Army of Women focuses on the long-buried story of nearly two thousand women from Canada and Newfoundland who signed up to be Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses, or VADs, in the First World War.

Book Review: To visit the First Word War cemeteries along the Western Front, or in the hundreds of other locations around the world, is to feel the grief of silenced and shattered dreams. 

Book Review: Alfred Edwin “Eddie” McKay lived a brief life. He was born in 1892 and was killed in action in 1917 at the age of twenty-five.

Book Review: Filling in the Ranks traces the development of the Canadian Army during the First World War, from its militia roots and enlistment criteria, through to the training of reinforcements. 

Book Review: The Vimy Trap, from historians Ian McKay and Jamie Swift, is a biting critique of how Canadians remember the First World War.

Book Review: In The Frontier of Patriotism: Alberta and the First World War, co-editors Adriana A. Davies and Jeff Keshen have created a compelling collection of essays that provides a more regional view of the Great War, illustrating in great detail the many ways it changed Alberta and Albertans.

Book Review: The story of Private Archibald John Polson, like many stories from the First World War, is heartbreaking. A collection of letters to and from Polson’s family during the war, many of the letters are translated from Icelandic and provide a unique perspective into the Icelandic community in Manitoba during the war.

Book Review: Alan Livingstone MacLeod presents a remarkable look at the many ways we honoured our war dead, and he explores the symbolism found in these often lonely monuments. Dozens of colour photographs finely illustrate the meticulous care and craftsmanship that went into sculpting these memorials. Long after the two world wars, they remain standing as a reminders of the true human cost of war.

Book Review: Capturing Hill 70 is an excellent publication that explores one of Canada’s least-well-known major battles of the First World War. Coming on the heels of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the Battle of Hill 70 took place from August 15 to 25, 1917. More than 8,500 Canadian soldiers were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. It was also the first time the entire Canadian Corps was commanded by a Canadian — Sir Arthur Currie.

In this presentation, Melanie Martin shares how Newfoundland and Labrador plan to commemorate their role in the Great War.

Book Review: Bowker has done us a service in exploring the turbulent postwar years and in unravelling the intricacies of the war’s impact on Canada and Canadians.

Book Review: Great War veteran Robert Clements starts his book with these lines: “There is not any such thing as a nice, clean polite war. War is always a mean dirty business.”

Book review: The exploits of Canada’s top pilot, Billy Bishop, are relatively well-known but often overshadow the achievements of other exceptional flyers. Roger Gunn’s book, Raymond Collishaw and the Black Flight, profiles Canada’s number two ace flyer.