The Vimy Trap
or, How We Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Great War
- Publisher
- Between the Lines
- Initial publish date
- Mar 2017
- Category
- World War I, Canada, Nationalism, 20th Century
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781771132763
- Publish Date
- Mar 2017
- List Price
- $28.99 USD
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771132756
- Publish Date
- Oct 2016
- List Price
- $29.95
-
Downloadable audio file
- ISBN
- 9781771136051
- Publish Date
- Dec 2021
- List Price
- $25.99
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
Description
The story of the bloody 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge is, according to many of today’s tellings, a heroic founding moment for Canada. This noble, birth-of-a-nation narrative is regularly applied to the Great War in general. Yet this mythical tale is rather new. “Vimyism”— today’s official story of glorious, martial patriotism—contrasts sharply with the complex ways in which veterans, artists, clerics, and even politicians who had supported the war interpreted its meaning over the decades.
Was the Great War a futile imperial debacle? A proud, nation-building milestone? Contending Great War memories have helped to shape how later wars were imagined. The Vimy Trap provides a powerful probe of commemoration cultures. This subtle, fast-paced work of public history—combining scholarly insight with sharp-eyed journalism, and based on primary sources and school textbooks, battlefield visits and war art—explains both how and why peace and war remain contested terrain in ever-changing landscapes of Canadian memory.
About the authors
IAN McKAY is a Halifax historian. He has an M.A. in history from the University of Warrick in England, and a PhD from Dalhousie University. He is the author of the seminal study The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentienth-Century Nova Scotia (1994).
Kingston writer Jamie Swift is the author of a dozen books, most recently The Vimy Trap, or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War (with Ian McKay), finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the Canadian Historical Association Prize for the Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History. He has held the Michener Foundation fellowship for public service journalism and was a longtime documentary producer for CBC-Radio’s “Ideas.” In addition to the writing life, he is a social justice advocate. He taught “Critical Perspectives on Business” at the Smith School of Business, Queen’s University for many years.
Awards
- Short-listed, Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing
- Short-listed, The Canadian Historical Association Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize
Editorial Reviews
Well-written and researched, and supplemented by a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, the authors present clear and valid arguments.
<p><em>Oral History Forum</em></p>
Complicated arguments are presented throughout with nuance and clarity.
<em>Winnipeg Free Press</em>
The Vimy Trap is openly (and refreshingly) polemical, well researched, and lucid in its cultural criticism and is likely to disrupt the martial celebrations of Vimy’s 100th anniversary.
<em>Canadian Historical Review</em>
Other titles by
Crisis and Contagion
Conversations on Capitalism and Covid-19
Warrior Nation
Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety
Rebels, Reds, Radicals
Rethinking Canada’s Left History
Left Transnationalism
The Communist International and the National, Colonial, and Racial Questions
Radical Ambition
The New Left in Toronto
In the Province of History
The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia
The Quest of the Folk, CLS Edition
Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia
Quest of the Folk, CLS Edition
Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia
Reasoning Otherwise
Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920
The Quest of the Folk
Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia
Other titles by
Warrior Nation
Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety
The Case for Basic Income
Freedom, Security, Justice
Sick of the System
Why the COVID-19 Recovery Must Be Revolutionary
Persistent Poverty
Voices From the Margins
Hydro
The Decline and Fall of Ontario’s Electric Empire
Walking the Union Walk
Stories From the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union
Getting Started on Social Analysis in Canada, Fourth Edition
Civil Society in Question
Wheel of Fortune
Work and Life in the Age of Falling Expectations
Conflicts of Interest
Canada and the Third World