Hometown Horizons: Local Responses to Canada's Great War

Tim Cook is the World War I historian at the Canadian War Museum. He is
the author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War.

Canada’s participation in World War I required an enormous national
effort, but it was experienced through hundreds, even thousands, of
local communities. Through a comparative examination of three
medium-sized towns—Guelph, Trois Riviиres, and
Lethbridge—Rutherdale analyzes how citizens viewed, interpreted, and
constructed the war.

The fighting on the Western Front was both an imaginary conflict
thousands of kilometres away and one that affected citizens every single
day. It was discussed, debated, and disseminated through speeches,
media, and gossip. It took fathers and sons. It galvanized groups and
set them against one another. Rutherdale looks at how the citizens of
these three cities mediated the war experience through a number of broad
issues, including the initial rush (or lack of interest in some cases)
to enlist, the patriotic response of citizens wishing to “do their
bit,” the demonization of the enemy, the internment of immigrants, the
ways that groups negotiated conscription, and the response of women to
the war.

Steeped in academic jargon, Hometown Horizons is not an easy read.
Rutherdale’s reliance on communications theory and the seeming
masculinization of every issue offers some insight into enlistment and
recruitment, but it too often verges on the absurd. Sentences read
thusly: “Interpreting such sources, constructing a secondary reading
from a constructed primary reading of an event itself constructed, may
suggest layers of communication that are far from direct, but worth
pursuing.” The often impenetrable text, when combined with the
book’s high price, will likely ensure that few outside academia will
read it. I hope that is not the case, however, since Hometown Horizons
is an important contribution to our understanding of how Canadians
experienced the Great War at the level of communities, groups, and even
individuals.