The Fighting Canadians: Our Regimental History from New France to Afghanistan.

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and author of
War and Peacekeeping and For Better or For Worse.

This is military historian David Bercuson’s paean to the Canadian regimental system. Bercuson is one of the country’s leading military historians, his prose has more energy than 99 percent of the country’s scholarly writers, and he can tell a good story and get the facts right. Bercuson argues that as soldiers are said to fight for their friends and comrades more so than they do for country or high ideals, their regiments give them their homes. Some units are good, some less so, but when a regiment has spirit and pride and history on its side, it can be a fierce opponent on a battlefield. Bercuson focuses on only a few Canadian regiments in some of the major conflicts in our history, but he does it well, telling the story from the beginning of Canada’s military history through to the war in Afghanistan. The anecdotes are good, the illustrations well presented, and the story line should appeal to all who served—and their children.