We Stand on Guard: Poems and Songs of Canadians in Battle

Neil Querengesser taught in the Department of English, University of Calgary, Alberta.

The editors of this collection remark that “It is often said that Canadians have never engaged in a battle or a war of their own making, that Canada is one of the few countries that has never raided or invaded another land for national gain. Our country’s soldiers remain ‘on guard’ because they are, indeed, guards.” And, in general, that is the theme of this collection of verse from three centuries of Canadians in battle. Obviously, some of the “battles” are sparsely represented in the 17 chapters of this collection, which cover every conflict from “Indian Battles” to “Future Battles.” But it is nevertheless interesting to follow the progress of poems and songs representative of these conflicts. The two longest chapters are those devoted to the two world wars, although conflicts such as the American Invasion, The Fenian Raids, and the Nile Expedition also rate a poem or two.

Although the poems and songs in this volume are topically related, they vary considerably in theme and especially in their degree of technical expertise. Some exceptionally good poetry shares pages with popular verse that makes no pretense of being good poetry, yet this arrangement adds to, rather than detracts from, this rather eclectic and democratic collection. Included are the famous (“In Flanders Fields”; “High Flight”), the popular (“It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”), the twisted (“The Man with the Gatling Gun”), songs of patriotism, songs of protest, and several modern poems about war by such accomplished poets as Dorothy Livesay, F.R. Scott, Alden Nowlan, E.J. Pratt, and Al Purdy.

We Stand On Guard is dedicated to “the Canadians who fought and died for freedom.” It is, ultimately, a portrait of a people for whom, if war is not something to be glorified, neither is it something to be cowardly avoided. It is a portrait of a people who would die sooner to prevent a war than to fight one.