Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada's Second World War (review)

In Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, Jeff Keshen provides a groundbreaking examination of the impact of the Second World War on Canadian society by challenging the prevailing popular conception that the events of 1939-1945 constituted Canada's "good war." While Keshen carefully documents Canada's remarkable economic and military contributions to the Allied cause, he convincingly demonstrates that the traditional picture of the Canadian war effort has been 'sanitized and simplified" to largely ignore the war's serious negative social ramifications.

Keshen divides his book into two parts. In the first, he emphasizes Canada's "patriotic" response to the war, a response that justifiably forms the basis of the "good war" viewpoint. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who volunteered for active military duty, the grassroots response of Canadians to the war was impressive. Spurred by government propaganda campaigns, Canadians donated $90 million to the Red Cross, purchased $12.5 billion worth of Victory Bonds, and salvaged more than 350,000 tons of recyclable materials. Canadian workers also participated fully in the burgeoning wartime economy largely supervised by federal agencies such as the Department of Munitions and Supply. Although this unprecedented economic growth exacerbated existing rural-urban and inter-provincial disparities, Keshen demonstrates that the Canadian government nonetheless presided over an administrative apparatus that regimented the activities of Canadian workers, controlled prices and wages, and laid the foundation of the postwar welfare state.

Keshen then devotes the majority of his text to the "problematic" aspects of the war effort by examining the negative impact of the war on many sectors of the Canadian population. In the economic field, Keshen focuses on the urban housing crisis and the thriving black market to demonstrate the financial hardships the war spawned. Government attempts to build an adequate supply of dwellings through Wartime Housing Incorporated proved to be woefully inadequate, and unscrupulous landlords took full advantage of the excess demand for lodging by gouging tenants, despite the imposition of rent controls. Stringent restrictions on the production of non-essential goods and the rationing of civilian supplies also created a thriving black market in gasoline, clothing, and food, despite the efforts of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board to prevent profiteering.

Keshen also documents the negative impact of the war on Canadian morals. Wartime privations encouraged the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs, and Canada's social fabric was stretched further by a significant increase in rates of divorce, illegitimacy, and venereal disease. Public concerns about the moral impact of the war manifested themselves in increased - and often unjustified - attention being paid to the activities of Canada's youth. Keshen provides a comprehensive overview of the resettling of thousands of British children in Canada, the rise in juvenile delinquency rates, and the implementation of progressive initiatives such as organized recreational facilities and reforms to the juvenile justice system.

On no segment of society did the war have as great an impact as it did on Canada's women. Keshen devotes much attention to the "chaotic and at times contradictory" results of the full-fledged participation of Canadian women in the civilian and military arenas. Between 1939 and 1944, the number of working women increased by more than 50 per cent, with the number of women employed in the non-textile manufacturing sector alone increasing from 6,000 to more than 261,000. This influx of women into the labour market, however, upset many traditionalists who sought to maintain women within their traditional domestic confines. Many working women also struggled to obtain adequate child care and resisted government and business initiatives to undercut their new-found economic freedom by forcing them to relinquish their jobs to returning male veterans. The influx of nearly 45,000 women into the three military service branches posed an even greater challenge to the traditional, gendered order of Canadian society. Servicewomen were indeed subjected to more stringent moral constraints than their male counterparts and many active duty...