The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of a Modern Canada, 1920 to 1950 (review)

To write a history of adolescence and youth requires a scholar to mark the phase as separate from childhood and adulthood. Furthermore, the scholar cannot be ignorant of how history affects the growth of individuals from childhood to adolescence. Cynthia Comacchio in The Dominion of Youth identifies the stakeholders in the history of adolescence and presents youth as active agents who forged a distinct identity.

Comacchio argues that Canadian adolescence took its form from 1920 to 1950 because in "each of the three decades . . . a world crisis—the Great War, the Great Depression, [and] World War II—proved the necessary trigger for . . . a generational consciousness" (8). She sets these youth against adults who she correctly notes override them in the historical record (15). She finds that youth were expected to grow into strong and morally-upright citizens but had to compromise with adults who believed they were responsible for their development. Comacchio observes that this scenario, the growth of oneself from child to youth to adult, could be a site for tensions between genders, races, and classes, as well as age groups.

The adult stakeholders deployed citizenship as a means to restrict, to control, and to redirect what were perceived to be "problematic youth." Comacchio situates citizenship in the metaphor of a "young Canada," a nation that could be considered an adolescent still "figuring itself out." The overarching discourse of citizenship sustains the chapters of this investigation into the history of adolescence over the three decades.

Each chapter is organized conceptually under the larger theme of citizenship in the three-decade timeline. In chapter one, Comacchio teases out the dominant theories concerning youth. Overall, the theorists considered adolescence to be "a problem of alarming scope and potential" (21). By the end of the 1930s, the professionals who studied adolescence across the world synthesized their thoughts into a "nature and nurture" paradigm, which led to the application of terms such as "delinquent" and "deviant" to what were perceived to be problematic youth, members of racial minorities, immigrants, and those of non-middle-class and non-Christian backgrounds. These youth were subject to intervention by professionals (23). Comacchio reveals protracted stays at home through the use of census data in chapter two, and protracted time spent in school, discussed in chapter four. These extensions to the coming-of-age process became most visible during the Depression years when large numbers of students, who would have departed formal education after the completion of grade eight, decided to remain in class in order to avoid entering a desolate labour market. The discourse of citizenship is most apparent in chapters three and five, on youth, love, sex, and work respectively. Teachings about sex and work were wrapped inside the larger concept of responsible citizenship and loyalty to the Canadian state. The use of citizenship to encourage loyalty to the war effort and to discourage contact with the potential demons of modernity— bars, sex trade workers, and premarital sex while in courtship—allowed for the "youth problem" to be contained.

Chapters six and seven represent a paradigmatic shift, from the youth as a "problem" to be solved, to youth as consumers and political activists who claim rights and spaces. Comacchio sets up chapter six as an exploration of "how the young had fun." The 1920s are set up as an era when the private sector recognized the purchasing power of youth. Hence, the history of youth in chapter six contributes to histories of dancing, music, and fashion. However, while the youth exercised their influence over fashion displays, danced, and invested in record players, their parents and other "youth watchers" grew concerned, suspicious, and irate. Chapter six reads as one of "youth versus adults" and it is also a history of adult disapproval of youthful frivolity. This dichotomy is resolved in chapter seven, a...