Engaging the Line: How the Great War Shaped the Canada-US Border by Brandon R. Dimmel (review)

Engaging the Line sets out to examine the impact of the Great War on the Canadian components of paired border communities. The three chosen represent distinct areas of the country, and include White Rock, British Columbia (and Blaine, Washington); Windsor, Ontario (and Detroit, Michigan); and St. Stephen, New Brunswick (and Calais, Maine). Windsor-Detroit was (and remains) the only metropolitan border centre while St Stephen and Calais were both small towns, and White Rock and Blaine smaller still. Each rates three chapters—one outlining pre-war history, one exploring changes imposed from without during the war years, and one illuminating the local response to these impositions. It is the latter that are the most interesting, and will be the most valuable to historians, as well.

World War I obviously compelled the federal government to better secure the border. But how was this received by those most affected? Only White Rock lacked a long-standing and economically advantageous relationship with its American opposite. With a large population of British immigrants and economically dependent on Vancouver, imperialist sentiment dominated local attitudes. Furthermore, the perceived threat posed by non-white immigration had justified a restrictive border in British Columbia well before the war. In contrast, both St. Stephen and the much larger Windsor had a history of close economic, social, and cultural contacts with their neighbouring American communities; in Windsor's case fully one-quarter of the city's population worked in Detroit. Both centres were also peopled chiefly by the Canadian-born. During the war years, Windsorites endured numerous interventions by Ottawa designed to stiffen the border, many of them bordering on the petty such as the ban on Sunday papers from Detroit, the imposition of daylight savings time, and certainly not least, the infamous "lady searcher" incident. Efforts to restrain the fluidity of the traditional cross-border culture were vigorously (if unsuccessfully) opposed on the logical grounds that Windsor's circumstances were unique. As Engaging the Line reveals, whether the United States was belligerent or neutral had little impact on the population's positive attitude toward their Detroit neighbours. Even acts of sabotage perpetrated by German-Americans convinced few to alter the status quo. Although there was some deterioration in relations between residents of St. Stephen and Calais, American entry into the war speedily resolved this. Nor had the noticeable wartime invigoration of pro-empire sentiments come at the expense of warm relations with the residents of Calais.

With the three case studies in hand, Dimmel offers several conclusions. First, the border was by no means uniformly conceptualized—though surely we would be surprised if this were otherwise. Second, the research illuminates how Canadians viewed the dramatically expanding purview of the state. Third, it confirms that the borderland ties of the early twentieth century went a considerable way toward explaining how such communities saw themselves and related to their extended neighbours—their provinces and Canada as a whole. And finally, it rightly argues that any claim of a broadly shared Anglo-Canadian war experience is less credible than ever.

Overall, the book is suitably framed within the literature on borderlands culture, the research is thorough, and the prose clear. There are inevitably some minor flaws, however. Letters to the editor may or may not give insight into alternative opinion—at the very least editors select the letters, and at the worst, were known to write them. The Canadian Expeditionary Force's (cef) casualties had not been light before the late spring of 1915, given the Second Battle of Ypres was fought in the last week of April. The photograph of the Windsor cenotaph appearing on page 154, its base covered with Canadian Corps battle honours, somewhat undermines the argument of a Windsor experience distinct from the binding together other Anglo-Canadians are supposed to have experienced. The initially low enlistment...