Varsity's Soldiers: The University of Toronto Contingent of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps, 1914–1968 by Eric McGeer (review)

In Varsity's Soldiers, Eric McGeer develops a narrative history of the University of Toronto's Canadian Officer Training Corps (cotc) contingent, which existed from November 1914 through to May 1968. He begins with an exploration of the period from 1861 to the outbreak of the First World War. During those precotc years, the university hosted a volunteer rifle company (formed in 1861), an engineer company (as of 1901) and a student rifle association (as of 1904). It is fair to say then that the book offers a general military history of the University of Toronto, and the roles that its male faculty and students played in uniform for over a century.

The author advances no particular thesis or argument. In some respects, McGeer's narrative approach reflects the "events as experienced" method – events unfold and were experienced by contemporaries – without an overarching need to fit those events into a particular argumentative or interpretive framework. (For comparison, see Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War.) Still, McGeer proposes a series of secondary arguments that may revise conventional understandings of particular dimensions of the cotc and Canadian military history overall. According to McGeer, the cotc helped Canada's universities to function as well as they did during the Second World War because the federal government administered the selective service requirements of the National Resources Mobilization Act through the university officer training corps. This arrangement, which was negotiated by University of Toronto president Canon Henry John Cody, permitted students to continue with their academic work while undergoing requisite military training. McGeer suggests further that the cotc, or at least the University of Toronto's contingent, had a greater impact on the selection and training of officers for Canada's forces in the Second World War than has otherwise been considered.

The book draws some useful comparisons between two distinct phases of peacetime training: the interwar years (when defence budgets collapsed) and the early years of the Cold War (when they soared). It also offers worthwhile commentary on the end of the cotc in 1968 – a consequence of decisions made by military authorities rather than university administrators. McGeer contends, counterfactually perhaps, that the demise of the cotc has aggravated an ever-widening gulf between Canadian civilians and Canadian soldiers in the decades that followed. While further study is necessary, it seems plausible that if the cotc had continued (in some form) up to the present, Canadians in general might have a better grasp of what purposes their armed forces have served, or ought to have served, at home and abroad. We fall back too easily on the strangely contradictory mythologies of Vimy Ridge and Peacekeeping in place of informed perspectives on military affairs.

Varsity's Soldiers fits into a growing body of literature on modern Canadian military history, during both peacetime and wartime. McGeer's work complements other studies that focus on military training, and on leadership training in particular. For instance, Varsity's Soldiers may be read usefully in conjunction with Geoffrey Hayes' recent work that examines Canadian officer training prior to and during the Second World War (Crerar's Lieutenants: Inventing the Canadian Junior Army Officer, 1939–45). At the same time, McGeer's exploration of leadership training may illuminate elements of much earlier works, such as John English's analysis of Canadian senior leadership in Normandy (Failure in High Command: The Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign).

McGeer draws upon much of the best available evidence to craft a narrative that spans an extended and complex period of Canadian history. Primary material includes the official records of the Toronto cotc, and relevant papers from the Office of the Registrar and the Office of the President. University publications, such as the yearbook Torontonensis, the student newspaper Varsity, and the University of Toronto Monthly, are also widely...