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  • Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada’s Second World War
  • P. Whitney Lackenbauer
Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada’s Second World War. By Jeffrey A. Keshen. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7748-0923-X. Photographs. Tables. Figures. Notes. Index. Pp. x, 389. Can. $45.00.

If Canadian military historians still tend to depict the Second World War as "the good war," a selfless moral crusade against tyranny, Jeffrey Keshen's social history of the war years exposes the more sordid side of wartime life. The author charts an able course through the realities, perceptions, and exaggerations of the country at war. Using a national lens he is able to discern and contextualize broad social and cultural trends in a revealing and compelling fashion.

"In many ways, the war was a social accelerator," Keshen explains, "quickly thrusting people into situations that boldly challenged their moral and social conventions" (p. 11). In these pages we see a country recoiling in the face of rapidly changing social values, and the range of topics is impressive: from voluntary services like the Red Cross and Air Raid Protection program, to economic strains and labour disputes, to rationing, a flourishing black market, and the selling of bodily pleasures. These challenges precipitated the increasing regulation of Canadian life and concomitant reforms to recreation, education, and justice systems. His important chapters on women and youth, with their rigorous attention to context and demographic realities, critically re-evaluate assumptions in the historiography and challenge misconceptions. His chapter on Canadians serving overseas, although probably the weakest, still reveals some interesting statistics on venereal disease and Canadians' proclivities for carnal pleasures. Veterans who returned to "civvie street" benefited from a comprehensive re-establishment program, carefully designed to ensure social stability. Many women, pushed back into the domestic sphere at war's end, shared concerns about traditional values and structures. Their wartime experiences, however, had "expanded horizons and ambitions" and "contributed to greater self-reliance and confidence and helped to build a legacy of broadened opportunities" (p. 145). [End Page 1281] More broadly, the author reveals fundamental changes in Canadian society and culture that had far-reaching repercussions.

The title bears striking resemblance to Lieut.(S) William Pugsley's Saints, Devils, and Ordinary Seamen (1945)—suggesting that perhaps not all the literature is as monolithic in its depiction of the "good war" as the author suggests—but Keshen's book is a wonderful and refreshing contribution to our knowledge of war and society in Canada. It is that rare gem that is as rich in detail as it is broad in its historiographical implications. Impressive in its critical use of the available secondary literature, archival holdings, newspapers, and oral interviews, the book's assertions are generally supported with solid evidence, and particularly rich aggregate statistics. The ample endnotes hold a wealth of interesting and useful information, although a bibliography would still have been helpful. Keshen's clear, accessible style and vigorous prose, unencumbered by jargon, make this an important source for students, scholars, and an interested general readership. Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers bridges the artificial divide which all too often stifles meaningful dialogue between social and military historians, and deserves a wide audience.

P. Whitney Lackenbauer
St. Jerome’s University
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
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