Winnipeg’s Great War: A City Comes of Age (review)

Early on in Winnipeg’s Great War, Jim Blanchard notes that “This book is the story of Winnipeg during the First World War, of some of the men who went to fight, as well as the people and the city they left behind, of the sacrifices they all made, the role they played in winning the war, and the profound impact the war had upon them and their city.” (8) It certainly is that – but it is also quite a bit more.

To begin with, Winnipeg’s Great War is a particularly fine example of popular history. Blanchard, who is already well known to many readers for his award-winning book, Winnipeg 1912 (Winnipeg 2005), approaches his topic with the sensibilities of a serious scholar, but also with the well-honed writing skills of one who knows how to write for a broader audience – a combination that serves both him and his readers well. Neither a fawning account of Winnipeg’s contributions to, and trials and tribulations endured on account of, the Great War, nor a diatribe against the war and the élites who were responsible for the particular way in which Winnipeg’s contributions were made, Blanchard’s work evinces an even-handed approach which pays attention to many important aspects of life in Winnipeg during the war years, an approach which includes the stories of those who served, those who stayed home, of men and of women, of the well-to-do and the humble, of committed pacifists, and of those who just wanted to stay alive. Nor does it shy away from an analysis of how civic patriotism and other forms of boosterism and patriotism were used as often crude bludgeons against those who did not support the war effort with what some viewed as enough ‘true British’ spirit – but perhaps even more remarkably, it does not automatically disparage the idealism and the spirit of those who wielded such weapons.

Relying upon a mix of primary and secondary sources, the author carefully charts the economic, political, demographic, and social changes Winnipeg and its diverse population experienced during this extremely traumatic period, acknowledging those changes which were unique to the city, those which were directly attributable to the war, and those which were linked to certain larger, structural factors. In this regard Blanchard does a masterful job of helping readers understand how the Great War and other major developments of this brief time span changed Winnipeg from the boom town it had been from the 1890s to 1913 into the somewhat less dynamic (at least in economic and population terms) city that would emerge in the interwar years. But having said this, Winnipeg’s Great War is not concerned exclusively or even primarily with economics. Rather it is more a social and political history of Winnipeg that emphasizes the changing relationships between citizens and the state (on several different levels), between Winnipeg’s various ethnic communities and the dominant Anglo-Celtic group, and the changes wrought in the city’s social and political structure as the city’s élite (and its sons and daughters) addressed the myriad crises of a city, a nation, and an empire at war.

Blanchard has mined the correspondence and papers of several prominent Winnipeg families to give a sense of what the war meant to them, and how this meaning and the attendant attitudes towards the war changed over the course of four terrible years. The élite’s response to news of the outbreak of the war is particularly well handled, often in the form of letters written from “the lake” by such local notables as the Reverend Charles Gordon, the Sanford Evans family, and Nellie McClung. But most poignant of all is the use of such sources to tell the story of Alex Waugh, son of Winnipeg’s Mayor Richard Waugh, whom Blanchard uses to illustrate a certain process of growth, maturation and, ultimately, to underline the tragic loss of potential – for the individual and the city – when...