Alive with personal stories, Hometown Horizons considers how people and communities on the Canadian home front perceived the Great War.
Description
Robert Rutherdale considers how people and communities on the Canadian home front perceived the Great War. Drawing on newspaper archives and organizational documents, he examines how farmers near Lethbridge, Alberta, shopkeepers in Guelph, Ontario, and civic workers in Trois-Rivières, Québec took part in local activities that connected their everyday lives to a tumultuous period in history.The making of Canada’s home front, Rutherdale argues, was experienced fundamentally through local means. Hometown Horizons challenges historians to consider the place of everyday modes of communication in forming collective understandings of world events.
Reviews
Robert Rutherdale’s Hometown Horizons: Local Responses to Canada’s Great War is an important work that contributes to a social and cultural understanding of the war. … This book stands out in the literature by offering a microscopic view of the struggle. … Overall, Rutherdale’s book is important in the uniqueness of its localized approach. It offers a wealth of information and the depth of the author’s research is impressive. Individuals from each community are brought to life and this work goes a long way in highlighting the importance of the local response to the Great War. Hometown Horizons is useful not only within the historiography of the First World War but also within the study of French-English relations, gender history, and rural and urban history in Canada.
- Canadian Military History, Spring 2007 1/1/2007
Readers will find a wealth of information in Hometown Horizons ... Rutherdale has provided a valuable addition to military and local history in this richly documented and nuanced study on the multi-faceted effects of the First World War on the Canadian home front.
- Jeff Keshen, University of Ottawa