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BOOK REVIEW ESSAY CLIO’S WARRIORS: CANADIAN either in fact or in memory. With 102,000 fatal casualties HISTORIANS AND THE WRITING and hundreds of thousands wounded, either physically OF THE WORLD WARS or mentally, both the national exertions and the grief by Tim Cook generated by the wars were incalculable. Yet, the same Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, events saw the country transformed into a mature nation. in association with the Canadian War Museum, 2006 These wars are the governing event behind all else ISBN 13: 978-0-7748-1256-6 contained in the book. 326 pages Reviewed by Ron Haycock Cook explores the role of the official historians, their keeping of records, and the value and function he English philosopher W.H.Walsh once of archives. He also identifies the common ideas to be commented: “History is an altogether stranger woven throughout his text. Official histories are “those and far more difficult discipline than is authorized by an institution, group or person where often envisioned.” Certainly, after reading the same agent agrees to support the project financially.” Tim Cook’s excellent new book, Clio’s This usually implies that the official historian will have TWarriors: Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World “full access... to otherwise restricted records.” In Wars, one can see that within the swirl of historical the Canadian case, several themes emerge. The relationship writing, there is little doubt that history is also fascinating of official historians with their academic counterparts and complicated. Cook’s work is a was (and still is) fragile at best, and history of the history, primarily of often uneasy. Sometimes there were the official historians who recorded, accusations that official historians preserved, organized, analyzed, and wrote only about the lives of the saints finally wrote about the two most and not of the sinners; or they wrote momentous events to date in Canada’s books that were, as Liddell Hart history: the two world wars. In it, he flippantly once remarked with respect demonstrates that the practice of the to the British official histories, historians’ craft is just as susceptible “official but not history.” Fortunately to pressures as those affecting the this was not the case with the Canadian events about which they are writing. histories. There are reputations at stake, especially when the major players are senior There is little doubt that Canada’s officers still living, or are the government official historians had to steer their officials or the incumbent politicians way through the problems of writing who, mirroring Nikita Khrushchev’s contemporary history – a high-risk observation, think that: “Historians are path fraught with the dangers of dangerous people. They are capable of still living participants, both soldiers upsetting everything.” Sometimes, our and politicians. And so, their histories official historians must save Canadian were often guarded with respect to reputations from our friends, or, at least, making broad judgments, or assigning make sure that the story of the valuable personal blame. They also had to contributions of small allies within a great coalition collect and to process, to read and to analyze millions war are told – for senior coalition partners often seem of pages of information. For years, governments reluctant to do so. Moreover, that “story behind the story” preferred to keep the records closed to public scrutiny, is not dull. Indeed, Cook’s amazing ability to uncover so the official historians were the only people to see the the true excitement, using exhaustive and wide-ranging actual evidence. Consequently, they were in the unique primary and secondary historical materials in the unfolding and important position of controlling documents and narrative, makes this work a fascinating read. “shaping” the archives. All the official historians knew that no archive was neutral, and so, what In many ways, the key part of this book is the quickly evolved was a sense of stewardship. One early introductory essay. Six chapters and a conclusion that tendency was a myopic desire to make sure that the cover details of the official history from 1914 to 2000, last bit of evidence was collected so that the record ending with an assessment of the current state of military was closed until it was complete and protectively history in Canada that follow it. However, the overall “straight.” Sometimes that guardianship was exercised story does not commence with the historians themselves. so vigorously that it impeded the scope of historical Rather, it is the fact that the two world wars of 1914-1918 enquiry for years. Moreover, the official historians and 1939-1945 are the greatest events in Canadian established the first, and thereby formative, history. There is hardly an element of our society that interpretations of how Canadians perceived their own has not been touched in one way or another by those wars, world wars. Spring 2007 ● Canadian Military Journal 105 BOOK REVIEW ESSAY When the restrictions of general admission Beaverbrook wanted recognition of the magnificent to these archives was finally but slowly eased after contributions and terrible sacrifices made by the Canadian the Second World War, a new generation of non-official Corps. Through a steady stream of media releases, such or “academic” historians, as Cook labels them, reappraised as the series Canada in Flanders, Aitken created a the decades of official interpretation. That they were sense of Canadian distinctiveness and identity lest our able to do so was because their “official brethren” military efforts be buried and forgotten within the had compiled and defended the military archives – a fact history of the British armies. His, then, was not lost upon some but not on others. Moreover, in the the stuff that official history became. It was the stuff last few decades, there have been increasingly more that established the reputation and the uniqueness numerous re-examinations of the documents and of of Canada’s wartime performance. In addition, the official assessments. Cook cautions us that some Beaverbrook knew that a more critical history must of these “new viewers” have forgotten that “...the ultimately be written. As he said: “The world can historian’s duty is to understand events within the not be allowed to forget. Records are necessary to context of the time rather than by reading history knowledge. There can be no history without them.” backwards with the benefit of hindsight.” Nevertheless, Beaverbrook’s Canadian War Records organization this latter fact will ensure that those who do not set the precedent for the documentation of all of this make this error will keep military history under nation’s future conflicts. constant review as new interpretations are deconstructed and reconstructed in a healthy evolution. With academic Near the end of the Great War, fatefully, for both military historians currently widening the scope of good and bad, Lieutenant-Colonel A. F. Duguid study, the discipline has moved beyond the original emerged as Canada’s Official Historian of that war. administrative and campaign focus of the official Moreover, he remained in that position until the end historians to assess the impact of the world wars on of the Second World War, having been originally Canadian society. This broader application makes military commissioned to write an eight-volume official history history much more legitimate and attractive in academic of the 1914-1918 conflict. Nearly 20 years later, and history circles. Perhaps it eventually will change the after many embarrassing questions, in both Parliament minds of those in many civilian universities who, as and in public, Duguid had only managed to produce yet, have not fully accepted military studies into their one volume with companion notes. Cook unravels curricula. Nevertheless, military history seems generally this story with clarity and sympathy. Not a trained alive and well – and a great amount of the credit historian, Duguid spent most of the inter-war period must go to the official historians who first laid the as a steward and compiler of the details of the conflict. foundations and nurtured talented academic successors. He battled with the British official historian, Sir James Edmonds, whom Duguid felt had denigrated As for the general public, far from the predictions the role of the Canadians at the Second Battle of Ypres of some fearful or budget-driven politicians, Canadians n 1915, and Duguid won. He reacted to the American were truly interested in the official history of their wars. official historians in much the same way for their The public strongly endorsed their writing and bought ignorance and neglect of Canada’s war role. He even their books. Yet, while there were varying degrees of resisted, then set straight, Canadian senior soldiers success and even one spectacular failure in the writing such as Garnet Hughes, the wartime Minister’s son, of war history, all the government historians were and Sir Richard Turner, VC, both of whom wanted dedicated, hardworking, analytical historians who set the to put their own “saving spin” on why their commands standard for the gathering, preserving, and writing of had not performed particularly well in battle. Above military history in this country. As Tim Cook frequently all, he wanted to make sure the official history would notes throughout his text, they “formed, fashioned or be a testament to the sacrifice that the Canadian soldier challenged the canon of Canadian World War writing and made in the Great War, and he felt it his duty to make constructed memory.” he documented base as complete and accurate as possible. This was his greatest mistake, because he Cook’s various chapters look at the main personalities did not get down to actually writing the history. As a and forces in the unfolding of the official history for the result, Canadians went into the next war with no history world wars.

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