Noble Illusions by Stephen Dale

Author:Stephen Dale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fernwood
Published: 2014-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

3

In the Thick

of Things

When Canadian boys awaking on Christmas morning 1916 unwrapped their eagerly anticipated copies of the thirty-seventh annual volume of Young Canada (a 1915–16 double issue), the world was already past the half-way point in a war that that would ultimately claim 9.5 million soldiers’ lives and wound 15 million more.1 Close to two years had passed since the conflict that was expected to end in six months had slid into a bloody, seemingly endless stalemate. The concept of trench warfare and associated names like Ypres, the Somme, Verdun and Gallipoli had by then entered the global lexicon and would soon become synonyms for mass human suffering and industrial-scale horror. Soldiers had found many novel ways to die: the previous winter, for instance, there had been reports from the Eastern Front of hundreds of Russian troops freezing to death as they slept. New combatants — lesser powers from the old alliance system — had joined the fray as the war dragged on: Bulgaria and Serbia had declared war on each other; Romania had declared war on Austria-Hungary; Greece had declared war on Germany and Bulgaria. There was fighting in Asia, the South Pacific, the South Atlantic and the Middle East, and incidental conflict in the colonial hinterlands as the Japanese made forays into Germany’s undefended colonies in the Far East and indigenous conflicts erupted across Africa.2 Soldiers were not the only parties caught in this expanding chaos. As those boys in Ottawa, Montreal and Edmonton unwrapped their new Christmas books in the crisp calm of a Canadian winter, the most mundane of the war’s effects were taking their toll on central European population centres, which were focused on survival. As G.J. Meyer writes in A World Undone: “Germany and Austria alike were beginning to die from within, their cities sinking into want and despair, their children literally starving.”3 How do you write about a world like this for an audience of schoolboys?

In the case of Young Canada, part of the answer is that you write about something else. Those innocent articles that appeared in the 1913 edition, the ones that waxed enthusiastic about hobbies and sports, still took up space in volume 37 — proving that childhood can remain to some degree a place apart from the real world; that enchantment can survive in the face of misery; that life goes on. “Stamps of the World” was still a regular feature, despite the disruptions to the mail service undoubtedly caused by crater-scarred roads and submarine-infested waters. The boy with a relative overseas could also seek some distraction with an adventure story that was unrelated to the war — something like “The Lariat and the Grey Steer — A Story of Cowboy Life,” or “From Thin Ice to Firm Floe,” recounting Commander Perry’s exploits at the North Pole. The industrious boy, meanwhile, might have his interest piqued by the instructional “How to Make a Bicycle Shed,” while the nature-lover could satisfy his curiosity with “The Wild Cat and Its Ways” or “Watching a Kingfisher.

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