Book Review: The fight for history: 75 years of forgetting, remembering, and remaking Canada’s Second World War
| Author | Yves Tremblay |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020221099315 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
International Journal
2022, Vol. 77(1) 144–159
© The Author(s) 2022
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Book Reviews
Tim Cook.
The Fight for History: 75 Years of F orgetting, Remembering, and Remaking Canada’s Second WorldWar.
Toronto: Allen Lane, 2020. 503 pp. CA$35.00 (cloth).
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3833-6
Reviewed by: Yves Tremblay, Department of National Defence, Ottawa, ON, Canada
This book traces the history of Canadian remembrance of the Second World War: a
story that Canadians imagine or cannot care to imagine. Cook believes that the social
memory of a good war should be found in narratives created, decade after decade, with
emphasis shifting over time. But he expresses concern about the incapacity of Ca-
nadians to remember and relate their “1939–45.”Thus the inquiry.
It is not until the middle of chapter one (page 76) that the argument comes alive in a
discussionabout the erection of new cemeteries, few in number andmore scattered across
the globe than those of 1914–18. In chapter six, the author poses the question about the
relevance of erecting a national monument to the soldiers of 1939–45. Except among
veterans, the interest is mixed. In response, the concept of “functional monuments”
emerges,as in, for example, a stadium namedin honour of a war hero. Cook criticizesthis
notion (89–92, 175–176, 387): it is memorialization reduced to the useful life of a
functionalbuilding with its bronzeplaque. The reluctanceto build partly explainswhy the
monumentsfor 1939–45 are few in number comparedto those for 1914–18, and noneare
like the one erected at Vimy in the1920s and 1930s (375–376). Ultimately, there will be
no national monument for the Second World War, and the mentionof 1939–45 is merely
added to the cenotaph for 1914–18 (along with that of Korea).
In chapter four, Cook explains how the Canadian generals were economical with
their prose, and official historians, little supported by their political masters, were not in
a hurry to publish. Official historiography was therefore unable to feed a national
narrative in the post-war period.
The author traces the lowest point in memory to the first half of the 1950s (chapter
five). His choiceof illustration is curious. He recalls the murder of Canadianprisoners of
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