PROFESSORS DAVID MACKENZIE AND PATRICE DUTIL PUBLISH A FRENCH EDITION OF THEIR BOOK ON CANADA’S 1917 WARTIME ELECTION

PROFESSORS DAVID MACKENZIE AND PATRICE DUTIL PUBLISH A FRENCH EDITION OF THEIR BOOK ON CANADA'S 1917 WARTIME ELECTION 

Les éditions du Septentrion of Quebec City has just released Un Pays En Conflit: La tumultueuse élection Canadienne de 1917, a book by the Department of History’s David MacKenzie and Patrice Dutil of Politics and Administration. It is a French-language translation of their Embattled Nation: Canada’s Wartime Election of 1917, first published in 2017. It is an important and welcome achievement, especially because it is relatively rare for an English-language book on Canadian history to be translated into French. The election of 1917 impacted English and French-Canadians equally, and the publication of a French-language edition now makes the book available in both official languages and will introduce this shared historical moment to a much wider reading audience.

Un Pays En Conflit explores the drama of Canada’s tumultuous wartime election. In 1917, after three troubled years of war, and fueled by the perceived urgency of imposing conscription, Robert Borden formed a new Union government composed of Conservatives and Liberals who had lost patience with Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Laurier, still leader of the Liberals, fought his last campaign trying to convince Canadians that a vigorous war effort still could be pursued without conscription. The country was deeply divided, with French-Canadians horrified at the prospect of forced enlistment for overseas service and English-Canadians more determined than ever to see the war through to the very end. The stakes couldn’t have been higher. With the parties – and the country – divided on the question of conscription, Canadians fought it out at the polls in a bitter and divisive campaign. Canada had not experienced such tensions before in its fifty-year history, and has not since. In our modern era of partisan political affairs, and with divisions based on region, class, and gender on full display, it is hard to remember that things were far worse a century ago, as Canadians marched to the polls during the great wartime election of December 17, 1917.