A Township at War is the story of one community, the southern Ontario
township of East Flamborough, during the First World War. It takes the
reader from rural Canadian field and farm to the slopes of Vimy Ridge
and the mud of Passchendaele, and shows how a tightly knit community was
consumed and transformed by the trauma of war.
In 1914, East Flamborough was like a thousand other rural townships in
Canada, broadly representative in its wartime experience. A Township at
War draws from rich narrative sources to reveal what rural people were
like a century ago - how they saw the world, what they valued, and how
they lived their lives. We see them coming to terms with global events
that took their loved ones to distant battlefields, and dealing with the
prosaic challenges of everyday life. Fall fairs, recruiting meetings,
church services, school concerts - all are re-imagined to understand how
rural Canadians coped with war, modernism, and a world that was changing
more quickly than they were.
This is a story of resilience and idealism, of violence and
small-mindedness, of a world that has long disappeared and one that
remains with us to this day.