Winnipeg’s Great War

I just finished reading Winnipeg’s Great War by Jim Blanchard.

I really enjoyed this book. I’ve always been interested in history, and this story was very detailed and intensely edited. The amount of information in it is absolutely remarkable.

The author, Jim Blanchard, came to our journalism class this week, and we had the privilege of asking him a few questions about his writing process.
He told us that he wrote the draft to this story by hand twice before ever sending it to an editor, and if you’ve read the book, that’s outstanding.

Moreover, like I mentioned before, the amount of research and information that went into this book is admirable.

The book is about the First World War starting in 1914 and basically goes over most of what happened in Winnipeg at that time.

I was particularly interested in this because, in my old job at Manitoba Film and Music, one of my tasks was to showcase the city to offshore producers who visited. Many producers saw Winnipeg as “the Chicago of the North” and I always told them that, at one time, Winnipeg was on the path to becoming as large and prosperous as Chicago.

I found this book to be very interesting, because it explained how Winnipeg went from being Canada’s third largest city in 1914 (“the Chicago of the North”) to the city it is today.

I was super interested in learning what exactly took place that changed the course of our city’s history, and I think Blanchard did a great job of explaining what happened.

My favourite topics in the book were women’s role in the war and how voting for women became legal. I also enjoyed reading about conscription and what events made enrolling as a soldier mandatory.

If you’d like to read more about how the First World War and Winnipeg in particular, pick up a copy of Winnipeg’s Great War at McNally Robinson.