Toronto, Canada – Adding a bold voice to recent debate over the role, cost, and reach of Canada’s military, a new book Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety by Ian McKay and Jamie Swift, provides a critical perspective on both Canada’s growing effort to portray itself as a militaristic Warrior Nation and its exploitation of history in achieving this end.

Taking examples from the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, and Canada’s UN peacekeeping missions in Africa, Ian McKay and Jamie Swift consider how Canada’s valorization of military history has thrown totemic Canadian ideals of peace, tolerance, and reasoned public debate into question. Replacing these ideals, the authors assert, is a shift in Canadian political culture toward authoritarian leadership and permanent political polarization.

“It’s all about how wars are remembered, not whether we remember them,” co-author Jamie Swift observed. “Warrior Nation describes the way that government attempts to manipulate and indeed mould public opinion to suit its own agenda.”

Historian and co-author Ian McKay added that “many regimes around the world have used the technique of mobilizing fear and drawing us back to cults of blood and death, but very few of those regimes were ever called democracies.”

In pages of exhaustive research, Warrior Nation sheds light on the key players and narratives essential to understanding both Canada’s past and its current direction. Swashbuckling marauder William Stairs, the Royal Military College graduate who helped make the Congo safe for European pillage.

Vimy Ridge veteran and Second World War general Tommy Burns, leader of the UN’s first big peacekeeping operation, a soldier who would come to call imperialism “the monster of the age.” Governor General John Buchan, a concentration camp developer and race theorist who is exalted in the Harper government’s new citizenship guide.

Ian McKay is a professor of history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.  His previous books include Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada’s Left History, For a Working-Class Culture in Canada, and the award-winning Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920.

Jamie Swift is a winner of the Michener Fellowship for Public Service Journalism. He has authored numerous books, from biography and history to corporate muckraking. His most recent title is Persistent Poverty: Voices from the Margins, co-authored with Brice Balmer and Mira Dineen.

Image Courtesy of   meunierd / Shutterstock.com

The article Canada Becoming a “Warrior Nation,” New Book Asserts appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

DreamWorks Pictures’ “War Horse”, directed by Steven Spielberg, has earned American Humane Association’s highest certification rating: Monitored: Outstanding, No Animals Were Harmed. The production complied with American Humane Association’s ‘Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media’ to ensure the safety of the horses and fully cooperated with American Humane Association’s Film and TV Unit,  which logged 1,100 hours on ‘War Horse’ sets in England and California and safeguarded more than 100 horses.

Since 1940, American Humane Association has been safeguarding animals in film. On the ‘War Horse’ production sets, American Humane Association representative Barbara Carr was present to make sure that the many horses used in the making of the film were both safe and treated humanely. Says Director Spielberg, “I gave Barbara [Carr] the complete, final cut so to speak, to pull the plug if she felt any of the horses were not up to the challenge or any of the horses were in any way in harm’s way.”

Spielberg gave Carr input on set in the planning of the stunt or the action the horse had to perform and also gave her opportunities to watch rehearsals in slow motion, done one step at a time, so she could determine whether it would be safe for the horse.

The film, which opens in theatres in the U.S. on December 25th, is an epic tale of loyalty, hope and tenacity set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War. Based on the best-selling book by Michael Morpurgo and the Tony Award-winning stage play by Nick Stafford, ‘War Horse’ is one of the great stories of bravery and friendship, brought to the screen by one of the greatest directors in film history.

‘War Horse’ begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets—British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter—before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man’s Land. The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse—an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks Pictures’ ‘War Horse’ stars Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Niels Arestrup, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch and Toby Kebbell. It is produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, and executive producers are Frank Marshall and Revel Guest. The screenplay was written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis and is based on the book by Michael Morpurgo and the international hit stage play by Nick Stafford, originally produced by the National Theatre of Great Britain and directed by Tom Morris and Marianne Elliot.

The article War Horse Gallops to American Humane Association’s Top Rating appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.