GUELPH – The Ontario Historical Society has presented the 2018 J.J. Talman Award to Edward Butts of Guelph for his book Wartime: The First World War in a Canadian Town, published by Lorimer.
The Talman Award recognizes the best book on Ontario’s social, political, economic, or cultural history published in the last three years.
The First World War is referred to as the “Great War” because of its scale, but also because of its political and social implications. In Wartime, Edward Butts eloquently tells the story of how the people of Guelph experienced the war.
It introduces readers to some of the men who enlisted and some who stayed behind, the anxious mothers, wives and children of soldiers overseas, and the many patriotic people who contributed to war-support work.
It follows the story of the war from the heady days of its outbreak and early enlistments, through the endless months of grim casualty reports, to the homecoming of the brave and the broken men who made it back.
Immersion in the back issues of the Guelph Mercury enabled the author to recover incidents of the war’s impact on local families, long-forgotten wartime conflicts and challenges experienced by the people of Guelph, and their reflections on the city’s identity.
These insights into the local community’s response to the Great War are accompanied by frequent allusions to its impact on other communities throughout Canada.
Butts is the author of numerous books, including Murder, Line of Fire, Running With Dillinger, True Canadian Unsolved Mysteries and The Desperate Ones, which was nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award.
