Winnipeg's Great War

In my journalism class this semester, we were assigned to read the book Winnipeg’s Great War: A City Comes of Age by Jim Blanchard. While the book was very different in style from both Hiroshima, which we read earlier this year, and much of our coursework in general, I enjoyed it.

The book really worked in the sense that it achieved its main goal, which was to educate readers on Winnipeg during the First World War. As someone who is a big history buff and an avid supporter of our city, I found the information in the book tremendously interesting as it brought together two things I really enjoy and it did it by providing an almost unbelievable amount of information.

The amount of detail in the book really is quite staggering. Blanchard came to our class to speak about the book earlier today and shared with us how it had taken him about three years worth of research to get enough information to compile the book. That’s another thing about the book that really works; you can tell that Blanchard really loves what he is talking about. His attention to detail and passion for the source material really comes across while reading. The book seems meticulously researched and really paints a vivid picture of how the city was like during the war.

Finally, the book works because it provides very interesting and very different look to war history. When I think of the First World War, I think of battles in Europe, trenches, mud, death etc. Blanchard lets us know how not all of the war takes place on the front and that life at home also changes drastically. This interesting portrait into the home front definitely opened my eyes to a whole different type of war history.

The way Blanchard wraps up this portrait with an effective ending to tie everything together was solid as well as he added the necessary emotion without losing his fact-based account.

That said, the book was not perfect. While the amount of information was impressive, it was also overwhelming at times. The details were so numerous that it became difficult to follow and it was too easy to get totally bogged down in all of the fact. At times, I wished Blanchard would have picked a few central figures and focused the story on them rather than trying to cram everything in. While Blanchard said he did not want to be like a historian, he ended up including a few too many facts and not quite enough narrative for me, though the letters from Alec Waugh were a nice touch.

I think journalists can learn a lot from the book, even though it is much more long winded than most journalistic articles would ever be.

First off, journalists can learn the importance of doing our homework and conducting research for stories. While we will rarely have enough time to include the same amount of facts or spend hours at the library like Blanchard, we need to take the time to get our facts right and decide what the reader will want to see because ultimately they are the true judge.

We can also learn the benefit of being passionate about our subjects because that makes your work stronger. You can tell Blanchard loves his city and its history and that makes his book more effective.

Finally, we can learn that using people in your stories makes them the strongest. Blanchard did not do enough of this in my opinion. The sections with Waugh were the best and most interesting in his work and it could have used more. People love to read about other people and we should keep this in mind.

I would compare this work to John Kersey's Hiroshima. The two works are similar in the sense that both contain tons of factual information and do it at the expense of much added colour or opinion. Both prefer to let the facts tell the story.

The works are also similar in how they tell a side of war away from actual conflict areas and focus on how cities were affected by the fighting. They both strive to show how the cities have changed as a result of the war, though one is much more obvious.

The key difference is how Hiroshima does a better job of humanizing the story. It focuses on a few key people and uses their stories to paint a portrait of the whole ordeal. Blanchard instead chooses to touch briefly on many things and not get too specific. While both approaches have merits, Hiroshima was easier to read but also much more graphic.

The discussion with Blanchard was informative for me in the sense that I learned the challenges the author faced in writing the book and how much work really went into it. I don’t think it fully registered with me just how much work would be required to find all of the information he included, especially when the conflict he is writing about happened almost a century ago.

I was also interested to learn a couple of his specific quirks like using recipe cards rather than typing his research out and how he actually knew little about the war before he started.

Overall, the book is definitely impressive but perhaps the sheer volume of facts narrows the potential audience. While those who are interested in war history or the history of Winnipeg will love the book, it may be too dry for casual readers.