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In the First World War, Canada suffered roughly three soldiers wounded for every one killed. Every time you go into a small Canadian town and see a cenotaph with 10 names on it, you have to imagine that back in the 1920s, the town would have featured 30 more men with missing limbs, missing eyes or worse. Manitoba soldier Christian Curley, for one, returned home after having lost all four limbs at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Government posters often depicted war injuries as superficial; an arm in a sling, a bandage over the forehead. But the drawing on the right depicts a Second World War-era pedicle graft, a particularly gruesome-looking procedure first pioneered on badly burned First World War soldiers.

The typical Canadian veteran never told his friends and family about what he had been asked to do overseas. Bomber veterans privately harboured vivid memories of seeing German cities vaporize under their Lancasters. And whether due to discretion or trauma, even decorated soldiers often did not talk about the violence they had been forced to use in defence of themselves or comrades. On the left, a sketch from the Second World War of the self-defence techniques taught to Canadian soldiers. On the right, a custom-made First World War trench club that would have been used in close-quarter trench combat, often in low light.

Remembrance Day is typically full of words like “bravery,” “sacrifice” and “selflessness.” And it’s true; Canada did consistently flock to the colours with a sense of duty and patriotism that doesn’t really exist with the same intensity anymore. What is less remembered is just how much societal pressure there was on Canada’s young men to enlist, particularly during the First World War. Government posters openly questioned the manhood of anybody who wasn’t in uniform. Women, in turn, were guilt-tripped for having the gall to be seen with a husband or sweetheart who was still a civilian. In the U.K., the shaming of male civilians reached its apex with the White Feather Brigades, groups of young women who would roam public areas pinning white “coward” feathers to able-bodied men in civilian clothes.