Canadian Blog Awards 2007 - the final post

As you can see from the graphic in this post - and in the right column of the blog - The Cannon's Mouth finished 3rd in the "Best Military Blog" category of the Canadian Blog Awards 2007. My thanks to all of you who voted for this blog, as well as to the organizers of the Canadian Blog Awards for their work in recognizing the wide range of Canadian bloggers. There's some pretty amazing work being done out there - check them out. My congratulations to all those military bloggers who were nominated, especially to the winner in the category - The Torch - and the second place finisher - Military Mom at Home. Who knows, maybe next year the organizers of the award will institute a category for Canadian history blogs.

Once again, thanks for your support!

Nomination for a Canadian Blog Award - Part 2

Just a reminder - the deadline for voting in the 2007 Canadian Blog Awards is Wed, 30 Jan, at 11.59 p.m. PST. Please consider voting for The Cannon's Mouth.

So, to follow on from my post last week about the 2007 Canadian Blog Awards - The Cannon's Mouth was nominated in the category "Best Military Blog". The first round of voting finished today, and The Cannon's Mouth is still in the running, one of the remaining five in the military category. Round 2 - the final round - means renewed voting for your favourite military blog, and I hope it's The Cannon's Mouth. If you want to vote for this blog, please visit the 2007 CBA site - the voting page is here. Voting begins tomorrow. Thanks again in advance for your vote if you think this blog is worthy.

Nomination for a Canadian Blog Award 2007

I discovered, quite by accident, that The Cannon's Mouth was nominated for one of the 2007 Canadian Blog Awards in the category "Best Military Blog". I don't know who nominated me - but thanks. I must be honest and admit I'd never heard of these awards until that point. Their website notes: "The Canadian Blog Awards is an annual event on the Canadian Blogosphere in which Canadian Bloggers and Blog Readers vote to decide which blog is the best - either overall or within a category."

Alright, like I said, The Cannon's Mouth has been nominated for "Best Military Blog", and voting amongst the nominated blogs is currently underway. If you want to vote for this blog, please visit the 2007 CBA site - the voting page is here. Thanks in advance for your vote if you think The Cannon's Mouth is worthy.

New look for The Cannon's Mouth

So I've taken the leap and have adopted a new template for The Cannon's Mouth. I've burst outside of the default list of Blogger blog "looks" and have gone with a variation of the K2 template freely available on the web (see the bottom of the page). The image at the top is a photograph I took this past spring of La Chaudière Military Cemetery, south of Avion, France. I've also made it easier to subscribe to this blog (this means you can have new entries/posts delivered to you). There are two options - subscribe by RSS reader (aggregator) or by e-mail. Hope you like it.

Military History Carnival #2

I don't think I mentioned previously that on 13 May 2007 the "Military History Carnival #2" went live on the Victoria's Cross? blog. In the world of blogging, a carnival is a post which a blogger agrees to piece together a collective post from submissions made by fellow bloggers. In this case, the subject is, obviously, the second carnival devoted to military history.

This issue of the carnival provides a brief text and links to a wide variety of posts on military history from around the world. The second carnival mentioned posts dealing with historiography, the use of the internet in military history, the state of military history, and subjects about or from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Russia, China, Korea, Japan, India, Switzerland, Spain, France and Greece. The only Canadian military history subject matter was my own post on my return from my trip to Vimy Ridge in early April.

Alright, so it's not entirely about Canadian military history, but that's not the point.

The third military history carnival will be posted on June 17 on Behind Antietam on the Web. Submissions can be e-mailed to bdowney@aotw.org or use the submission form.

The Campaign to save HMCS Sackville

"Mark from Ottawa" over at The Torch has posted an interesting piece on the campaign to save HMCS Sackville, a Halifax landmark (or is that a "seamark"?). Well worth the read.

Tonight, I finished re-reading the late Ben Greenhous's Dieppe, Dieppe, a quick overview of Operation JUBILEE of 19 August 1942. This is just one of the items I've been reading lately in preparation for my trip overseas as part of my job with DND. I guess this is a bit of an announcement, that I may not be posting much, if at all, between 1 and 16 April while I'm in France. My primary work overseas concerns the burial of Private Herbert Peterson, 49th Battalion, CEF, the identification of which I've written about previously, specifically the needs of his family and the media in attendance. I will also be providing other historical support to the Canadian Forces' contingent. I hope to have the opportunity to blog on The Cannon's Mouth while I'm there, the biggest unknown at this point being access to an internet-connected computer. (A battlefield tour to Dieppe is also scheduled for the contingent, thus my reading of Ben's book).

Time for something a little different

I've decided to make a change in the format of The Cannon's Mouth / Par la Bouche de nos Canons. Basically, I'm going to try to make this blog more personal. As I close in on the one year anniversary of working on this project, and as I approach 120 posts, I've been thinking about the format I've settled into. And, to be blunt, I'm not happy with it. So, it's time for a change. I'm going to try to approach the writing of this blog in the more traditional (if such a term can be used for a technology so new) sense of the genre being a "web log", or diary if you will. This is reflected in my new masthead statement: "A journey through Canada's military history / Un voyage par l'histoire militaire du Canada". After all, most of what I post is a reflection of the material I discover as I follow the paths of my craft as an historian. The remainder comes from readers who send me information, and for that I'm quite glad and would like to say thank you. Please keep sending me material as I have no intention of straying from the subject matter at the core of this blog - just how it's presented.

I'm going to begin with some of the highlights of my experiences in the pursuit of Canadian military history yesterday. I spent the day at Library and Archives Canada looking at a couple of areas of research. First, I was looking for material on a trench raid in which the 49th Battalion, CEF, participated in during early June 1917. This was to help with material I've been putting together on the raid for my job at the Directorate of History and Heritage, Department of National Defence. More on that subject in a future post. Suffice it to say, I looked through a couple of battalion files on "minor operations" - the intriguing name given to patrols, trench raids, small scale attacks - but didn't find much new to me.

The second area I spent researching (and on my own time) involved finishing researching the operations log / war diary of First Canadian Army for December 1944 and January 1945 as well as the war diary for the headquarters of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division for the same period. The reason for this is work on a book length project for which I know a publisher who is very interested in having me produce a manuscript for. The project is the Allied assault on the island of Kapelsche Veer, in southwestern Holland, from late December 1944 through January 1945. This was a nasty piece of business, the terrible weather colliding with a strong sense of pointlessness about the entire endeavour. I had the opportunity to conduct a battlefield tour of the island with Dr. Steve Harris (Chief Historian, Directorate of History and Heritage) in May 2005 for the Canadian Forces' contingent involved in the commemorations marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. Three visits to the island - the surface of which has only changed minimally in sixty years - and I was hooked. This is a sad, heroic, tragic, violent tale - war in a nutshell. To date, there have only been a couple of article of chapter length treatments of the operation in English and the subject cries out for more. I'm still in the very early stages of research on the project, but I'm already finding fascinating avenues to follow, coming up with interesting questions, and discovering primary and secondary sources in English, French, Dutch, German and Polish (the 1st Polish Armoured Division attacked first).

Last night, I stumbled across the latest issue of the Canadian Military Journal / Revue militaire canadienne, vol.7, no.4, Winter 2006-07, to be precise. The electronic version always precedes the hard copy which I see at work. As usual, this journal has much to offer in the way of Canadian military history, including: Second Lieutenant Will Lofgren's "In Defence of 'Tommy' Burns" / "À la défense de « Tommy » Burns"; Béatrice Richard's "Henri Bourassa and Conscription: Traitor of Saviour?" / "Henri Bourassa et la conscription : traître ou sauveur?"; Rob Stuart's "Leonard Birchall and the Japanese Raid on Colombo" / "Leonard Birchall et le raid japonais sur Colombo"; Eric Wagner's "The Peaceable Kingdom? The National Myth of Canadian Peacekeeping and the Cold War" / "Un royaume pacifique? Le mythe canadien du maintien de la paix et la guerre froide", as well as a handful of book reviews on historical publications.

Further material on my military remains story

My thanks to Damian at The Torch for expanding on the story of the ongoing identification of Canadian military remains that I noted in the Cannon's Mouth a couple of weeks ago. The Torch is a very interesting group blog on the Canadian military - not too much historical content, mostly current affairs, but all interesting for Canadian military historians nonetheless.

My other blog

Blogs seem to be like potato chips - one just isn't enough. I've got several ideas for blogs other than The Cannon's Mouth but, at this point, I've only put one into action. It's quite different from this blog and is a bit of an experiment on my part. Can the blog format be used as a living, ongoing encyclopedia? My other blog is called "Soldiers of the 38th", and is an attempt on my part at an ongoing mass biography of the officers and men of the 38th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, during the First World War. As I wrote in the initial entry on the blog:

For several years now I've been researching and writing a history of the 38th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, and its experience during the First World War. Throughout this time one of the things that's bothered / intrigued me is the amount of information I've been able to gather on individual members of the 38th but without any really feasible outlet for the information. In the back of my mind I've wanted to write a collective biography of these men, but I'm not sure that will ever happen. (I still have a lot of work left to do just writing the overall history). Putting the information slowly onto my website is also possible, but seems a lot of web-type work that I'm not really up for. So, what I have concluded is, why not use a blog to present this information? I'm already familiar with Blogger (from my other blog - The Cannon's Mouth) and it's a quick and easy means to get some information out onto the web and, hopefully, garner some feedback as I go along.

So, here's the plan. I will write individual posts on members of the 38th - hopefully one a day or so - using some of the basic information I've gathered. I will then consider each of these posts to be available for editing, in other words I will add more information as I find it - images, medal citations, newspaper blurbs, etc., etc. I will use labels (see the bottom of this message) specific to each unique family name (all the Smiths together, for example) and these will appear on the right sidebar as a type of index to the individuals. This will become unwieldy when I've written posts for hundreds of individuals, but I'll try to figure something out.

Feedback would be wonderful! Further information on one or more soldiers I've written about, fantastic!

I've currently written individual posts for more than fifty officers and men - obviously, I've got a long, long way to go. But, I'm in no hurry and am willing to put years into the project. After all, what are more important than the stories of some of the men who have fought (and about 1 in 5 members of the 38th died during the war) for this country.

Dominion Institute poll on our knowledge of Canadian military history

I've yet to delve into the media's coverage of Canadian military history, but this story is different. CTV.ca reported today on a survey carried out by the Dominion Institute on our "collective knowledge of Canadian military history", only to find that it was "eroding". According to the report, the survey "found that only 42 per cent of Canadians received a passing grade on a simple test of First World War knowledge." Not only were the results of the survey pitiful (my opinion, not theirs), the institute fears for the future of Remembrance Day at this rate.

I doubt this blog does particularly much to educate the public on Canadian military history - nor is it really intended to. But, as a member of the Canadian military history online community, I feel the need to do more. And this is not just something that I resolved to do after reading the CTV story. I made one small step for my part yesterday when I initiated a second blog - Soldiers of the 38th - where I intend to present biographical information that I have gathered (and will, hopefully, continue to gather) on the officers and men of the 38th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, during the First World War. Hopefully this will bloom into a place where visitors can read about some of our past warriors, their accomplishments, and sacrifices.

What other ideas do any of you have? How do we bring Canadian military history to the "masses" by using the technology now at our fingertips?

Changes to my blog

Those of you who've visited The Cannon's Mouth / Par la Bouche de nos Canons before have probably noticed the change in appearance of the blog. Not only did I change the template (appearance) of the blog - hopefully making it more readable - but I have also added some additional items. Note that at the bottom of each post there is an icon letting readers comment on any individual post - feedback is great if I'm ever going to know what you readers would like to see on the site. There are also "labels", tags of a generic nature I've given to each post. This feeds into an index of sorts, which appears on the right "sidebar" of the blog, linking the reader from any one "label" title to all the posts which dealt with that topic.

On the right sidebar, at the top, you'll find an "about me" section with a picture of me and my daughter, a brief blurb, and a link to a more extensive profile incorporating several categories and providing a link to my personal website (www.kenreynolds.ca). Below that is "Subscribe to this blog by e-mail" - essentially, there are three ways to read this blog on a regular basis: (1) by visiting the blog site on the internet at one of the three gateway addresses (cmhistorians.blogspot.com; www.cannonsmouth.ca; or www.bouchedenoscanons.ca); (2) by using an RSS reader in your web browser (Google Reader, Netvibes, etc., etc.); or (3) by entering your e-mail address into the "subscribe to this blog by e-mail" link (it sends a verification message which, when responded to, automatically begins sending each post I place on the blog to you as an e-mail message. Below that is a photograph (art for art's sake) of my daughter and the camp flag of The Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa during a regimental open house. I'm the regiment's museum curator and current regimental historian and I think she's already decided to join up when she get's old enough (in fifteen years or so). Below the blog archives is the list of labels I mentioned. Then follows my blogroll, a list of other blogs which I frequent (I need to add several more historical and technological titles) and links to some interesting websites (ditto). Then follows an idea I "borrowed" from someone else's blog (I forget who now), listing the last ten books I've read (just for pure interest sake). Then we have advertising, some search engines, etc. (running this blog is cheap - Blogger is free, the domain names are not - but some income would help). Along the bottom I have a "links to this site" section and a visitor counter.

You may be wondering, with reference to an earlier message, when can you expect more en français, from Michel Litalien. Michel's still helping with the blog for the francophone military history community, but it turned out to be easier logistically for me to post his material (I'll always note it came from him) and retain the blog as my own little fiefdom.

New History of The Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment

Sandy Antal and Kevin R. Shackleton have co-written Duty Nobly Done: The Official History of The Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment, published by Walkerville Publishing Inc. The book is billed as the "first comprehensive examination of one of Canada's most storied militia units, whose history spans more than three centuries. From their origins as the first militia organizations in what is now Ontario to the present, the units of Essex and Kent counties have loomed large in the history of their province and nation." The two authors combine to cover the period of the War of 1812, the 1838 rebellion, the years up to and including the First World War, the Second World War, and more recent years. Coming in at 854 pages, the book also includes more than 220 photographs and illustrations, and can be ordered by phone or via e-mail. Please note that all proceeds go to The Scottish Borderers Foundation for the benefit of The Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment.

A couple of big changes to this blog

Major announcements!

First, I'm extremely glad to be able to announce that Michel Litalien, a fellow military historian, colleague at the Department of National Defence, and friend, has agreed to join me in writing this blog. This is a great - and very significant - addition to what this blog can offer. Michel has a great amount of knowledge about Canadian military history, especially concerning (but not restricted to) what's going on en français in the field. I have always wanted to have English and French-language content on this blog but, to be totally honest, my French is not (yet) what it should be, and this has been a difficult proposition for me to get my head around. Michel's entrance onto this forum helps me tremendously and will provide a much-needed French-language presence on the site. What this means, in a practical sense, is that individual blog entries will be in English or in French, depending on who's writing a particular entry. We have neither the means nor the desire to translate English entries into French or vice-versa. Despite my own personal deficiencies, I entirely agree that practitioners in the field of Canadian military history should be as bilingual as possible.

Tied to this change is my second announcement. Look at the title box above, and you'll see that this blog is now titled "The Cannon's Mouth / Par la Bouche de nos Canons" (the sub-title statement is being translated and will change shortly). Many of you may remember the now-defunct newsletter of the same name(s) produced by the Canadian Military History Group / Groupe pour l'histoire militaire canadienne. In my first entry on this blog, I noted the possible similarities between what I wanted to accomplish here and what was done in that publication. I've recently received the permission I felt necessary to resurrect the title(s). I've also purchased the domain names www.cannonsmouth.ca and www.bouchedenoscanons.ca and have set them up to automatically forward to this blog (cmhistorians.blogspot.com). What that means is there are three web addresses where this blog can be reached, although future advertising and promotion of the site will take the form of the two new, more obvious and, admittedly, better sounding domains.

The Canadian Military Historians Blog gets some attention

The latest issue of Canadian Military History, mentioned in my last entry, provided this blog with some very welcome press. In an announcement posted in the issue, the journal notes:

"Canadian Military Historians
News about projects on Canadian military history
and the community of historians behind them.

Ken Reynolds, an historian and the Assistant Heritage Officer at the Directorate of History and Heritage, Department of National Defence, has recently started a blog devoted to Canadian military history. It can be found at:

cmhistorians.blogspot.com

Reynolds explains the purpose of his blog:

"I've been thinking about undertaking a blog for some time now. But talk is cheap, and procrastination is tempting. Today, the 89th anniversary of the start of the Canadian battle for Vimy Ridge in France, would seem an appropriate time to get started.

"In particular, I would like this blog to be something that talks about what Canadian military historians are up to and what projects - recently published, unpublished, presentations, lectures, etc. - they're working on. Partly this is because I'm simply nosy, and would like to know what's going on. Is a project I'm considering working on already being researched and written about by another professional historian or a graduate student somewhere? Is there someone out there in our field doing work on a subject which might complement what I'm doing and can we help one another? What's new and exciting out there?

"The first obstacle to overcome what was to call this blog. I thought about using "The Cannon's Mouth", the title for the noew defunct newsletter issued by the Canadian Military History Group, whose mandate was, I think, similar to what I'd like to do on this blog. I wish I'd thought of the phrase "Clio's Warriors" that Tim Cook is using for his soon to be released book on Canadian official military historians. But, alas, I'm not that imaginative. So, I decided to go with the bland, yet appropriate title of "Canadian Military Historians".

"Now what? Well, I'm not entirely sure. Blogging is a bit like experimentation. I'm hoping to add some information worthy of the subject and get the ball rolling, as it were. After that, I guess we'll see."

The blog contains a great deal of useful information and is great service to anybody interested in the field of Canadian military history. Be sure to visit Ken's blog on a regular basis."


Thanks to everyone at Canadian Military History for the plug!