Jonathan F.W. Vance

Professor and Canada Research Chair
PhD, York University, 1993


Professor Vance is a specialist in Canadian military and cultural history, war and society in the 20th century, and social memory. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Culture, and was recently elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His monograph Death So Noble won the 1998 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, the 1998 C. P. Stacey Award, and the 1998 Dafoe Book Prize.


Research Interests

My current research revolves around Canada and the First World War. One project is an attempt to understand the war's impact on Canada through the lens of one community, the township of East Flamborough in southern Ontario. Another is a large-scale study of Canadian Expeditionary Force attestation papers, to provide a clear picture of the provincial origins of volunteers and conscripts and to produce a database that can be used for future research.

Research Collection of the Canada Research Chair
in Conflict and Culture

The collection is now available to researchers working in the fields of military history, cultural studies, war and society, and prisoners of war. It is a heterogenous collection of archival materials, microforms, published and printed documents, and secondary sources relating to the cultural dimensions of conflict and the collective memory of war. Its holdings, which might be broadly classed as ephemera, are strongest in a number of areas:

  • popular culture artifacts
  • materials relating to veterans organizations
  • children’s literature and educational materials relating to war history
  • military training and instructional manuals
  • wartime publications

The original materials in the collection are eclectic, and reflect the manner in which they have been gathered. The emphasis has not been on a coherent acquisitions policy, but rather on preserving materials that might otherwise have been lost.

Visits to the collection are by appointment only. Researchers who are unable to visit the archives in person may in certain circumstances be able to purchase photocopies of selected materials. The guide to the collection is available here in pdf.

Representative Publications

A History of Canadian Culture (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Unlikely Soldiers: How Two Canadians Fought the Secret War Against Nazi Occupation. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2008.

Mourir en héros: Mémoire et mythe de la Premiere Guerre mondiale, trans. Pierre R. Desrosiers. Outremont, PQ: Athéna Éditions, 2006.

Building Canada: People and Projects that Shaped the Nation. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2006.

Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment (editor), Second ed. Millerton, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2006.

"Documents in Stone and Bronze: Monuments and Memorials as Historical Sources," in Jeff Keshen and Sylvie Perrier, eds. Building New Bridges / Bâtir de nouveaux ponts: Sources, Methods, and Interdisciplinarity / Sources, méthodes et interdisciplinarité (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005): 185-195.

"Remembering Armageddon," in David MacKenzie, ed., Canada and the First World War: Essays in Honour of Robert Craig Brown (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005): 409-433.

"The Soldier as Novelist: Literature, History and the Great War," in Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review 179 (Winter 2003): 22-37.

A Gallant Company: The True Story of "The Great Escape". Third ed., New York: Simon and Schuster/iBooks, 2003.

High Flight: Aviation and the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2002.

Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997.

Objects of Concern: Canadian Prisoners of War through the 20th Century. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994.

Doctoral Level supervisory privileges

Also from this web page:

Current Courses