Review: Canadian Military

In conjunction with its website, Canadian Military makes for an interesting classroom resource.  When describing my experiences with history in high school, I would often joke with my friends, "Every ten pages in the Canadian history textbook, we had avoided another war.  Every ten pages in the American history textbook, they had just fought in another war, sometimes with themselves."  Even for the daughter of a Canadian military history buff, a man who served on reserve for three years, my idea of the Canadian national identity never included a military, and when it did, it was always had a negative implication.  Canadian Military, as a magazine, is a reminder that the Canadian military wasn't just a collection of blunders by Sam Hughes. 

The only difficult part of integrating Canadian Military into the classroom is that it requires a fair bit of context to make it readable.  I picked the article "On Target September 7", which describes an election and chain of command that I'm completely unfamiliar with.  I think I understand what's happening, but I can't be sure without a lot of context to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.  On the one hand, this website could force teachers to work harder at developing a more well-rounded history curriculum, one that takes into consideration all of the Canadian military's hard work from throughout history, the politics that take place in the forces, and their continuing significance in society today.  Unfortunately, teachers already have so much work to do to prepare for their lessons that it's doubtful they'll have the time or energy to develop a decent historical analysis using all that Canadian Military has to offer.

Another complaint about the magazine is that so much of it is written in a conversational tone that it's difficult to tell what facts have been embellished or are clearly hearsay.  In the article I read, there was such an air of incredulity that I fear what I was reading was pure fiction.  It was like a Tom Clancy novel online.  I think that the magazine does have some advantages for teachers, but not enough to warrant full integration into the classroom.