The articles “Cadets, Curfews, and Compulsory Schooling: Mobilizing Anglophone Children in WWII Montreal” by Tamara Myers and Mary Anne Poutanen and “The Education of Japanese Children in The British Columbia Interior Housing Settlements During World War Two” by Patricia E. Roy contribute to the wider historiography on the division of Canada during World War II. One of Tamara Myers and Mary Anne Poutanen’s topics in their article was the division of English, Protestant Canadians who supported Britain’s war effort and Catholic, French Canadians refusal to support it.  During the second World War, Canadian children were being mobilized in protestant schools by having many aspects of war work imbedded in local schooling, much to Catholic Quebec’s dismay.[1] Protestant schools, principals, and teachers promoted the war effort by acting as supportive role models and encouraging discussions about the importance of contributing the war effort.[2] As a result of this encouragement, many students contributed to the war effort by taking part in fundraising money for charities and soldiers and their families,  purchasing and sending goods to soldiers overseas, and buying and selling war savings stamps and victory bonds.[3] Despite Canada being democratic, freedom of patriotic expression had its limitations as students, mostly francophone, who refused to participate in such patriotic activities faced expulsion, or, under the Defence of Canada regulations, the suspension of habeas corpus and censorship invocation.[4] Japanese Canadians also faced division from Canadian society during WWII, as highlighted in Patricia E. Roy’s article. During the War, the provincial government of British Columbia rejected responsibility of educating Japanese children and as a result, the children were restricted to separate schools.[5] The schools that Japanese children were segregated to were of poor quality and the education that they were taught was taught by volunteer teachers who were often unqualified and inexperienced, some with even an incomplete education.[6] After reading these two articles, it was notable that the loss of liberty and an increase in discipline was prevalent theme. Moreover, the article “Disciplining Children, Discipling Parents: The Nature and Meaning of Advice to Canadian Parents, 1945-1955” by Mona Gleason also contributes to this theme. While in the previous articles, the main focus of discipline was towards children, Gleason’s article focuses more on how parents were to discipline children. Parents who did not follow traditional gender roles were said to influence their child towards homosexuality.[7] Juvenile delinquency was attributed to the prolificacy of crime comics which led to the outlaw of them in Canadian society and contributing to the loss of liberty.[8]

[1]Tamara Myers and Mary Anne Poutanen, “Cadets, Curfews, and Compulsory Schooling: Mobilizing Anglophone Children in WWII Montreal,” Histoire Sociale 38, no.76 (2005): 387.

[2]Ibid., 390.

[3]Ibid., 390.

[4] Ibid., 386-387.

[5]Patricia E. Roy, “The Education of Japanese Children in British Columbia Interior Housing Settlements during World War Two,” Historical Studies in Education, 4, 2 (1992): 211.

[6]Ibid., 215.

[7]Mona, Gleason, “Disciplining Children, Disciplining Parents: The Nature and Meaning of Advice to Canadian Parents, 1945-1955,” in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 366.

[8]Ibid., 358.