Canada At War; A Record of Heroism and Achievement, 1914-1918; Containing Also A Story of Five Cities by the Rev. Robert John Renison, D.D.

Toronto: The Canadian Annual Review Limited, 1919. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Fair. viii, 448 pages. Front and rear boards had some weakness and were restrengthened with glue. Cover has some wear and soiling. Black stain on bottom edge. Name of previous owner written on fep. Decorative endpapers. Color Frontis illustration. Index. Introduction/Preface by Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Laird Borden, the Prime Minister of Canada. Includes chapters on The Eve of the Storm in Canada; The Thunderbolt of War; Meeting a Crisis of National Life; The War Ministry of Canada; On the Way to War--Raising an Army; On the Way to war--Canadians in England; Canadians at the Front in 1915; Canadians at the Front in 1916; Canadians at the Front in 1917; The Year of Victory--1918; Munitions of War; War Economics and Conditions in Canada; War Gifts and Patriotic Work of the People; The French Canadians and the War; Union Government and the War Elections; The End--Canada a British Nation; Members of the C. E. F. who won the Victoria Cross in the World War; Diary of the World War; A Story of Five Cities: Amiens, and the Turning of the Tide; Arras, Zero plus Twenty-Four Hours; Cambrai, and the Gates of Pearl; Valenciennes, and the Promised Land; Mons, and the March to the Rhine; and The Invisible City, the Bivouac of the Dead. Also includes Index, as well more than 60 black and white illustrations. In a writing career that spanned three decades, Castell Hopkins produced some 40 books and pamphlets, wrote extensively for newspapers, journals, and other publications in Canada and abroad, and coordinated and edited a number of series, including the first encyclopedia on Canada. Produced in six volumes between 1898 and 1900, this work, a good deal of it prepared by Hopkins himself, was meant to document authoritatively Canada's past and present; Canada "requires only to be known in order to be great," he wrote. In addition, each year between 1901 and 1923 he edited and wrote much of the ambitiously conceived, massively detailed, and still widely consulted Canadian annual review of public affairs, which he intended to be an impartial compendium of statistics, current events, speeches, and press opinions. He went on to portray World War I as a struggle between British civilization and German authoritarianism, so that in such works as The province of Ontario in the war . . . (Toronto, 1919) he used his pen as a sword to rally Canadians. He came to celebrate the war years as Canada's coming of age within the international community, something demonstrated, he said, by the acceptance of Canadian delegations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the League of Nations. Hopkins's books, pamphlets, and articles provide considerable insight into the imperialist mindset that so profoundly affected Canadian politics and society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Longer lasting in impact was the meticulous effort made by Hopkins to record contemporary history in his Canadian annual review. Robert John Renison was an Anglican bishop in the mid 20th century. Renison was born in Cashel, County Tipperary into an ecclesiastical family on 8 September 1875 and educated at Trinity College School and the University of Toronto. Ordained in 1896, his first position was as a curate at the Church of the Messiah, Toronto, after which he was a missionary at Fort Albany. He was the Archdeacon of Moosonee and, after World War I service as Chaplain, 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade, the Archdeacon of Hamilton. He was then rector of Christ Church, Vancouver until 1929 when he became Dean of New Westminster. In 1931 he was elected Bishop of Athabasca but only held the post for a year. From then until 1943 he was rector of St. Paul's Toronto when he became the Bishop of Moosonee. In 1952 he became the Metropolitan of Ontario, a position he held until retirement in 1954. He died on 6 October 1957. Renison University College in Waterloo, Ontario is named after him.