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New Westminster (B.C.), Douglas College. $5.00. Distributed by Douglas College, P.O. Box 2503, New Westminster, B.C., V3L 5B2. Special issue: PEACE AND WAR, vol. 15, no. 2, 1986.

Grades 9 and up
Reviewed by Alan Thomas

Volume 15 Number 2
1987 March


In this special issue, editor Dale Zieroth assembles the work of fifty-two writers, most of them living Canadian writers, who describe, express, or comment on experiences of war. The wars mentioned are various, from the U.S. Civil War through the First and Second World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, to El Salvador today, and onward into the future with anticipations of all-out nuclear war. A superbly written introductory essay by George Woodcock suggests that the general meaning of such history is a progress towards inhumanity. What emerges from the collection is a sense of the variety of human experiences and responses under war's profound touch.

Some leading Canadian writers contribute, but the value of this issue lies in the number of lesser-known figures who provide strong poems: David Emmonds, Steven Heighten, and Pat Wheat Icy. among others, demonstrate the irony and passion and grim understatement this subject calls out in writers. A section of sixteen full-page drawings by children living as refugees in Central America adds a peculiar mixture of the charm and pathos to be found in childish visions of everyday life in a war /one. with the military boot shown as coming down hard on the poor chickens.


Alan Thomas, Scarborough College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont.
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