Finding realistic, compassionate memorials to losses of war, and the resolve that such dark and painful days will never again be experienced

Ian McKay and Jamie Swift are shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust’s Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for their book The Vimy Trap: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War, published by Between the Lines. The Shaughnessy Cohen Prize winner will be announced at the Politics & the Pen gala in Ottawa on May 10.

Ian McKay and Jamie Swift, co-authors of The Vimy Trap: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War, which is a finalist for the Writers' Trust's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for the best political book of the year.

Feature

BY IAN MCKAY, JAMIE SWIFT

May 1, 2017

Just before Remembrance Day, 2014, the Canadian government unveiled seven new bronze figures that together comprise Parliament Hill’s first-ever war memorial. The authorities solemnly deposited some dirt—now inevitably described as “sacred soil”—from the War of 1812 battlefields at the bas...

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