Adam Chapnick

Every August, the Canadian Forces College welcomes a new cohort to its National Security Programme. The thirty-odd students typically include fifteen Canadian Armed Forces officers, six public service executives from federal departments with responsibility for security, and eight international officers. Classes are co-taught by academic faculty, mostly civilian but some retired military, and professional mentors, who are recently retired senior officers and public service…

Not even a pandemic can slow down one of Canada’s great military historians, Tim Cook. The best-selling author of Vimy: The Battle and the Legend and Shock Troops, which won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction in 2009, Cook spent his lockdown producing a comprehensive account of the “entwinement of the fighting units and the medical services” during the First World…

Tim Cook has spent the last two decades publishing well-received, accessible accounts of Canada’s military history. Much of his early career focused on the First World War (his Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918 won the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction). More recently, he has written poignantly about that war’s…

According to Statistics Canada, over the last 20 years the number of employed 25- to 34-year-olds who have completed a university degree has risen dramatically. Among men, the number has increased from 17 to 27 percent. The gains among women have been even greater, from 19 to 40 percent. This past September, however, came a pivotal shift, at least in the province of…

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, and efforts to reflect on the Canadian wartime experience are well under way across the country. The government of Canada is committing tens of millions of dollars to remember our national achievements and sacrifices, and countless new books will undoubtedly be released to do the…

Is Canada a warrior nation or a peaceable kingdom? Few authors are better qualified than Tim Cook to answer a question that has become a part of the national discourse ever since the current government was first elected in 2006. An internationally acclaimed, award-winning historian at the Canadian War Museum, Cook is one of Canada’s best at integrating the academic expertise of the traditional researcher with the literary flare of the successful…

It has been more than half a decade since the Liberal government of Paul Martin released its International Policy Statement. As the title of that document made clear, it differed significantly from its predecessors. It marked the first time that a Canadian government had undertaken an international policy review. In the 21st century, the thinking…