Long Synopsis
In 1914, Canada entered war because Britain did. By 1929, it had become more autonomous, more wounded, more modern, and more divided. Blood, Flu, and Bread is a national history with battlefields in it, not a battlefield history with home-front chapters attached. It follows soldiers through Ypres, the Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele, and the Hundred Days, but it also stays close to kitchens, factories, farms, internment camps, hospitals, union halls, polling stations, and families waiting for telegrams.
The First World War expanded Canada’s state power, deepened French-English tension, opened limited voting rights to some women, sharpened suspicion toward immigrants, and created a generation of veterans whose wounds did not end with the Armistice. Then came influenza, labour conflict, Winnipeg 1919, new political movements, consumer culture, radios, cars, and the fragile prosperity of the 1920s. Blood, Flu, and Bread is the story of sacrifice without amnesia, victory without neat healing, and a country moving toward catastrophe with one hand on the radio dial.