Though formally approved, the project to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline remains one of the most controversial issues in the country. Opposed by some First Nations, municipal councils, environmentalist groups and the government of British Columbia, the project has become a focal point in the wider campaign against pipeline construction.
Yet the original Trans Mountain pipeline, which the current project seeks to complement, faced few of these roadblocks and little public opposition.
In fact, the first pipeline was seen as an important and positive development throughout Canada, according to an analysis of primary documents and the testimony of experts. The speed with which the project proceeded is a good first indicator: Trans Mountain was proposed in 1951 and construction wrapped up a mere two years later in 1953.
By contrast, the extension project was first proposed in 2013 and approved by the federal government in 2016, yet remains years from completion. It may face lengthy court challenges and intense on-the-ground protests in B.C. — likely encouraged by the provincial government.
In a 1952 speech reported by The Coast News, a paper serving the British Columbian coast, then-B.C. premier Boss Johnson conveyed a very different attitude. The Trans Mountain Pipe Line was “perhaps the biggest thing that has happened to the lower mainland,” he said.
A major project at the time, Trans Mountain was the second in a wave of long-distance pipelines spurred by the 1947 discovery of the massive Leduc oil reserves in Alberta. It was the first pipeline across the Rockies.
The Trans Mountain system, after its completion in 1953. Part of the debate within the Trans Mountain Pipeline Company — jointly owned by Canadian Bechtel Ltd. and Standard Oil — was over how much of the pipeline would divert to the United States. (Credit: Trans Mountain Pipe Line Company Annual Report, 1955)
Economic considerations were front and centre for the original project. Globe and Mail articles from the time emphasized the substantial investment made in local communities, the importance of the increase in pumping capacity, and the rapid pace of construction.
In the same 1952 speech, Premier Johnson noted proudly that the $82 million being spent on the pipeline would be a boon to B.C.’s economy. That’s approximately $765 million in today’s dollars, according to a Bank of Canada inflation calculator. The price tag for the extension project currently sits at about $7.4 billion.
Despite the ballooning cost, the impetus behind today’s extension is also economic. Another pipeline to the Pacific, its proponents say, would allow Canada economic access to growing Asian market, especially China.
In 1952, when construction began on Trans Mountain, Canadian troops were fighting Chinese soldiers in Korea. And in the midst of the Cold War, the Trans Mountain Pipe Line was seen as an important security project. Canadian officials were concerned that oil tankers serving the Lower Mainland would be vulnerable to submarine attack, according to Robert D. Bott, an oil historian and journalist.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the original pipeline’s approval and construction was the lack of significant or effective opposition. According to Clint Tippett, president of the Petroleum History Society, issues like First Nations Rights, climate change and even the attitude of not-in-my-backyard-ism — all in the forefront of today’s process — were of limited importance.
It is unfathomable today, for example, that the federal government would amend the National Parks Act to allow pipelines in nature reserves, as the Liberals of 1950 did to allow Trans Mountain to cross Jasper National Park.
Parliamentary debate focused largely on the specifics of the plan (the amount that should run through Canada and the cost) not the question of its importance. On the whole, MPs treated the project as an obviously beneficial endeavour.
When faced with the difficult reality of contemporary pipeline politics, the original Trans Mountain process must seem for proponents of today’s extension a distant, happy dream.
On Jan. 26 , Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott announced a drastic six-point planto grapple the ghastly overrepresentation of Indigenous children in Canada’s child and welfare services, an imbalance that draws its roots in Saskatchewan’s “Adopt Indian and Métis” campaign during the Sixties Scoop era.
Throughout the 60s, provinces across Canada adopted the Child Removal System funded by the federal Department of Health and Welfare. On April 1, 1967, Premier Ross Thatcher’s Saskatchewan government launched its Adopt Indian and Métis AIM program. This project was intended to remove many Indigenous children from their respective families and place them in non-Indigenous environments.
This period was referred as the Sixties Scoop era.
Raven Sinclair, a professor of social work at University of Regina, asserts that although she had a positive experience with her adoptive family, she was aware of the differences between her and others in her new surroundings.
Ms. Sinclair is Métis, born in Saskatchewan, and counts among the 20,000 Indigenous children who were apprehended in the 1960s across Canada and placed in non-Indigenous homes.
“I knew I was different from my adoptive family because of my skin complexion but I did not know that I had native roots until during my teenager years,” said Sinclair.
“After reconnecting with my biological family, it took me 30 years to recover my relationship with them since we had to start from scratch,” she added.
The AIM program was initially run as a pilot project from 1967 to 1969. Its primary objective was to find out if advertising Indigenous children on television, radio and newspapers across Saskatchewan would entice non Indigenous families to adopt First Nations children.
Source: CBC Digital archives
Allyson Stevenson, a Métis adoptee and lecturer at University of Regina asserts that the AIM propaganda campaign was crafted to make indigenous children appealing to Euro-Canadian Saskatchewan families.
“This imagery of the commercials and messages aimed to promote the AIM program through social meetings, broadcast and print platforms successfully stimulated interest in transracial adoption as planned” said Stevenson.
“Many Euro-Canadian Saskatchewan families were quick to embrace the idea that Indian children were no different than any other child,” she added.
This advertising campaign was the result of an increased number of indigenous children into child welfare and Post-war policies of citizenship and integration.
Helen Allen, a reporter for the Toronto Telegraph, was instrumental to the success of this AIM ads campaign. Through her Today’s Child column, she helped find new homes for 11,000 Saskatchewan native children who were without parents or relatives.
“Indigenous people, in general, were furious and strongly opposed that their children being advertised without their consent,” said Stevenson.
The AIM advertisements were vehemently contested by the Métis Society. This organization was created in 1971 and led by prominent Métis figures like Howard Adams and Nora Thibodeau Cummings. Their main objective was to demonstrate that the AIM propaganda campaign was detrimental to the Métis community as a whole.
The group argued that adoptive parents failed to recognize the Métis identity of adopted children while raising them in a non-indigenous society.
In 1969, Indigenous people made up 7.5 per cent of the population of that province. Although, 41.9 per cent of all children in foster homes were Indigenous children, according to the Government of Saskatchewan.
The overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the province of Saskatchewan’s child welfare system is the combination of several historical factors including a provincial child welfare legislation that unfairly targeted Indigenous families and a paternalistic professionalism of social welfare experts.
Philpott stressed the urgency to tackle the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in Canada’s child and welfare services while addressing First Nations and governments officials during the Children and Families Together conference in Ottawa.
“We must find ways for the removal of children in such extraordinary numbers to be stopped. Effective approaches to family reunification should be expanded. Children should remain with their families and their kin whenever it is humanly possible” said Philpott.
This is a video from the CBC Digital archives describes the Adopt Indian and Métis (AIM) advertisement campaign success at placing Indigenous children in new homes.
How did you find/obtain it?
During my interview with Allyson Stevenson, she suggested that I look at the CBC digital archives website in order to find a video footage about the AIM campaign.
Why was the documentation helpful?
This video clearly illustrates how the AIM campaign was broadcasted on television.
Joseph Merrill Currier, 1875. Photograph: from the online database of Library and Archives Canada.
For now, the house stands still, deserted and unlivable – which was not the case when it was built in 1868.
The first owner of 24 Sussex Drive was Joseph Merrill Currier – a lumber magnate from North Troy, Vermont, who moved to the town of New Edinburgh in 1853 to grow his business. Although his career as a businessman and member of parliament was always prosperous, the same couldn’t be said about his personal life.
In 1855, he lost three of his children to infant mortality. Three years later, his wife, Christina Stenhouse Wilson, passed away of grief. His second wife, Anna Crosby, gruesomely died at a flour mill co-owned by Currier. She was walking through the mill during its anniversary party in 1861, when she lost her balance and fell into a water turbine that caught her dress.
It was his third marriage to Hannah Wright that put a stop to his personal tragedy.
The granddaughter of Philemon Wright (founder of present-day Gatineau), Hannah Wright was known for her talents as a hostess. So as a wedding gift, Currier promised to build her a house that was fit for a grand party – a building that later became 24 Sussex Drive.
The construction lasted between 1866 and 1868. By the time it was nearly complete, an article by the Ottawa Citizen in 1867 called the “beautiful villa” gothic, and the design of the house “chaste and elegant.” The article also mentioned that the house featured marble mantelpieces, walnut floors, an oak staircase and “ornamental work in every room.”
“One of the main features in the drawing room of the original house was the elaborate fireplace, which was removed during the reconstruction in 1950. Also note the antique chandeliers and light fixtures.” Photograph: from Maureen McTeer’s book “Residences: Homes of Canada’s Leaders,” 1982.
According to David Jeanes, the president of Heritage Ottawa, what was unique about the house was that “it was twice as long as it was wide” (25 by 12 metres). Jeanes studied the building at 24 Sussex Drive as part of a larger research project that focused on Confederation-era mansions in Ottawa. He thinks the building was unusually lengthy “because it was along the river, to take advantage of views to the North.” The Ottawa Citizen confirmed Jeanes’ theory – overlooking the Ottawa river, luscious fields and distant hills, the article from 1867 said the view from Currier’s property embodied a “quiet beauty” like no other in Ottawa.
When the construction was finalized, Currier named his home Gorffwysfa, which translates to “a place to rest” from Welsh.
“The funny thing, is that I have not been able to find the evidence that there was any Welsh blood,” says Jeanes about Currier’s family. He believes the name came to Currier when he visited or read about a place in North Wales called Gorphwysfa, “where people rested before making the final climb to the top of Mount Snowdon,” says Jeanes.
“An exterior view of the house at 24 Sussex Drive as built by J.M. Currier in 1868.” Photograph: from Maureen McTeer’s book “Residences: Homes of Canada’s Leaders,” 1982.
Currier died in 1884, and after his wife passed away in 1901, Currier’s son James sold the house to William Cameron Edwards, a Canadian businessman and parliamentarian.
In 1943, the house was expropriated by the federal government and significantly renovated in 1949 to become the official residence for the prime minister of Canada. The building was stripped of its Victorian features and replaced by the modern architecture of the 1950s.
“There isn’t very much that’s left that was original from Joseph Currier’s house,” says Jeanes.
The first prime minister to live at the residence was Louis St. Laurent, who moved in in 1951. Since then, nine prime ministers have resided at the house originally built by Joseph Merrill Currier.
But given the poor state of the current residence, whether the building at 24 Sussex Drive will live to see another prime minister is still unknown.
Ottawa Car Company workers pose with one of Ottawa’s first electric streetcars, named ‘Lallah Rookh’ on Slater Street in 1893. By the 1940s, the newer streetcars could transport up to 56 passengers. / SOURCE: City of Ottawa Archives, used with permission.
Last fall, Ottawa’s light-rail transit veered slightly off track with OC Transpo postponing the opening of the project from May to November 2018. The Confederation Line, the first stage of the light-rail system, will cost the city $2.1 billion and span 12.5 kilometres.
It’s hard to believe that from 1891 to 1959 Ottawa actually had a robust transit system that traversed over 48 kilometres with routes that mirrored today’s light-rail plans — plus it was electric-powered. That popular streetcar system was known as the Ottawa Electric Railway.
Paul Henry, chief archivist at the City of Ottawa Archives said many streetcar routes were determined based on traffic flow of Ottawa commuters. In other cases, Ottawans could petition the Ottawa Electric Railway like this 1895 petition.
Archivist Signe Jeppesen noted that the Britannia Beach expansion was an easy one for the Ottawa Electric Company since the company also owned property at Britannia Park at the time.
Britannia Park was also the place to partake in the hip-gyrating rock and roll scene of the 1950s because it had outdoor pavilions that encouraged dancing, said Henry.
“From a sociological perspective it’s interesting to see the connection between the streetcar enabling people to get around town, and the activities that they undertook once they had access to a stable transportation system,” Henry said.
Not unlike Ottawa’s light-rail transit system today, Ottawa’s streetcars had their fair share of controversies.
“What’s fascinating is that the directors of the Ottawa Electric Railway and the directors of the Ottawa Car Company, which built the streetcars, were the same people,” said Henry. He said that the issue of conflict of interest would never have been allowed today.
Henry and Jeppesen confirmed that the popularity of Ottawa’s streetcars peaked in 1941 with an annual ridership of 39.8 million in a city of just 154,000 people, which ultimately created wear and tear on the streetcars.
“In 1899, a mile of track, or 1.6 kilometres, would have cost them the equivalent of $71,000 today. The capitalization costs of an effective, well-laid out streetcar system was challenging at best, even if you had the flexibility in a private sector enterprise,” said Henry.
Ottawa’s streetcars were at a crossroads when amendments to the Income War Tax Act cost Ottawa Electric Railway over $1-million in 1945, according to Jeppesen. Three years later, the city-owned Ottawa Transit Commission purchased the streetcars.
It was a confluence of factors that led the city to decommission the streetcar system: large swaths of track had to be rebuilt and streetcars were in need of major repairs, as reported by The Ottawa Journal in Apr. 29, 1959.
Ottawa’s geographic expansion and the rising costs of electricity left the Ottawa Transit Commission with one choice: to replace the streetcar system with diesel buses. / SOURCE: Ottawa Journal, April 29, 1959
“It was born to the incredulous acclaim of thousands on a June day in 1891,” wrote Thomas Kerr of the streetcar in the Ottawa Journal on Apr. 26, 1960. “It died to the nostalgic acclaim of other thousands in April, 1959.”
Although Ottawa’s streetcar tracks have been ripped up and paved over, Henry said the streetcars left a profound legacy in its triumph of technology over environment.
“Local solutions were invented like the snow sweeper car to deal with a unique Ottawa problem. They were then exported by the Ottawa Car Company to other consumers of streetcars,” he said.
The City of Ottawa Archives said it hasn’t heard if the city plans to pay tribute to the bygone streetcars ahead of the Confederation Line’s maiden voyage this fall.
Whether it is for the increase of its value or even its effectiveness, the minimum wage has been a matter of discussion since it was introduced in Ontario over 50 years ago.
In Canada, the minimum hourly rate was first established in 1918, in British Columbia, with the Women’s Minimum Wage Act. The law was a way of protecting against the exploitation of women and children who worked in the factories and industry. In an article published by the Globe and Mail, the president of the Ontario Federation of Labor at that time, David Archer, called the Act a “welfare measure.”
The day the minimum wage became official in Ontario. Men were then included and were paid more than women. | The Globe and Mail historical archives
In 1963 the Ontario government introduced a new minimum wage law that included men. The minimum wage was proposed by the Labor Minister Leslie Rowntree. Its establishment in Ontario was a recommendation of a report drafted by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Association. The idea was to protect workers from exploitation.
The new law was celebrated by the Ontario Federation of Labor. David Archer said to the Globe and Mail on the day of the announcement that they had been fighting for a minimum wage for a long time and for him the new Act a great victory.
One of the initial downsides was that the minimum wage was considered too low by Labor. Initially, the Ontario Federation of Labor had asked for a rate of $1.25 per hour, but the government set the minimum wage at $1. The rate was considered by union representatives to be insufficient even if an employee worked 40 hours per week.
The different rates paid by gender was one of the main topics of discussion in the new law. During the votes regarding the minimum wage in the beginning of that year, Liberals had tried to push the rate for $1.25 and had voted against the creation of different rates per gender, but they had lost their bid.
Dressmakers during a strike in 1931. Women in Canada were the first ones to get paid by a minimum wage | Ontario Jewish Archives
The vice-president of the Toronto and District Labor Council, Donald Montgomery told the Globe and Mail in 1963: “It [minimum wage] recognizes the established practice of less pay for women, who do the same work as men in spite of legislation establishing equal pay for equal work.” As a response, Labor Minister Rowntree said that to achieve parity the government needed to take step by step.
The Provincial Council of Women accused the government of Ontario of discrimination. At that time, the explanation for the different rates was that men were usually married and had a family to support, while women might be single. The representative of the Council, Mary Wood, responded to that excuse in an article published by the Globe and Mail in 1963: “plenty of single women have dependents.”
Meanwhile, employers were not pleased with the Minimum Wage Act. According to an article published by the Globe and Mail, restaurant owners said that with the new law they would need to raise the cost of meals, otherwise they would go out of business.
University of Ottawa’s economics professor Mario Seccareccia said that at that time, “it became deeply engraved this idea that minimum wages were not good for the economy in a sense that they created unemployment,” even tough there was no evidence of negative impact in the other provinces that had the minimum wage established in previous years.
According to Seccareccia, studies from the last twenty years have proven that the minimum wage increases the productivity other than creating unemployment.
In 2017 Ontario increased the minimum wage from $11.40 per hour to $14. In 2019 the province plans to make another increase to $15 an hour. This will be the highest growth of the minimum wage rate in the last 40 years.
*The spelling of the word “labour” in 1963 was “labor” in every newspaper article found.
Canadian soldiers return home to Toronto, 1919 (Source: Wikipedia))
The December 2017 federal overhaul of Canada’s Veterans Disability Pension has some veterans up in arms. They claim the distribution of benefits is cloaked in ambiguity.
Recent historical research about Canada’s original disability pension for veterans reveals history could be repeating itself.
Canada’s pension system for disabled war veterans was established by Order-in-Council on March 2, 1917 – the year before World War I ended. Less than 100 years later, research led by a team at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies in Waterloo, Ontario, has focused on how disabled Canadian ex-service people of the Great War engaged the pension system.
The 1917 Order-in-Council declared: “No deduction shall be made from the amount awarded to any pernsioner [sp?] owing to his having undertaken work or perfected himself in some form of industry. The amount of a man’s pension is decided simply by the extent of the incapacity he has incurred by doing his duty as a soldier.”
However, the Laurier Centre’s research team claims that the path leading up to applying for a disability pension, and the path travelled after applying – both for former officers and privates – were often shrouded in ambiguity.
The team’s findings are highlighted in a recent ActiveHistory.ca blog post series. The blogs centre around the 170,000 Canadians injured in WW1.
According to Coming Home: Veterans, Pensions and the Canadian State After the Great War, “Although this [Order-in-Council’s] concept of ‘attributability’ was meant to encourage objectivity on the part of those who evaluated applications, it nonetheless remained ambiguous,” writes Eric Story on January 23, 2018.
Brittany Dunn chronicles Lieutenant George Adams’ experience in He Will Again Be Able to Make Himself Self-Sustaining: Canadian Ex-Officers’ Return to Civilian Life.
On February 20, 2018, Dunn writes, “… ex-officers framed their pension applications in language which … emphasized assistance as a last resort.”
At 36, Adams joined the Canadian Army in 1916. He was partially buried by a shell and wounded by shrapnel and bullets. In 1919, Adams was discharged. He did not apply for a disability pension until 1939.
Dunn writes, “Lieutenant Adams told the CPC [Canadian Pension Commission] he had not applied … ‘until [his] condition ha[d] become so that he is considerably handicapped.’ He lived on his savings until they ran out.”
Adams was granted a veterans’ allowance and was awarded a 25 percent pension for arthritis.
In her February 6, 2018 blog, The Difficulty in Diagnosis: Shell Shock and the Case of Private Dennis R., Kanace Bogaert relates how challenging it was to obtain a disability pension for psychological illnesses.
Dennis was one of more than 15,000 WWI Canadian soldiers diagnosed with combat-related psychological illnesses.
In 1918, Dennis was discharged from the military and hospital. Although a medical board claimed Dennis had suffered from a 75 percent disability caused by service, the Board of Pension Commissioners (BPC) rejected Dennis’s pension application. After hospital treatment, his symptoms subsided, and pensions were only awarded for permanent ability loss.
Ten years later, Dennis, age 31, was observed at Montreal’s St. Anne de Bellevue mental hospital. He complained of feeling weak, falling asleep at work and head pain. Dennis asked for treatment and wanted to re-apply for a pension.
“His diagnosis was changed to ‘constitutional psychopathic inferiority’ … that implied inherited mental degeneracy,” writes Bogaert. “This was … not eligible for a pension because inheritance could not be attributed to military service.”
Dennis launched an appeal, which was also denied.
“The BPC assured veterans that their evaluations and ratings of disability due to war service were ‘both accurate and fair’,” writes Bogaert. “Veterans, however, did not always agree.”
– 30 –
Accompanying photo:
Caption: Canadian soldiers return home to Toronto, 1919
(Source: Wikipedia)
ANNEX A
Evidence of first-hand research
For this article, I have accessed several websites, including the following:
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele
Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada_during_World_War_I
Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia
3) Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies
4) Coming Home: Veterans, Pensions and the Canadian State After the Great War
5) He Will Again Be Able to Make Himself Self-Sustaining: Canadian Ex-Officers’ Return to Civilian Life.
6) ActiveHistory.ca
7) The Difficulty in Diagnosis: Shell Shock and the Case of Private Dennis R 8) 1917 order in council: http://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/objects-and-photos/archival-documents/government-documents/pensions-and-industry/?back=484
9) http://www.throughveteranseyes.ca/articles/
10) http://activehistory.ca/2018/01/coming-home-veterans-pensions-and-the-canadian-state-after-the-great-war/
11) http://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/after-the-war/veterans/benefits-and-land-for-veterans/
12) http://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/objects-and-photos/archival-documents/government-documents/pensions-and-industry/?back=484
13) https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/liberals-pension-plan-for-disabled-veterans-won-t-take-effect-until-2019-1.3729370
14) https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/government-fails-to-meet-veterans-expectations-regarding-the-re-establishment-of-lifelong-pensions-under-new-veterans-charter-668152793.html
15) Library & Archives Canada
16) The Canadian War Museum
17) http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/here-is-how-a-second-world-war-canadian-veteran-is-treated-differently-than-an-afghan-war-canadian-veteran
18) The Canadian Museum of History
Annex B
Two pieces of documentation
Document I
Q1: What is the documentation?
A1:
• The document is an online blog called Coming Home: Veterans, Pensions and the Canadian State After the Great War.
• URL: http://activehistory.ca/2018/01/coming-home-veterans-pensions-and-the-canadian-state-after-the-great-war/
• The document was written by Eric Story, who is a member of the research team at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies in Waterloo, Ontario. The team started to conduct research in 2014 on how disabled Canadian ex-service people of the Great War engaged the pension system and the fact that Canadian war veterans’ original disability pension (created in 1917) was shrouded in ambiguity. This document was the first in a series of 5 documents that highlight this theme, providing historical evidence and using case studies to do so.
• The blog was published on the ActiveHistory.ca website on January 23, 2018.
Q2: How did you find/obtain it?
A2: When I began to conduct online research for my Data Visualization assignment several weeks ago, I came across Eric Story’s article.
Q3: Why was the documentation helpful?
A3: I thought that the fact that Canadian veterans’ original disability pension was enveloped in ambiguity, as is today’s disability pension, would make for an interesting topic for this assignment. This blog post is excellent in that it:
• is written by a professional historical military researcher, which gives me confidence in its content and factual accuracy
• is the first in a series of five blog posts related to this subject. As a result, it sets the foundation for, and explains what the requirements were, for a veteran to be considered eligible for the pension, and why the original disability pension (established in 1917) was shrouded in ambiguity.
• led me to other blog posts in the series that were also very helpful to my story
• is well-written
Document II
Q1: What is the documentation?
A1:
• The document is an online blog post called The Difficulty in Diagnosis: Shell Shock and the Case of Private Dennis R.
• URL: http://activehistory.ca/2018/02/the-difficulty-in-diagnosis-shell-shock-and-the-case-of-private-dennis-r/
• The document was written by Kanace Bogaert, who is also a member of the research team at the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies in Waterloo, Ontario. The team started to conduct research in 2014 on how disabled Canadian ex-service people of the Great War engaged the pension system and on the fact that Canadian war veterans’ original disability pension (created in 1917) was shrouded in ambiguity.
• This blog tells the story of Private Dennis R., illustrating how challenging it was to obtain treatment or a disability pension post-First World War for psychological illnesses.
• The blog post was published on the ActiveHistory.ca website on February 6, 2018.
Q2: How did you find/obtain it?
A2: When I came across the first blog post in the series, it mentioned the fact that it was the first blog post in a series. I therefore did a Google search for the other blog posts and came across this one.
Q3: Why was the documentation helpful?
A3: I found this document to be very helpful because it:
• is written by a professional historical military researcher, which gives me confidence in its content and factual accuracy
• chronicles a case study, which makes for interesting reading
• further explains why the original veterans disability pension was shrouded in ambiguity, in the context of how challenging it was to obtain treatment, or a disability pension, post-First World War for psychological illnesses
• is well-written
