"Serve Canada with Men Like These": Masculinity, "Peacekeeping," and National Identity in Cold War Canada, 1956-1959
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Authors
Jaques, Bronwyn Elizabeth
Date
2016-09-07
Type
project
major research paper
major research paper
Language
en
Keyword
Canada , Cold War , Gender , Masculinity , Military , Recruitment , Media , Advertising , Peacekeeping , National identity , Anti-modern modernism
Alternative Title
Abstract
This paper explores the ways in which the construction of militarized masculinities in Cold War
Canadian media reflected the hegemonic masculinities and broader social trends of the period.
This paper focuses specifically on the recruiting materials produced for and by the Canadian
Army between 1956 and 1959, the time of the Suez Canal Crisis and the beginnings of
“Canadian peacekeeping.” Through the mobilization of modern and anti-modern masculine
identities attached to hegemonic and idealized Cold War Canadian masculinities, the Army
created the image of the “Modern Warrior” to portray itself as an occupation and culture for “real
Canadian men.” This identity simultaneously corresponded with Canada’s new “peacekeeping”
identity. By presenting certain images of Canadian manhood as the “ideal” Canadian identity and
by associating this “ideal” masculinity with military service, the Army’s recruitment
advertisements conflated Cold War rhetoric of service, defence, national citizenship, cultural
belonging, and “ideal” ethnicity with a Canadian identity available only to a specific (and often
exclusive) segment of society. Because military service has long been considered the crux of
citizenship, these advertisements (re)entrenched patterns of middle-class, heterosexual, Anglo-
Saxon masculine power and dominance in a time of social uncertainty and cultural anxiety
through the reaffirmation of this group’s “privilege” to serve the nation.