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WORLD WAR II AND CANADIAN LANDSCAPES Canadians in general as well as for those who participated in the events themselves and their families and friends. Within Canada, interest in the country’s military history has grown significantly over the past thirty years or so; the decision to renew the official war art programme in 2001 was only one of many expressions of this. Alongside this renewed interest in military history, war art’s two functions have also met with increased interest. Appreciation of the artworks themselves has grown, with steadily increasing numbers of new books, articles and media treatments being devoted to them. And in step with this increased visibility — in both senses of the word - of the artists’ work, more and more Canadians have been going to visit the actual physical “sites of memory” where they or those close to them fought, and when there, they are turning to the visual testimony of the war artists to expand and enrich their experience. Back in 1916 Max Aitken envisaged the Canadian War Memorial Fund initiative as a means of enhancing appreciation of the Canadian contribution to what he saw as the greatness and glory of the British Empire. The empire is now long gone, but the art works created in the successive projects his idea launched now help Canadians to gain a deeper understanding of Canada and of themselves as Canadians. WORKS CITED Abell, Walter. “Canadian Army Art Exhibition.” Documents in Canadian Art, edited by Douglas Fetherling, broadview press, 1987, 100-104. “About the Canadian Forces Artists Program.” https://www.canada.ca/en/services/defence/ caf/showcasing/artists-program/about.html, accessed 12 January 2014. “Canada’s War Artists’ Perspectives.” https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/artists/ indexeng.html. Canvas of War, directed by Michael Ostroff, 2000. Sound Venture Productions. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?’v=7GM_l4cWuBE. Brandon, Laura. “Dispatches: Grounders in Canadian Military History.” https://www. warmuseum.ca/learn/dispatches/canadas-war-art/#tabs. ———. “Doing justice to history’: Canada’s Second World War official art program.” chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.warmuseum.ca/ cwm/exhibitions/artwar/essays/artandwar-canadas_2nd_world_war_art.pdf. “Holocaust Art of Ava Bayevsky.” https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/ treasure/291eng.html. Jackson, Alexander Young. À Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1976. Silcox, David P. Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. + 185 +
