Bohdan S. Kordan - Böcker

Since 1991, Canada has provided Ukraine with ongoing political and economic assistance. Never was this policy pursued with more urgency than in 2014, when Russian aggression prompted the Canadian government to elevate its support for Ukraine to a foreign policy priority. Although the move is often described as a radical departure, Bohdan Kordan and Mitchell Dowie contend that it was consistent with Canada's security interests and political and historical identity. In this calculation the worldview of Prime Minister Stephen Harper also figured prominently. Canada and the Ukrainian Crisis offers a timely explanation of the dynamic interaction between key factors - at the international, national, and individual levels - that shaped the Canadian government's response and imbued it with an unusual degree of urgency. Explaining the nature of the crisis and why it elicited such a forceful reaction from the Harper government, Kordan and Dowie assert that Canada's decision to side openly with Ukraine is best understood as a course correction, rather than a completely new foreign policy direction. They argue that this action reaffirmed Canada's historical commitment to a liberal rules-based order that has been an emblem of its foreign policy since the Second World War, treating the Ukrainian crisis as part of a wider struggle to defend liberal principles and values. Resolving lingering questions about the most serious geopolitical event since the end of the Cold War, Canada and the Ukrainian Crisis demonstrates that the policy changes triggered by the crisis represent a return to deep-rooted concerns about international order.

No Place Like Home chronicles a little-known episode in Canada’s national history: when internment was first employed during the Great War under the War Measures Act.Highlighting the problem of immigrant fit and belonging, Bohdan Kordan shows how legal, political, and cultural frameworks modelled an understanding of the role and place of immigrants originating from enemy lands and how, amid the economic, social, and political uncertainties of war, internment as an instrument of security policy and a political choice altered the lives of thousands of innocent people. No Place Like Home brings to the fore new perspectives on both Canadian internment and the role and responsibility of government in war. Focusing on the status of enemy aliens and the blurring of the military/civilian distinction, the book also takes a broader social view of the period and offers a critical assessment of the various camp experiences.Kordan articulates how internment, truly known only to those who endured it, can still have deeper meaning as shared history and enlists compelling reasons to comprehend and honour it.

Approximately 8,000 Canadian civilians were imprisoned during the First World War because of their ethnic ties to Germany, Austria-Hungary, and other enemy nations. Although not as well-known as the later internments of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, these incarcerations played a crucial role in shaping debates about Canadian citizenship, diversity, and loyalty. Tracing the evolution and consequences of Canadian government policy towards immigrants of enemy nationality, No Free Man is a nuanced work that acknowledges both the challenges faced by the Government of Canada as well as the experiences of internees and their families. Bohdan Kordan gives particular attention to the ways in which the political and legal status of enemy subjects configured the policy and practice of internment and how this process – magnified by the challenges of the war – affected the broader concerns of public order and national security. Placing the issue of internment within the wider context of community and belonging, Kordan further delves into the ways that wartime turbulence and anxieties shaped public attitudes towards the treatment of enemy aliens. He concludes that Canada's leadership failed to protect immigrants of enemy origin during a period of intense suspicion, conflict, and crisis. Framed by questions about government rights, responsibilities, and obligations, and based on extensive archival research, No Free Man provides a systematic and thoughtful account of Canadian government policy towards enemy aliens during the First World War.