I recently finished reading One Of The Boys – Homosexuality in the Military during World War II by Paul Jackson. As this is the book that the National Film Board of Canada documentary, Open Secrets is based on, and which I’ve featured at this site, I’ve been wanting to sit down and read more about this subject.

And as I’ve posted about gays in the military on numerous occasions, including my letter to the Minister of National Defence and his response, I felt that this would be a good book to further my education on how Canada dealt with the question of queers in the military.

The last sentence seems a little odd, given that I served in the Canadian military. However, given my age, (40 something) I obviously didn’t serve during World War II. But I do have an interest in that time period of Canadian military history, and given that there’s been so few books available on this particular subject I felt that I must read One Of The Boys. Also, in addition to finding out more that might help me in my writing about what I feel to be an unfinished piece of business when it comes to Canadian service members who were discharged prior to homosexuality no longer being illegal in the Canadian Forces, I also felt that perhaps this book would help me out when it came to writing about the current situation in America and the effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. I rather think it will on both counts. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently finished reading One Of The Boys – Homosexuality in the Military during World War II by Paul Jackson. As this is the book that the National Film Board of Canada documentary, Open Secrets is based on, and which I’ve featured at this site, I’ve been wanting to sit down and read more about [...]