"Two Generals," White Pine, and Canada Reads

It has been an exceptionally good week for Two Generals.

On Monday, it was nominated for the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading White Pine Award for Non-Fiction. The White Pine award is for high school-aged readers, which fits nicely with the fact that Two Generals is now being used in some Ontario high schools as part of the curriculum. Readers of the appropriate age are encouraged to read the books and vote, with the winners announced next spring at festivals in Ottawa, Toronto, and Thunder Bay. It's a big deal, gets young people reading lots, and who doesn't love libraries? So thanks to the OLA for the nomination. Happy to be a part of it.

On Tuesday, which was not about to let Monday get all the glory, Two Generals was announced as being in the Top 40 for the 2012 edition of Canada Reads, the CBC's annual "battle of the books" that unfolds on radio and TV, which for the first time (conveniently for Two Generals) is focusing on non-fiction. I was flattered when it began turning up among early recommendations and polls, and am thrilled to have even made the long list.

The inclusion in last year's competition of my pal Jeff Lemire's excellent graphic novel Essex County among the Top 5 for best Canadian novel of the decade proved to be somewhat controversial, so I was also happy to see that Canada Reads wasn't steering away from comics-based works this year. In fact, there are no less than THREE graphic novels in the Top 40: mine, Sarah Leavitt's Tangles, and Chester Brown's Louis Riel. Even if none of us go further (though my money's on Riel making the Top 5), this is a very good thing for comics. That said, I'd be over the moon if the book made the Top 10...so please go to the voting page before October 30th and cast a vote for me and Two Generals, won't you?

Often in the past when trying to explain the sophistication of comics storytelling to people who clung to old stereotypes, myself and others would point out the number of comics works that had been nominated for and/or won mainstream literary prizes (Maus and the Pulitzer, Jimmy Corrigan and the Guardian Prize, Sandman and the World Fantasy Award, etc.) In none of even my most ambitious dreams, however, did I think I'd ever be among those lucky few. I'm not sure the word "honoured" even begins to describe it. HUGE thanks to everyone who made both nominations possible.

Scene 9, Page 24

 This scene is taken directly from Law Chantler's diary, which reads: 

Thursday April 29

Did my first cliff-climbing to-day.  Spike Kearns & Stauffer and I, wheeled to the Sandgate Quarry and spent about an hour going up and down about 100 ft.  Some straight and some slanting.  Not difficult.  Just requires steady nerves.

Try as I might, I was unable to find photo reference of Sandgate Quarry, so I've depicted a fairly generic-looking quarry here. I did find pictures of Kearns and Stauffer, though, so their depictions (though tiny) are correct. Also, while I'm not an expert on rock-climbing techniques or precisely sure what the Army would have taught in 1943, the climb as depicted here is consistent with '40s-era cliff-climbing photographs.

"Two Generals" Nominated for Two Eisner Awards

Late last week, the nominations were announced for the 2011 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. There a lot of different awards in the industry, but these are the big ones, "the Oscars of comics." And I'm proud to say that Two Generals has been nominated in two categories.

A lot of people suggested to me that they thought I would get a nomination, but I wasn't willing to bet on it since the book isn't as well known in the US as it is here in Canada. This is one of those cases in which I was happy to be wrong, though, as the book was nominated for Best Reality-Based Work, and designer Jennifer Lum was also recognized for Best Publication Design.

Very flattered to be recognized by the Eisner judges, especially since Will Eisner (after whom the award is named) was my favourite cartoonist of all time, as well as a personal hero and role model. Congratulations to all of the other nominees, and may the best book win this July at Comic-Con International!

Scene 8, page 23

Another short scene, based on an excerpt from Law's diary that described how they "walked over a couple of hills and slept in the sun" on the weekend following the start of training, though it should be noted that in diary they have a woman, Peg Reynolds, with them for a picnic. I couldn't figure out who she was. A girlfriend of Jack's perhaps? Without knowing for sure, I chose to do the scene without her.

Their dialogue about the difficulty of the training came straight from the mouth of Colonel Doug Barrie, a veteran I was fortunate enough to be able interview, and who had been a young lieutenant in the HLI of C, and a friend of my grandfather and Jack. Young lieutenant Barrie makes a few cameo appearances in the book, so I'll discuss him and his impact on Two Generals further when we arrive at them.

Scene 7, Page 22

This brief training montage is based on two short entries from Law's diary:

Monday March 29

Training started with a “bang”.  Run everywhere we go.

Wednesday March 31

I’ve lasted this long – I should be able to finish.

Which is pretty suggestive on its own. The regimental War Diary, along with some old photographs, helped me to visualise some of the training for the sake of depicting it here.

Scene 6, Pages 17-21

This is one of the most important scenes in the book and was, in fact, the very first scene I ever envisioned, before I even knew there would be a book. When I first discovered my grandfather's diary years ago, this was the entry I opened to and read. To say that it made an impression would be an understatement. When I found out later that his brother Clarence had been injured in an eerily similar accident (Clarence died in the '60s, so I hadn't known him and was only vaguely aware that I'd had a great uncle) it not only shed new light on the diary entry, but created a thematic resonance between the two events that eventually grew into Two Generals. The entire rest of the book is very much an extrapolation of this one scene.

Here is the diary entry that started it all (typed out to prevent you from having to decipher Law's handrwriting):

"Friday March 26

Left for London with Jack right after lunch. Stayed at King George and Queen Elizabeth officers club. Saw Bob Hope & Betty Hutton in “Let’s Face It”. Quite good. Got to know how to get around on the tubes. Had dinner at the Cumberland House, close to the Marble Arch by Hyde Park. On way home saw woman under a double decker bus – found out later she was killed."

The following entry, Saturday March 27th, describes what's  probably a pretty standard day of sightseeing for tourists on their first trip to London: Hyde Park, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square, London Bridge, Westminnster Abbey, 10 Downing Street. For the sake of drama, I've switched the days so that they stumble upon the tragic scene at the end of their weekend leave.

Nobody still living in my family could say for sure what had happened to Clarence, which is why I've been somewhat vague here about both the year and Clarence's age. One of my uncles said Clarence had been hit by a milk wagon. My father said it was a streetcar, as depicted here. I ended up going with the streetcar, because the idea that it's a public transit vehicle makes for a more clear connection to the woman under the bus, and because a bit of research demonstrated that the streetcars in Newmarket were new around the time Clarence would have been young (suggesting a young boy might have stepped onto the street without knowing they were there). I suppose I could have driven to Newmarket and spent some time digging around old newspapers on microfiche to be sure, though without knowing even the year of the accident, it would have been hard to know where to start. And I'm petty convinced it was a streetcar.

It does seem an odd coincidence that both Law and Clarence ended up in St. Thomas, Ontario. The mental hospital there explains Clarence's presence, but it was never clear whether Law located there so that Clarence would have family nearby, or whether the idea of putting Clarence in long-term care there came about because Law was already living there. It's one of the pieces of information that would have made Two Generals more complete, but seems to now be lost to time.

Unfortunately, I was also unable to find any visual reference whatsoever for the King George and Queen Elizabeth Officers Club, so on page 21 I've drawn a fairly generic-looking barracks-type room for them to be in. As I'm not specific in the book about where they stayed, I guess it works.

Shuster Award Nominations

Woke up this morning to a pleasant surprise: I've been nominated three times in the 7th Annual Joe Shuster Awards, which celebrate the achievements of Canadian comics creators, publishers, and retailers. One nomination is for Outstanding Canadian Cartoonist (alongside big names like Darwyn Cooke and current Canada Reads darling Jeff Lemire) while the other two are in the Comics for Kids category, including one specifically for Two Generals.

I was surprised but pleased by the nomination for Two Generals for the Comics for Kids award. While it wasn't written specifically for children, myself and the folks at McClelland & Stewart always thought of it as having "crossover potential" and being something that should be read by young people. That the book seems to be being received that way is gratifying.

The full list of nominees does a terrific job of illustrating the quality of work being done by Canadian creators, both English and French, as well as the enormous diversity of today's comics scene. Go take a look, and maybe you'll discover something great you hadn't yet heard of. And congratulations to the other nominees!

Scene 5, Page 16

This scene is fictional, though--as with any place where I've invented things in Two Generals--it's based on a few completely factual pieces of information.

The first was a funny thing one of my uncles told me when I was just starting to talk about doing the book. Apparently, many of my grandfather's fellow soldiers had trouble remembering his name(s), so to a lot of people he became known simply as "Joe". Sure enough, once I got into my research phase, I came across an instance in Capt. J. Allan Snowie's Bloody Buron where he's referred to as "J. Chantler". That's the kind of personal detail that simply had to be in the book, so I've speculated as to its having originated with a senior officer in this scene.

Speaking of other officers, I made the decision early on that I would try not to name them when they appeared as characters. The reason being, quite simply, that I'm only one man and had my work cut out for me just trying to get Law and Jack's stories right. If other real-life characters were going to come much to the foreground, I'd have felt compelled to get their stories right, as well--which would have meant tracking down their familes, doing more interviews, digging through still more letters, diaries, etc., than I already had on my plate.

The senior officer depicted here is both an example of and an exception to that rule. While he's not named here, he will later be referred to as Law's company commander, and later still as Captain Stark. So anyone who cares to can correctly identify him as Vince Stark, who was indeed the "B" Company commander and did, as is related later, get shot in the back in the anti-tank ditch in Buron. Those details, at least, I managed to get right because they're important to Law and Jack's stories. Otherwise, I don't know much about the man. I'm hoping maybe because of the book I'll hear from descendants of his, assuming there are any.

And, of course, Law and Jack really did start training on March 29th, according to both my grandfather's diary and the War Diary of the Highland Light Infantry of Canada.

One other note: someone told me that the salute depicted here is inaccurate; that the Canadians in WWII used the palm-out British salute and hadn't yet changed to the American palm-down version in use today (and used here). So far, I haven't been able to verify it (anybody know for sure?) but if it's true I'll likely change it for future editions.

EDIT: See the comments for this post for a decisive conclusion to the "palm up or down?" salute question.

Scene 4, Page 15

This quick, one-page gag was born after I read a humour article in an early-1940s copy of The Aldershot News that poked fun at some differences between Canadian and British culture (the food, the level of formality, the public drinking, etc.) Something that surprised the British, apparently, was the Canadian men were willing to lend a hand in the kitchen. And something that surprised Canadian soldiers--according to the article, at least--was that English toilets a) flush with a pull chain and b) make a hell of a racket. I thought that to be the exact kind of earthy detail that Two Generals was created to make record of, and a perfectly all-visual cue to capture the feeling of having travelled to foreign country for the first time.

Some people seem to agree with me (like my editors, who always said this was their favourite part of the book.) Others, not so much: I recently received an email from a reader who didn't understand what was going on in the scene and found it "very hard to believe" that two men from Ontario would never have seen a flush toilet. So, to reiterate in case you're having difficulty decoding these mostly-silent panels: it's a PULL-CHAIN toilet, and according to the at least one writer of the era, that was a novelty for Canadians.

Scene 3, Pages 11-14

The purpose of the first half of this scene was to contrast the way that North Americans survived the 1930s (as depicted in the previous scene) with the way that Germany survived it. When I first began writing Two Generals, it was for children's publisher Tundra Books and therefore this section was considerably more extensive and detailed in its explanation of how the War began in order to accomodate younger readers. When it got bumped across the hall to Tundra's parent company McClelland & Stewart, I began writing for a more mature audience, and trimmed this sequence down to its essentials. Because I think (okay, hope) that most adults know how the Second World War started.

So most of the German stuff here is just general encyclopedia history, and not dependent on any particular source. The hardest thing was getting a German translation of "No Help Wanted" (I've been told that the translator asked why anyone would post such a sign...the result of being raised in a time of prosperity, I assume.)

Some of the facts that were cut from this section: Canada declared war on Germany on September 10th 1939, ten days after the German invasion of Poland, and a week after the declarations of war by Britain and France. Out of a population of less than 12 million people, Canada eventually raised a military of over 1.1 million, with 40%-50% of males aged 18-45 in most provinces serving in uniform (Quebec being the only exception, something that was understandably controversial at the time.) 


The details of Law's enlistment and training come directly from records obtained from the regiment itself. On the very first night that I went to the Armoury in Cambridge, Ontario to look around, Sergeant Lance Harrisson (whom I've mentioned previously in this blog) produced a document (pictured here) detailing my grandfather's enlistment, training, and transfer to the Highland Light Infantry of Canada. Which was a real godsend, because virtually none of that information was known to me or the rest of my family. It also proved conclusively that during the War, my grandmother was living with her father at his farm, a detail that proved important in the homecoming scene at the end of the story.

For the longest time, my grandparents' wedding picture was the best photograph I had of Jack Chrysler, and my inital character design was based on it. (I would eventually be the beneficiary of several more excellent photos of him, but I'll describe that lucky discover later in the blog.) Since the book came out, many people have asked me exactly how the two met. Honestly, I have no idea. My father and his brothers didn't know, and my research never uncovered any details about the origins of their friendship. My assumption is that, being from different towns, they met as fellow officers in the HLI, sometime after April 1942. But it's impossible to know for sure, which is why it isn't included in Two Generals. It's too bad, because it would have been great to include it, and I think the book is weaker for its exclusion.

Law's diary says clearly that they left from Camp Borden at 3:30 on March 8th 1943, and it wasn't hard to find out that it was by train (though I can't recall at the moment just where that information came from.) As for the rest, I'll let Law's diary speak for itself: