From top: Bell tents and men fill a field at Camp Valcartier, Que., in 1914; A march-past is organized at Camp Borden, Ont., in July 1916; (Inset) Sir Sam Hughes (right) visits Camp Valcartier in September 1914. Most of the world remembers World War I as a futile struggle when naive young men, raised to believe in abstractions like honour, duty and manliness, were slaughtered in pointless battles planned by incompetent generals. English-speaking Canadians, while generally accepting this view, have supplemented it with the memory of a war in which their soldiers won great victories and forged a new nati...