Boosters and Barkers

“Back him up! Buy Victory Bonds.” Boosters and Barkers examines the unrelenting financial demands of Canadian participation in the First World War, exploring the aims, methods, and implications of securing public support.

David Roberts is a retired editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada. In addition to writing many entries for the DCB, he is also the author of In the Shadow of Detroit: Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, and Motoropolis. He lives in Don Mills, Ontario.

"[Boosters and Barkers] illustrates how the cost of war is more than the battlefield casualties and societal scars it leaves behind."

Ron Verzuh:

"Moving through each of the war loans with forensic care, Roberts gives readers an inside-the-vault examination of how Canada accomplished the near-impossible feat of raising hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for munitions, clothing, food, and soldiers’ wages."

Patrice Dutil:

"There has been an explosion of material on Canada and the war over the past decade, but the subject of finance, critical as it is, seems to either bore or intimidate most writers and scholars. Roberts, decided to take on this knotty problem, and we’re all the winners for it."

Graham Broad, author of A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939–45:

David Roberts should be proud of the notable contribution he has made to the history of Canada in the First World War. This is an important and indeed groundbreaking work, both adding to existing scholarly debates and initiating new ones.