COMPENDIUM OF CANADIAN REGIMENTS-A Civilian's Perspective
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BY Micheal Gregory
ISBN#0-9688562-0-9
ISBN#9781894263283
This 400page reference book compresses an exhaustive research of a rarely explored subject. Its index includes 565 mostly Canadian regiment names.
The book opens with ten short chapters that probe, sometimes irreverently, the place regiments have in both the nation’s history and society. The chapters have titles such as Words and Weapons, Apparel and Tactics and Strategy. Also explored is the method of using regiments to settle the country and the consequent relationship regiments have to the nation's geography. In the attendant notes and arrangement of regiments in the Compilation this relationship becomes thematic. Underlying all of this is the tribalistic romance inherent in the concept of a regiment.
It is shown that regiments have borne the brunt of the wars and that they are a distinct and ancient form of military organization having a surprising continuity through changing jurisdictions and therefore are placed in a context of war and peace, from first contact to the 21stC. In so doing the book uses fifteen various types of lists. For example a list is devoted to the numbered battalions of the First World War. Other lists have titles such as Chronology or Military Demographics and there is a short illustrated list of the various hats worn by Canadian soldiers in their 300year history.
Part III, The Compilation, which takes up half the book, contains all the regiments entered in historical and then geographical sequence under 132 headings. It contains the vital data and has reproductions of 123 insignia or badges.
Mike Gregory has had some contact with the Armed Forces and has participated in schemes and exercises to test equipment. The idea for the book however came more from an interest in Canadian history.
