Unwanted Warriors uncovers the history of Canada’s first casualties of the Great War – men who tried to enlist but were deemed “unfit for service.” What impact did military exclusion have on these men? Nic Clarke looks for answers in the service files of 3,400 rejected volunteers and explores the mechanics of the medical examination, the physical and psychological qualities that the authorities believed made a fighting man, and how evaluations changed as the war dragged on. In the process, he exposes the deleterious effects that socially constructed norms about health and fitness had on individual men and Canadian society during the First World War.

Nic Clarke's profile page

Nic Clarke is the curatorial manager of Diefenbunker, Canada's Cold War Museum. His research primarily focuses on disability and health in Canada during the Great War period. He has published articles on a variety of subjects, including the diet of Canadian soldiers during the Great War, hockey and the Great War, and the treatment of disabled children in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canada.

This book is an interesting and very worthy addition to World War I historiography.

Army History, No. 109

...highly recommended for students of the Great War.

Canadian Military History, Vol 27, Issue 2

In Nic Clarke’s well-researched and well-written Unwanted Warriors: The Rejected Volunteers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the historian at the Canadian War Museum has provided his readers with an illuminating study pertaining to Canada and the First World War based largely on previously unexamined sources … Clarke provides his readers with a new way of looking at recruitment, loyalty, duty, casualties, and conscription in Canada between 1914 and 1919.

Ontario History