We often picture life on the Canadian home front as a time of austerity, as a time when women went to work and men went to war. A Small Price to Pay, the first full-length study of consumer culture in wartime Canada, explodes the myth of home front sacrifice by bringing to light the contradictions of consumer society during the Second World War, from car lots and grocery stores to movie theatres and wartime advertising. War brought rationing, price controls, shortages, and patriotic pressure to save for the sake of the nation. But Canadians also had money in their pockets after years of want, and the fantasy realm of advertisements promised them limitless material abundance. Our “greatest generation" was not impervious to temptation but rather embarked on one of the biggest spending booms in Canadian history. Between 1939 and 1945, jewelry, clothing, and drug store sales doubled, restaurant business tripled, and Canadians bought over a billion tickets to the movies. By cutting through the fog of patriotic enthusiasm, Graham Broad reveals that the consumer-spending boom of the 1950s and 1960s was not a “postwar" phenomenon after all. | A Small Price to Pay by Graham Broad, Paperback | Indigo Chapters