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A Canadian Patriot and Imperialist; the life and times of Brigadier James Sutherland Brown. Atholl Sutherland Brown. Co-published by the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies and Trafford Publishins, 2004. 217p. $32 paperback.
It's a risky business for a son to write a biography of his father, particularly when the latter is a controversial character like James Sutherland 'Buster' Brown. But the author does it superbly well with an objectivity that exposes most of his hero's warts and with commendable restraint in defending him when he is attacked.
This is more than a biography of a complex military man; it is an intriguing history of his times during which the public image of a man in uniform evolved from hero to buffoon and back again. By birth and upbringing Buster was typical of the many Anglo-Canadian patriots who joined the permanent army or militia in the early twentieth century. But he was in no sense monotypic; he was an intelligent and popular...