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This article is a study of the memoirs of three Canadian ex-servicemen who were blinded during the First and Second World Wars. It inquires autobiographical accounts as a source to understand disability both at an individual and a social level. I argue that autobiographies, as they reflect the individual experience of disability, also reveal concepts and prejudices concerning disability that are inherent to a society at a specific time. The authors hence can either challenge or confirm persistent ideas about disability. This paper is organized in three parts. In the first I present the autobiographies this study is based on, and summarize their main features. In the second I focus on the way blindness impacts individual’s identity. I shall argue that the loss of sight is experienced as life-changing event, a death-rebirth process that deeply affects the veterans as well as their entourage. Blindness enhance hence a process of re-definition of the self which encompasses, on the one hand, blind individuals’ perception of their own ‘exceptionality’ and, on the other, their desire for normality and social integration. In the last section I analyze how the three writers address Canadian society in order to challenge the existing ideas and prejudices about the blind. I argue that they deliberately choose to use autobiographical narratives as a device to point out and challenge common preconceptions about blindness. Key-words: History of disability, Experience of disability, Canadian War Veterans, Visual Impairment, Autobiographies Doria, “Memoirs of Blind Canadian Veterans” CJDS 7.3 (November 2018) 123 "From the darkness to the light" Memoirs of blind Canadian veterans of the First and Second World Wars Corinne Doria, Professor of Disability Studies and European History, Sciences-Po Paris and Sciences-Po Lille corinne.doria@gmail.com On June 7 1917 Private James H. Rawlinson of the Ontario 58th Infantry Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force was blinded by a fragment of shrapnel. He entered the St. Dunstan's Institute for Blind Soldiers and Sailors in London for rehabilitation; there he learned Braille, typing and carpentry before returning to his native Ottawa. In 1919 he published Through St. Dunstan’s to Light1, a book in which he describes the drama of his wound, his rehabilitation, and his return to the civilian society. 1 Rawlinson, James H. (1919). Through St. Dunstan’s to Light. Toronto: Thomas Allen. James Rawlinson is one of the several hundred Canadians who lost their sight in war, and one of the few who decided to tell their story in an autobiographical work. We can also mention Blind Date2 by Private John Windsor, and Wings of Courage3 by Pilot Officer Neil Hamilton, both of whom fought in the Second World War. These books narrate individual journeys ‘from the darkness to the light’; they provide insight into the experience of blindness and what it means – from a psychological and a practical viewpoint – to be suddenly deprived of sight as an adult. These works also testify to the care given to blinded veterans and their integration within civilian society, and so tell of the evolution of welfare policies for the visually impaired and general attitudes towards blind people in Canada during the course of the 20th century. 2 Windsor, John (1963). Blind Date. Sidney, BC: Gray’s Publishing Canada. 3 Hamilton, Neil R. (2000). Wings of Courage: A Lifetime of Triumph over Adversity. Calgary: Nacelles. This article examines how disability is portrayed in auto-biographical accounts of Canadian war blinded. We will question how the authors display themselves and relate their experience, and how their memoirs reflect or challenge persistent ideas about disability. Scholarly literature on disabled veterans consists mostly of works of military or social Doria, “Memoirs of Blind Canadian Veterans” CJDS 7.3 (November 2018) 124 history4. Although providing essential information about the return of maimed ex-servicemen to civilian society, these works have left some important issues unexplored: questions such as how veterans experienced their condition, how did their relatives cope with the impairment suddenly acquired by a family member, what ideas and prejudices there were about disabled individuals – are outside the purview of these works. 4 See, among others, Whalen, Robert Weldon (1984). Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War 19141939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; Broadfoot, Barry (1985). The Veteran’s Years: Coming Home from the War. Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre; Morton, Desmond, and Glee Wright (1987). Winning the Second Battle: Canadian Veterans and the Return to Civilian Life, 1915-1930. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; Prost, Antoine (1992). In the Wake of War: ‘Les Anciens Combattants’ and French Society, 1914-1939. Oxford: Berg;Gerber, David A., ed. (2000) Disabled Veterans in History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Cohen, Deborah (2001). The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans, in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939. Berkeley: University of California Press. For a more comprehensive understanding it is useful to mobilize the theoretical and methodological frame of disability studies. That discipline analyses ideas about disability, the process of social exclusion or integration of impaired people examining their ideological and practical patterns. It can accordingly highlight several questions currently unresolved in the scholarly literature. My study will address three points: first, I shall analyze how blindness is experienced; secondly, I shall study blindness as a factor in identity; thirdly, I shall discuss ideas and conceptions concerning the blind within the Canadian society in the 20th century. This paper is organized in three parts. In the first I present the three autobiographies this study is based on, equally providing some elements concerning the status of blind individuals in Canada during the 20th century. In the second I focus on the way blindness impacts individual’s identity. I shall argue that the loss of sight is experienced as lifechanging event, a death-rebirth process that deeply affects the veterans as well as their entourage. It enhance hence a process of re-definition of the self which encompasses, on the one hand, blind individuals’ perception of their own ‘exceptionality’ and, on the other, their desire for normality and social integration. In the last section I analyze how the three writers address Canadian society in order to challenge the existing ideas and prejudices about the Doria, “Memoirs of Blind Canadian Veterans” CJDS 7.3 (November 2018) 125 blind. I argue that they deliberately choose to use autobiographical narratives as a device to point out and challenge common preconceptions about blindness. Three Canadian blind veterans James Rawlinson’s Through St. Dunstan’s to Light is the only autobiography by a blind Canadian veteran of the First World War. Little information is available about the author: we only know that he was born in Ottawa that he enlisted in the 170th Infantry Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and that in the spring of 1917 he was in northern France5. In June he was injured during an air raid: a splinter hit his right temple causing a sudden and irreversible loss of sight. After two months in hospital – first in St. Omer and then in Boulogne – he entered the St. Dunstan's Hostel for Blind Soldiers and Sailors in London6. That institution had been founded in 1915 by Sir Arthur Pearson, a press magnate who was blinded by glaucoma and decided to devote himself to the cause of British eye-wounded veterans. The foundation’s headquarters were a magnificent mansion – the biggest in London after Buckingham Palace – made available by the American millionaire and philanthropist Otto Kahn. St. Dunstan's patients lived there and received comprehensive training for their rehabilitation, including Braille, daily life skills (self-grooming, orienting), and also vocational training, mostly in crafts such as shoemaking, basketry and carpentry. Rawlinson stayed at St. Dunstan’s for 16 months and then returned to Ottawa, where he found a job as a typist and stenographer. Through St. Dunstan’s to Light does not relate its author’s entire life story, but only the two years of it from 1917 – when he was injured – to 1919 when 5About the Canadian military intervention in the First World War, see Nicholson, G.W.L. (1964). Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1919. Ottawa: Queen's Printer; Freeman, Bill and Nielsen, Richard (1998). Far from home: Canadians in the First World War, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Busch; Briton, Cooper (2003). Canada and the Great War: Western Front Association papers, McGill-Queen's University Press. 6 On the history of St. Dunstan’s see Castleton, David (1990). Blind Man’s Vision: The Story of St. Dunstan’s in Words and Pictures. London: St. Dunstan's, and the memoirs and biographies of the founder and administrators: Pearson, Sir Arthur (1919). Victory over Blindness. New York: George H. Doran; Lonsdale, Lord Fraser of (1943). Whereas I Was Blind. London: Hodder and Stoughton; id. (1961). My Story of St. Dunstan's. London: George G. Harrap; Dark, Sidney (1992). The Life of Sir Arthur Pearson. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Doria, “Memoirs of Blind Canadian Veterans” CJDS 7.3 (November 2018) 126 he went back to Canada. Apart from the first chapter describing the circumstances of his wounding, the book is entirely devoted to Rawlinson’s training at St. Dunstan’s and his description of the facility, its inmates and its staff. Blind Date, published in 1962, is the autobiography of John Windsor, an officer of Lord Strathcona's Horse, a light cavalry regiment that fought during the Second World War as an armored unit. The book is a linear narrative from the author’s early childhood to the age of fifty. Born in Calgary, Windsor attended the Royal Military College in Kingston (Ontario), and was mobilized in

"From the darkness to the light": Memoirs of Blind Canadian veterans of the First and Second World Wars