Thomas Littlewood's dissertation, "Public Commemorations and Personal Memories: Canadian Commemoration of the Second World War," examined how Canadians have commemorated the Second World War since its end.
He found that Canadians borrowed heavily from the commemorative traditions established after the First World War as a way of understanding their grief and charting a future for themselves and for the country.
Though the federal government was never able to get a traditional Second World War memorial off the ground, communities across the country built traditional stone and granite memorials in surprising numbers.
The rites and rituals of Remembrance Day were already solidified after the First World War, and they did not change significantly after 1945. Immediately after the Second World War, many Canadians conceptualized the conflict through the lens of Christian sacrifice and peace. Fears and threats of nuclear war in the 1970s had a distinct influence on how some Canadians viewed the war, the military, and Canada’s role in the geopolitical theatre. As the war became more distant, though, many minority groups in Canada began to use Remembrance Day as symbol for their inclusion in the Canadian mosaic, and they campaigned for explicit inclusion in Remembrance Day ceremonies. In the 1990s, a renewed interest in the Second World War thrust the memory of the war into the forefront of political and social debates, again shaping how the war has come to be remembered.
Dr. Littlewood's defence was held on Wednesday, June 26 at the University of Guelph. He was supervised by Dr. Alan Gordon until his untimely death in 2022. Dr. Matthew Hayday of Guelph and Dr. Geoffrey Hayes of Waterloo continued on as Thomas' supervisors. The rest of the committee included Dr. Tarah Brookfield of Laurier and Dr. Ian Milligan of Waterloo. His other examiners included Dr. Alex Souchen of Guelph and Dr. Jonathan Vance of Western University.
"I am currently revising some of the dissertation to form a monograph about Remembrance Day and its place on the yearly civic calendar. My non-academic work continues as a church administrator and fundraiser," says Thomas.
Thomas contributed a great deal to the Tri-U program over his time at Guelph, notably during the pandemic. He served as a co-president of the Tri-U Graduate Students Association (TUGSA) in 2020-21. He was part of the organizing committee at Guelph for the 2021 Tri-U Conference that was held entirely virtually. In 2023, his article, "Failure to Launch: Canadian Federal Government Attempts at Memorialising the Second World War, 1945-1967," published in Canadian Military History won that year's essay prize.