The First World War was the cause of dramatic changes in every Canadian community. What it meant to daily life becomes clear in this book about the war years in Guelph, Ontario. The first months were the easiest, as young men rushed to enlist. Once news of casualties and deaths started arriving, the atmosphere changed drastically. Mothers dreaded the arrival of the telegraph boy. Newspapers published fulsome obituaries which could not obscure the tragedy of their deaths. Tensions emerged — one compelling example being a secret military and police night-time raid on a Catholic seminary just outside the town, looking for young men hiding from conscription.With these stories, Edward Butts offers a compelling portrait of people trying to make sense of a war with little evident logic. His account helps explain why the cause of the League of Nations and efforts to ensure peace in the 1920s and 1930s were so powerful amongst Canadians who had learned about the real impact of wartime on ordinary people.Through the use of primary resources including articles from the local press, letters from overseas, and newsreels in the cinema, Butts captures the reality of the First World War for Canadians at home.

John Boileau and Dan Black tell the stories of some of the 30,000 underage youths - some as young as fourteen - who joined the Canadian Armed Forces in the Second World War. This is the companion volume to the authors'’ popular 2013 book Old Enough to Fight about boy soldiers in the First World War. Like their predecessors a generation before, these boys managed to enlist despite their youth. Most went on to face action overseas in what would become the deadliest military conflict in human history. They enlisted for a myriad of personal reasons -- ranging from the appeal of earning regular pay after the unemployment and poverty of the Depression to the desire to avenge the death of a brother or father killed overseas. Canada's boy soldiers, sailors and airmen saw themselves contributing to the war effort in a visible, meaningful way, even when that meant taking on very adult risks and dangers of combat. Meticulously researched and extensively illustrated with photographs, personal documents and specially commissioned maps, Too Young to Die provides a touching and fascinating perspective on the Canadian experience in the Second World War. Among the individuals whose stories are told:Ken Ewing, at age sixteen taken prisoner at Hong Kong and then a teenager in a Japanese prisoner of war campRalph Frayne, so determined to fight that he enlisted in the army, navy and Merchant Navy all before the age of seventeenRobert Boulanger, at age eighteen the youngest Canadian to die on the Dieppe beaches

Between 15,000 and 20,000 underage youths, some as young as ten, signed up to fight in Canada's armed forces in the First World War. They served in the trenches alongside their elders, and fought in all the major battles: Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge, and the rest. Many were injured or suffered psychological wounds. Many died. This is the first book to tell their story.Some boys joined up to escape unhappy homes and workplaces. Others went with their parents' blessing, carrying letters from fathers and mothers asking the recruiters to take their eager sons. The romantic notion of a short, victorious campaign was wiped out the second these boys arrived on the Western Front. The authors, who narrate the fighting with both military professionalism and humanity, portray many boys who, in the heat of battle, made a seamless transition from follower to leader to hero.Authors Dan Black and John Boileau combed the archives and collections to bring these stories to life. Passages from letters the boy soldiers wrote home reveal the range of emotions and experiences they underwent, from the humorous to the unspeakably horrible. Their parents' letters touch us with their concern, love, uncertainty, and often, grief. Meticulously researched and abundantly illustrated with photographs, paintings, and a collection of specially commissioned maps, Old Enough to Fight is military and social history at its most fascinating.

"* compares bastions on opposite coasts * includes 100 photographs and documents * discusses the role these bases played during the 19th century and the early years of WWI""This book offers a fresh perspective on North American history, and the key role played by Halifax and Victoria in ensuring that Canada emerged as an independent country in the 20th century.Brian Elson focuses on the significance of the bases for the all-powerful British navy at Halifax and Victoria through the 19th century and the First World War. As he explains, Halifax gave the Royal Navy the land base they needed to project British power along the whole east Atlantic coast of North America. Victoria’s Esquimault did the same thing for the Pacific coast.During the 1800s the United States grew dramatically, adding huge swaths of lands west, south and north that had belonged to France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia – while pushing aside native peoples. More than once the American government came into conflict with Britain over British territory in North America. There were threats of war and annexation, and American popular support for absorbing Canada was strong.In this book Bryan Elson shows how the British presence in Halifax, and later in Victoria, stood in the way of US designs on Canada. American leaders knew that the British Navy, with its bases on both coasts, had the power to cut them off from the rest of the world with a naval blockade. The American threat to Canada was effectively countered by the British presence in these two cities.The two bastions played their most important role in the early years of the First World War. As Bryan Elson explains, in 1914 the United States stood aside while the British Empire, including Canada, took on Germany. In this situation, the British navy – including the Canadian navy’s first east coast warship – mounted a show of force by stopping all incoming and outgoing traffic from the port of New York. This lasted until the US finally opted into the war, on the side of Britain, in 1917.Meanwhile, on the west coast the Equimault naval base was buttressed by the extraordinary action of the B.C. provincial government – which at the start of the war bought two new submarines from a shipyard in Seattle for the fledgling Canadian navy."

A world without war: this is the vision that Douglas Roche has pursued for decades. A long-time Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament, Canadian ambassador for disarmament, and later a senator, Roche has been in the thick of international affairs for more than forty years. Though few of us realize it, today the world is more peaceful than in past centuries. Wars have diminished destruction dramatically in the past two decades. This is no accident -- it is the cumulative result of the work of the world's peacemakers. Sometimes in public, often behind the scenes, talented high achievers are waging a campaign for peace that is in ascendance over the warlike intentions of the arms industry, military generals, and aggressive government leaders. Neither Roche nor the peacemakers shy away from the thorniest issues the world faces -- including the threat posed by nuclear weapons, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and multiple threats of genocidal violence. Roche shows how new ideas like the responsibility to protect innocent civilians from genocide or armed attack by their own government, and new institutions like the International Criminal Court are moving the world along the path to the end of war. To tell this story, Roche profiles some leading peacemakers of our time and the work they are doing, and also interviews keen observers of world politics who offer informed commentary on the work of the peacemakers. You will meet former prime ministers and foreign ministers, senior UN officials, religious figures, women's organization leaders and activists. Few are household names. Roche documents the many successes of the past two decades in reducing conflict in the world, and in creating structures and institutions which are making war less likely and more difficult for states to initiate. With a Resources section of websites, books and films.

The American refugees who fled north to Canada after Britain's defeat by the revolutionary U.S. army were determined to build a culture separate from the U.

Takeo Nakano immigrated to Canada from Japan in 1920, later marrying and starting a family in his adopted homeland. Takeo's passion was poetry, and he cultivated the exquisite form known as tanka.Then came the Second World War. Takeo Nakano was one of thousands of Japanese men forcibly separated from his family in 1942 and interned in labour camps in the British Columbia interior. Takeo was one of those who protested the forced labour in the camps and the separation from his family. His punishment was to be sent even further away, to an isolated internment camp in northern Ontario.This book, first published in 1982, is a rare first-person account of the experience of internment. This new edition includes a foreword by his daughter, Leatrice M. Willson Chan, with whom he collaborated in preparing his memoir.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the new science of weather forecasting was fraught with controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, a bitter dispute about the nature of storms had raged for decades, and forecasting was hampered by turf wars then halted by the Civil War. Forecasters in England struggled with the scientific establishment for recognition and vied with astrologers and other charlatans for public acceptance. One of the voices in this struggle was Stephen Saxby, a British naval instructor who thought he had found a sure-fire way of forecasting storms. He championed a popular, but somewhat eccentric, theory that weather disturbances are linked to stages in the moon's orbit of the earth.Saxby got lucky. One of his well-known long-range predictions–for a serious storm on October 4, 1869–was right on the button. On that very day, a deadly hurricane caused massive floods along the eastern seaboard of the United States then barrelled ashore at the Canadian border. The timing of the storm could hardly have been worse. Coinciding with an extremely high tide, the resulting storm surge breached centuries-old dykes at the head of the Bay of Fundy.In The Discovery of Weather, author Jerry Lockett traces the early days of weather forecasting, the background to Saxby's prediction, and the drama of the storm itself.About the AuthorJerry Lockett is a Halifax-based writer and editor. His first book, Captain James Cook in Atlantic Canada, won the Dartmouth Book Awards prize for nonfiction in 2011. A two-time Atlantic Journalism Awards finalist, his work has appeared in publications in Canada, the United States, and Britain, including New Scientist, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Geographical Magazine, Equinox, Cruising World, Blue Water Sailing and many others. He has felt the wrath of two hurricanes—Hugo in 1989 and Juan in 2003—and thinks that’s enough for anyone.

This is the story of the most famous iceberg of all time - the iceberg that has gripped the imagination of the world, that humbled human technology and dramatised the wonders and dangers of the North Atlantic Ocean. Author Richard Brown uses the iceberg's story to present the natural history of the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic at the turn of the twentieth century. A rich panoply of birds, whales, bears, seals and other ships cross the path of the iceberg. With an expert's understanding of natural history and an authentic storyteller's voice, Brown weaves these storylines together as the iceberg slowly drifts away from Greenland and down the coast of Labrador to its fateful encounter with the world's most famous ship.With extensive illustrations drawn from volumes of exploration and natural history of the period, this is a beautiful and compelling read. First published in 1983 and championed by publishers worldwide, this reprint of the original edition is accompanied by a brief biographical note on Richard Brown's career as a research scientist working for the Canadian Wildlife Service.

The sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912 captured the world's attention a hundred years ago and still holds it today. Although it was bound for New York, more than 100 passengers aboard the ocean-liner were headed for Canada. Titanic Lives delves into the unique stories of ten of those passengers. Some were rich - like railroad tycoon Charles Melville Hays and a scion of Montreal's Molson family. Others were not, and would have been lost to history had they not been a part of this unforgettable story.From the scandalous romance between Montreal's Quigg Baxter and his French showgirl mistress, to one woman's search for her toddler and husband as the life boats were being launched from the decks, this book gives its readers a glimpse into the lives of those who took that fateful voyage on the Titanic. You will hear about Paul Chevre, renowned French artist travelling to Montreal to reveal his latest sculpture, and Arthur Peuchen, the wealthy chemist and lumber king whose last-minute decision to board the Titanic turned him into both a hero and a target.Be it nursemaid, cabaret dancer or ex-soldier, Rob Rondeau weaves together the unique and compelling stories of ten people sharing one common thread - they were all on board the Titanic, destination Canada.

"One Woman's War will undoubtedly earn a place as one of the most valuable personal documents of the Second World War." – Montreal Gazette "A compelling memoir." – William French, Globe and Mail "The eyewitness report is so vivid, so utterly human, that one puts down the book with the feeling of having been there. " – Patricia Morley Books This is a story not of military campaigns and grand strategy, but the joys and sorrows of life on a more intimate battlefield – the battlefield of the French resistance.Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Gladys Arnold was sent to Paris by Canadian Press in October 1939, and was the only Canadian reporter to experience the invasion of France by the Germans in the spring of 1940. One Woman's War is Gladys Arnold's vivid eyewitness account of the fall of France and the growth of the Free French resistance. She was one of the first journalists to interview General Charles de Gaulle, and she brings to life many of the memorable people, French and Canadian, who fought the underground war.One Woman's War is an account of some of the most important and harrowing events of the 20th century, told by a marvellously engaging and courageous woman.About the AuthorGladys Arnold was Paris correspondent for Canadian Press from 1936 to 1941 and information officer with the Free French in Canada from 1941 to 1947.

"Finkel and Leibovitz have come up with a new and more satisfactory explanation of why the Second World War broke out when it did." – Telegraph JournalWas Neville Chamberlain merely naive, a man of peace who was blind to Hitler's warlike intentions in the late 1930s? Or did he, with the backing of much of Britain's ruling elite, positively prefer Nazism to the threat of Communism in a politically charged era? Alvin Finkel and Clement Leibovitz forcefully maintain the latter view. They present irrefutable evidence that in 1938 Chamberlain’s government, supported by powerful business interests and an influential segment of the press, sought an agreement with the Nazis that would protect the west against attack while positively encouraging German expansion in Central and Eastern Europe. Attempts to conclude a pact among Britain, France, Germany and Italy were not, in fact, abandoned until Churchill's ascension to power in May of 1940.The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion is a bold and scrupulously documented re-examination of a vital period in European history, one that definitively overturns much received wisdom.About the AuthorsAlvin Finkel is a professor of history at Athabasca University. He is the author of Business and Social Reform in the Thirties, The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta, and A History of Canadian Peoples.Clement Leibovitz spent eight years researching the events leading to World War II.

For over three hundred years, lawlessness in Canada flourished off Canada's east coast. Pirates roamed the North Atlantic, and master storyteller Harold Horwood recounts their action-filled careers, crimes and violent deaths. Privateers, who were licensed by governments to harass the enemy, aimed to capture enemy ships and plunder their cargo. Among the characters readers meet in these pages are the folk hero, Peter Easton, still celebrated as a great Newfoundlander, and famed privateer Enos Collins, the wealthiest ship owner in British North America and owner of the Black Joke.This new collection brings together the best of Harold Horwood's writing on pirates and privateers, and offers rich, edge-of-your-seat, highseas adventure. If you are looking forward to the next Pirates of the Caribbean instalment, this will whet your appetite. About the AuthorHarold Horwood combined a literary ambition with early experience as a labour union organiser and a close collaborator of Newfoundland's first premier Joey Smallwood in the campaign for Confederation. He later became an author, and with his organising experience was the natural choice as founding vice-chair of The Writers' Union of Canada and later chair, 1980-81. He was the author of 24 books in total; five fiction, many types of non-fiction, and one poetry anthology. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1980.

In 1939, Halifax quickly became the country's centre of war activity when Canada declared war on Germany. With its vital naval base and its key role in getting supplies to Great Britain, the city was on a wartime footing for seven long years. Blackouts, enemy ships just offshore, and worries about raids and attacks were part of daily life. So were thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and merchant seamen who passed through on their way to or from Europe.Wartime Halifax is a visual history of this period. William Naftel has found a treasure trove of archival photos showing the bustling shipyards, construction, convoys and cadets, and never before seen images of parades, platoons and personnel. The photos show the dramatic impact of the war on city life -- long lineups at movie theatres, crammed dance halls, and crowded restaurants. Visuals and text convey a unique portrait of a wartime city -- not in cosmopolitan Europe but on Canada's east coast.This is a book for anyone with an interest in the history of the Canadians who participated in the Second World War. It is a companion to William Naftel's double award-winning book Halifax at War published in 2008.About the Author William D. Naftel was a historian and regional manager with Parks Canada for thirty years, in Ottawa and Nova Scotia. He is the author of Halifax at War, winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for non-fiction and the Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing. He lives in Halifax.

Billy Bishop was the top Canadian flying ace in the first World War, credited officially with a record breaking 75 victories. A highly skilled pilot and an accurate shot, he was fiercely ambitious, driven by an undisguised hatred of his enemies. He played hard and fought even harder. A highly skilled pilot and a crack shot, "top gun" of the Allied air forces, by 1918 Bishop was the most highly decorated war hero in Canadian history. He also remains the most controversial. Some of Bishop's fellow pilots were repelled by his grandstanding and suspected he was deliberately inflating his number of "kills." Since then, the claim has been repeated by many others. Bishop went from being the most decorated war hero in Canadian history to a crusader for peace, writing the book Winged Peace, which supported international control of global air power. While some historians feel that authorities upgraded Bishop's claims to improve morale, author Dan McCaffery presents the true life and accomplishments of Bishop through information he gathered from interviews and archival sources.About the AuthorDan McCaffery is one of Canada's most successful military aviation history writers. He is the author of Hell Island: Canadian Pilots and the 1942 Air Battle for Malta, Air Aces, and Battlefields in the Air, amongst others.

"This is a solid, no-nonsense book, an important one that lays the Bishop controversy to rest..