From Victoria to Vladivostok
As the last guns sounded on the Western Front, 4,200 Canadian soldiers, some of them conscripts, travelled from Victoria to Vladivostok to open a new theatre of war in Siberia. Part of the Allied intervention in Russia’s civil war, the force sought to defeat Bolshevism, but grim conditions, conflict among the Allies, and local opposition eventual …
Militia Myths
This cultural history of the amateur military tradition traces the origins of the citizen soldier ideal from long before Canadians donned khaki and boarded troopships for the Western Front. Before the Great War, Canada’s military culture was in transition as the country navigated an uncertain relationship with the United States and fought an impe …
FOB Doc
A compelling and informed observation of the truth of Canada's war, from a dedicated Canadian doctor.
Unusually for a Canadian Forces physician, Ray Wiss spent virtually his entire tour in the combat area. He was stationed at Forward Operating Bases -- "FOBs" -- in Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban and the most intense combat zone in …
Veterans with a Vision
History has told us something about our war dead but very little about our war wounded. Veterans with a Vision provides a vibrant, poignant, and very human history of Canada’s war-blinded veterans and of the organization they founded in 1922, the Sir Arthur Pearson Association of War Blinded. Serge Durflinger details the veterans’ process of ci …
Operation Husky
Now available in paperback, book seven of the Canadian Battle Series.
On July 10, 1943, twenty thousand Canadian soldiers joined two great Allied armies on the beaches of southern Sicily for Operation Husky -- the first western Allied thrust to win a toehold inside HItler's Fortress Europe.
Guarding the renowned Eighth Army's left flank, 1st Canadi …
Canada, the Congo Crisis, and UN Peacekeeping, 1960-64
In 1960 the Republic of Congo teetered near collapse as its first government struggled to cope with civil unrest and mutinous armed forces. When the UN established a peacekeeping operation to deal with the crisis, the Canadian government faced a difficult decision. Should it support the intervention? By offering one of the first detailed accounts o …
Pearson's Peacekeepers
In 1957, Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the United Nations Emergency Force during the Suez crisis. The award launched Canada’s enthusiasm and reputation for peacekeeping. Pearson’s Peacekeepers explores the reality behind the rhetoric by offering a detailed account of the UNEF’s decade-long effort to keep peace along th …
Kiss the kids for dad, Don’t forget to write
Between 1916 and 1918, Lance-Corporal George Timmins, a British-born soldier who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, wrote faithfully to his wife and children. Sixty-three letters and four fragments survived. These letters tell the compelling story of a man who, while helping his fellow Canadians make history, used letters home to remain a …
The Politics of Procurement
In 1993, Canada’s Liberal Party cancelled an order to replace the navy’s Sea King helicopter. It claimed that the Tory plan was too expensive, but the cancellation itself actually cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Aaron Plamondon connects this incident to the larger evolution of defence procurement in Canada, revealing that partis …
Holding Juno
Following his national best-seller, Juno Beach, and with his usual verve and narrative skill, historian Mark Zuehlke chronicles the crucial six days when Canadians saved the vulnerable beachheads they had won during the D-Day landings in book five of the Canadian Battle Series.
D-Day ended with the Canadians six miles inland -- the deepest penetrati …
Liri Valley, The
The second book in the Canadian Battle series, details the Allied Armies fighting their way up the Italian boot in early 1944. Rome was the prize that could only be won through one of the greatest offensives of the war. Mark Zuehlke, following his book, Ortona, returns to the Mediterranean theatre of World War II with this gripping story of courage …
Gothic Line, The
Book three in the Canadian Battle Series. Stretching like an armour-toothed belt across Italy's upper thigh, the Gothic Line was the most fortified and fiercely defended position the German army had yet thrown in the path of the advancing Allied forces. On August 25, 1944, it fell to I Canadian Corps to spearhead the famed Eighth Army's major offen …
Crisis of Conscience
The First World War’s appalling death toll and the need for a sense of equality of sacrifice on the home front led to Canada’s first experience of overseas conscription. While historians have focused on resistance to enforced military service in Quebec, this has obscured the important role of those who saw military service as incompatible with …
Juno Beach
Drawing on personal diaries as well as military records, Juno Beach: Canada’s D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944 dramatically depicts Canada’s contribution to the most critical Allied battle of World War II.
Acclaimed military historian Mark Zuehlke recreated the pivotal day of World War II from planning through attack. Falling through a black night, p …
Terrible Victory
BOOK SIX in the Canadian Battle Series
Terrible Victory is a gripping account of Canada's bloody liberation of western Holland, one of our finest, and most costly, military victories.
On September 4, 1944, Antwerp, Europe's largest port, fell to the Second British Army and it seemed the war would soon be won. But Antwerp was of little value unless th …
Empty Casing
When Canadian soldier Fred Doucette was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a UN peacekeeper in 1995, he had a premonition that this tour of duty would be different. He had been posted to Cyprus in the 1970s and 1980s, but the horrors of the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s were beyond imagining.
Doucette takes us to the heart of the conflict as the Bos …
Renegades
Between 1936 and 1939, almost 1,700 Canadians defied their government and volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War. They left behind punishing lives in Canadian relief camps, mines, and urban flophouses to confront fascism in a country few knew much about. Michael Petrou has drawn on recently declassified archival material, interviewed survivi …
Cautious Beginnings
Kurt F. Jensen argues that Canada was a more active intelligence partner in the Second World War alliance than has previously been suggested. He describes Canada’s contributions to Allied intelligence before the war began, as well as the distinctly Canadian activities that started from that point. He reveals how the government created an intellig …
Northern Armageddon
The Battle of the Plains of Abraham is one of the pivotal events in North American and global history. This clash between British general James Wolfe and French general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on September 13, 1759, led to the British victory in the Seven Years’ War in North America, which in turn led to the creation of Canada and the United Sta …
Soldiers Made Me Look Good
A riveting follow-up to the best-selling Peacekeeper, including MacKenzie's provocative views on leadership and the current state of the Canadian Armed Forces. Since retiring from the Armed Forces, Lewis MacKenzie has not stayed out of the spotlight but continues to speak his mind. In this straight-talking memoir, he traces his post-military career …
An Officer and a Lady
During the Second World War, more than 4,000 civilian nurses enlisted as Nursing Sisters, a specially created all-female officers’ rank of the Canadian Armed Forces. They served in all three armed force branches and all the major theatres of war, yet nursing as a form of war work has long been under-explored. An Officer and a Lady fills that gap. …
Emily Carr's Attic
When Paul and his mother move into an apartment for the summer, the old gentleman who lives next door introduces him to a menagerie of new "friends" in the attic of The House of All Sorts. What follows is both a wonderful adventure and a young boy's artistic awakening.
Fight or Pay
The First World War is remembered largely for the immense sacrifice in life and limb of Canadian soldiers. In Fight or Pay, Desmond Morton turns his eye to the stories of those who paid in lieu of fighting – the wives, mothers, and families left behind when soldiers went to war. A pan-Canadian story, Fight or Pay brings to light the lives of thou …
Hometown Horizons
Robert Rutherdale considers how people and communities on the Canadian home front perceived the Great War. Drawing on newspaper archives and organizational documents, he examines how farmers near Lethbridge, Alberta, shopkeepers in Guelph, Ontario, and civic workers in Trois-Rivières, Québec took part in local activities that connected their ever …
“Here Is Hell”
Grant Dawson’s analysis of political, diplomatic, and military decision making avoids a narrow focus on the shocking offences of a few Canadian soldiers, deftly investigating the broader context of the deployment in Somalia. He shows how media pressure, government optimism about the United Nations, and the Canadian traditions of multilateralism a …
Betrayed
In January 1944, Vice Admiral Percy Walker Nelles was fired from his position as head of the Royal Canadian Navy. Betrayed reveals the true story behind the dismissal: a divisive power struggle between two elite groups within the RCN pitted the navy’s regular officers against a small group of self-appointed spokesmen for the voluntary naval reser …
Battle Grounds
Base closures, use of airspace for weapons testing and low-level flying, environmental awareness, and Aboriginal land claims have focused attention in recent years on the use of Native lands for military training. But is the military’s interest in Aboriginal lands new? Battle Grounds analyzes a century of government–Aboriginal interaction and n …
Cooking Under the Arch
Down-to-earth, easy-to-prepare, inexpensive recipes for home cooking are at the heart of this cookbook inspired by foods from the garden. Ingredients can be purchased locally through farmers' markets (or grocery stores), but if you want to grow your own, this book tells you how.
Written by the same people who brought you Gardening Under the Arch, Co …
Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers
It was the “Good War.” Its cause was just; it ended the depression; and Canada’s contribution was nothing less than stellar. Canadians had every reason to applaud themselves, and the heroes that made the nation proud. But the dark truth was that not all Canadians were saints or soldiers. Indeed, many were sinners.
In this eye-opening and capt …
