In the evening dusk of August 22, 1944, during an intense battle off the Norwegian coast, the HMS Nabob, one of the two Canadian-crewed aircraft carriers in the Second World War was struck by a torpedo on the starboard side. Among the souls on board was Dr. Charles Read Jr., a young flight surgeon who needed to draw upon every bit of his training and skills to fight against seemingly impossible odds to save the lives of his shipmates. These are his memoires.Follow Dr. Read from his...

Seven soldiers. Seven military specialties. Seven stories.What was it like to serve in the combat mission in Afghanistan? Journalists’ reports from 2006 to 2011 could only give brief glimpses of the reality on the ground for Canadian soldiers. This book reveals the full story of what happened to seven soldiers, ranking from corporal to captain, who were deployed during Operation ATHENA, Phase 2. The operation became known as “the combat mission” as Canadian battle ...

2016 Speaker's Book Award — Shortlisted2016 Heritage Toronto Book Award — NominatedAn account of the women working in high-security, dangerous conditions making bombs in Toronto during the Second World War.What was it like to work in a Canadian Second World War munitions factory? What were working conditions like? Did anyone die? Just how closely did female employees embody the image of “Rosie the Riveter” so popularly advertised to...

On Guard For Thee: Canadian Peacekeeping Missions is a collection of stories about Canadian men and women who have served overseas on UN or NATO missions from the end of the Cold War to the present day. The stories are collected directly from the individual veterans. Contributors represent virtually every major Canadian mission, including Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. They represent the whole of the operational experience, from the training they undergo b...

On April 18, 2002, Alpha Company, Third Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was on a training exercise at Tarnak Farms, a former Taliban artillery range in southern Afghanistan. The exercise had been underway for nearly seven hours when two American fighter pilots flew overhead. One, Major Harry Schmidt, saw the artillery fire below, and thinking he was under attack, dropped a laser-guided bomb.Four Canadian soldiers died that night, the first Canadian com...

"We are thus not only the first country in the world with the capability to produce nuclear weapons that chose not to do so, we are also the first nuclear armed country to have chosen to divest itself of nuclear weapons."Pierre Trudeau United Nations, 26 May 1978From 1963 to 1984, US nuclear warheads armed Canadian weapons systems in both Canada and West Germany. It is likely that during the early part of this period, the Canadian military was putting more effort, money, an...

Fighting Words is a collection of the very best war journalism created by or about Canadians at war. The collection spans 1,000 years of history, from the Vikings' fight with North American Natives, through New France's struggle for survival against the Iroquois and British, to the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Rebellions of Lower and Upper Canada, the Fenian raids, the North-West Rebellion, the First World War, the Second World War, Korea, peacekeeping missions, and A...

In late 1942, Britain was desperate to win the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. German U-boats had sunk hundreds of Allied ships containing millions of tons of cargo that was needed to continue the war effort. Prime Minister Churchill had to find a solution to the carnage or the Nazis would be victorious. With the support of Churchill and Lord Louis Mountbatten, eccentric inventor and amateur spy Geoffrey Pyke proposed a dramatic project to build invincible ships of ice—massive, unsinkable ...

This book describes the organization, lists the units and illustrates the uniforms and equipment of the four Canadian divisions which earned an elite reputation on the Western Front in 1915-18.Canada's 600,000 troops - of whom more than 66,000 died and nearly 150,000 were wounded - represented an extraordinary contribution to the British Empire's struggle. On grim battlefields from the Ypres Salient to the Somme, and from their stunning victory at Vimy Ridge to the...

Despite Canada’s active participation in the First World War, which many claimed made Canada a nation, the country was almost defenceless in September 1939 when war was declared again.Larry D. Rose, a long-time journalist and a military specialist, examines the military’s own failures, the hidden agenda of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, and the divisions within Canada leading up to Canada’s entry into the war. He suggests that the lack of preparedness was directly resp...

The stories of many POW escapees are well known, but what about those who miraculously evaded capture in the first place and returned to fight another day?This compelling book tells some of the epic stories of the thousands of shot-down airmen, including Canadians from across the country, who got out from behind enemy lines in Europe, the Far East, and Africa during the Second World War. Based on special first-hand interviews and new research into official debriefing documents held...

Isaac Brock is the best-known figure of the War of 1812. He is widely credited as the military leader who frustrated the United States in its ambition to invade and take over Canada.Brock was born in the English Channel Island of Guernsey, where his limited combat experience did nothing to shake his moxy. Before coming to Canada, he faced a challenge to duel; when he insisted the other man be a handkerchief's length away, his opponent was forced to back down. Brock survived family ...