History, Military
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The English Trip of 1910
Toronto, Sir Henry Pellatt, the Queen's Own Rifles and the Press Gang by Mima Brown Kapches
The year 1910 saw the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s Own Rifles, Canada’s longest-serving reserve regiment. To celebrate this landmark, a series of events, military parades, and spectacular historical pageants featuring hundreds of participants...
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Caught in the Turmoil of History
Intrepid Soviet Spies, a Jewish-Croatian Family, Shattered Ideals, and Terror Unleashed by Communist and Fascist Regimes by Ivana Caccia and Maroje Mihovilović
Branko Vukelić may not be well known outside his home country, but he certainly should be. That’s because Branko was a spy, part of the famous Soviet secret espionage group based in Tokyo and led by Richard Sorge. They were spying on Japan and...
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The Life of a Romanian WWI Prisoner of War
A War Journal by Emma Dirk
Readers today are watching the voices of those who endured the First and Second World Wars diminish or disappear, unheard, altogether. To preserve, illuminate, and share her great-grandfather’s memories for future generations, Emma Dirk has...
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All My Love and Then Some
The Letters of Cpl. Polly G. Meilman RCAF (WD) to Her Parents, 1942-1944 by Margaret Melhorn
In the middle of World War II, in September 1942, an enthusiastic eighteen-year-old named Polly Meilman boarded a train to Toronto. She was leaving her home in Nova Scotia for her basic training in the Women’s Division of the Royal Canadian Air...
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Escape to Paradise
by Edgar Pankratz
Theo Dirks was born in a Mennonite village in the Ukraine. During the Second World War, he and his family were exiled to Siberia, but through disastrous circumstances managed to escape and come back home. When the Germans arrived, Theo was...
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Escape from Siberia, Escape from Memory
An Odyssey Across Two Oceans & Nine Countries to Arrive Home by Paul Wojdak
Paul Wojdak’s father, Pawel, was born in 1912 in Novosibirsk, Siberia. During the 1800s, many Polish people were banished to Siberia for rising against czarist Russia’s repressive policies aimed to destroy Polish language and culture, and they...
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My Father's Letters
Romance Amidst War by Garth M. Stiebel
Framed by the violence and chaos of a global conflict is my parents’ love story, touchingly told in a series of letters from Max to Rosaleen from the day after they met in 1941 to my mother’s disembarkation in Halifax from the Queen Mary as a war...
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Following the Echoes
The Quest to Uncover a True Wartime Story of Love, Loss, and Legacy by Claudia Fox Reppen and Lance Fox
After the death of their British-born Grandma Gladys in 2021, siblings Claudia and Lance took a sudden interest in the Canadian fiancé Gladys lost during World War II, Wendell “Del” Pierce Drew, a member of the elite RAF Pathfinder Force with...
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Hoping to Hear from You Soon
Canadian War Letters, 1940-1945 by Sheila M. Cornett
Born in 1948, Sheila Cornett grew up in a time when almost everyone’s father had served in the Second World War. Like many veterans of that conflict, her own father did not talk about his wartime experiences. Six decades later and after her...
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The Red Knight
by John Charles Corrigan
The Red Knight is the product of 25 years of meticulous research. It is, arguably, the most comprehensive account ever written about the Canadian Air Force’s legendary solo jet-aerobatics performer. An important part of Canadian aviation history,...