Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

Locate me
FR

Second World War

by

Seasons Before the War
Bernice Morgan, illustrated by Brita Granstrom
Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides
(Ages5-13)

In this tale that begins, “Once upon a time, long, long ago…” author Bernice Morgan lovingly recounts the joys and trials of everyday life in her childhood home of St. John’s, Newfoundland. With the Second World War casting a vague but ominous shadow, she and her siblings spent their days playing in the streets and fields, the back alleys and parks.

There were more horses than trucks at that time, and in their neighbourhood there were bulls-eye shops and a blacksmith shop, dressmakers and shoemakers and a carpenter shop where their father worked. 

Morgan recalls starting school—and the disappointment it turned out to be despite the exquisite pencil box Aunt Sophie bought her—and the long, cold winters, the almost unbearable anticipation of the announcement that Toyland would soon open, meaning that Christmas was very near. Fond memories of simpler times, just before the world would change forever, that she holds in her heart even still.

This nostalgic recollection of a particular time and place exudes a sense of wistful longing and the sober recognition of how much has changed. Morgan’s poetic descriptions are vivid and evocative, and tinged with the sadness of knowing what dreadful darkness lay just around the corner.

For young readers of today, it feels like the best type of picture-book diary: one that is heartfelt and affectionate as it portrays the small but meaningful minutiae of daily life in a different time.

This beautiful ode to times past is also a coffee-table book to be savoured by adults. Brita Granstrom’s delicate and intricate illustrations are a perfect complement to the text, beautifully depicting each scene with myriad details. The free and sketchy brushwork gives them a vague and indistinct quality that suits the narrative.

Exquisitely designed, written and illustrated, this is a charming work of historical fiction/remembrance.

by

In The End of Music, Jamie Fitzpatrick guides the reader through interconnected timelines between a mother and son. The story dives deep into the lives of Joyce and Carter. Joyce’s story includes her time as a young flight attendant and singer in a band in post-Second World War Newfoundland and the present, when she is elderly and living in a nursing home.

Joyce’s son Carter was part of an up and coming rock band but now spends time with his wife in Ontario worrying over their young son’s heart condition, his mother in the nursing home and his ex-wife/ex-bandmate, who is dying from cancer.

The perspectives of Joyce and of Carter are expressed in similar, yet completely different ways. Fitzpatrick is somehow able to express so eloquently the thoughts and feelings of a woman living, working and socializing in the late 1940s, while interlacing the narrative with her son 50 years later and his internal struggles with a past love, a sick child and an ailing mother. But the central tie that brings the two story lines together is music.

Joyce’s younger years involve long days at work, moving into late nights singing with the band–trying to balance professionalism, relationships and attention from men in her audiences. Carter’s story reflects on his days as an aspiring rock star, his relationships, fallouts and the demise of the band, to coming to realize that his band’s music was more impactful on their fans than they had imagined. This realization spurs his mission to resurrect their recordings, facing several obstacles and frustrations along the way.

The End of Music is a novel not to be read when you’re feeling sleepy. The story lines are incredibly detailed and interwoven to a degree that you have to be awake and alert to fully differentiate which story line you are reading. As the transitions are so seamless, I sometimes had to re-read a page or two prior to confirm that I was up to speed on whose story was being told and where I was in the timeline.

Both stories express a love of music, a loss of love, struggles with the past and a hope for health and happiness. In addition to the masterful way Fitzpatrick connects these two narratives, what really stood out for me was his ability to truly personify and articulate two completely opposite but related characters’ thoughts, feelings and actions, in two completely different eras, telling two stories which converged into one.

The End of Music
Jamie Fitzpatrick
Breakwater Books

by

Royal Rifles soldiers en route to Hong Kong Nov 1941

It is hard to believe one might maintain hope in a prisoner-of-war camp located thousands of miles from home, especially as health declines and the pages of the calendar turn with no end in sight. But it is courage, hope and resilience that shine through in The Endless Battle: The Fall of Hong Kong and Canadian POWs in Imperial Japan. The book draws on the personal papers of Andrew “Ando” Flanagan to recount the experience of one New Brunswick soldier who became a POW after the fall of Hong Kong in 1941.

Written by Flanagan’s son, Andy Flanagan, The Endless Battle illustrates in vivid detail the brutal three-and-a-half years Flanagan suffered in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. The use of Flanagan Sr.’s personal papers, and his subsequent reflections on his own words in conversations with the author in the years after he returned home, offer insight into the enduring impact his traumatic experience had on he and his family. While he suffered in the POW camp, his family waited at home with little information regarding his welfare. Fortunately, he wrote home on occasion and sent one radio broadcast over Toyko Radio International. In his letters, he hesitated to reveal the true nature of his physical injuries from the backbreaking labour, regular beatings and barely substance-level rice rations.

After the war, the physical effects and mental trauma endured. He admitted, “I still woke up at night screaming in Nip, fighting a battle without end. My family told me I was worse when I drank whisky. Drinking beer helped me fall asleep. Whiskey made me fightable.”

The man Ando Flanagan was shines through in his own words. He learned Japanese so he could speak with his guards and advocate for his fellow prisoners. He was a man from a small town in New Brunswick and he mused regularly about being homesick. His casual way of writing allows the reader to visualize all things–from the worst beatings he endured to returning home and falling in love with his wife-to-be, Clara. The brutal reality of the prisoner-of-war camp shines through, as does the humanity he attempted to preserve as he wrote about his fellow prisoners of war and his family back home.

The book is volume 24 in the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society’s New Brunswick Military Heritage Project series that aims to provide the New Brunswick voice in Canada’s wartime experiences. The Endless Battle is the second book in the series recounting the experiences of a New Brunswicker who endured the harsh conditions in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. In 2009, Jonathan Vance published Bamboo Cage, which uses the personal diaries of Flight Officer Robert Wyse to highlight his experience in a camp on the Indonesian island of Java. In both cases, the books capitalize on a rich document set that allows the reader to hear about the brutal experience straight from the men who lived it. Some of Flanagan’s stories are so extreme as to seem unbelievable. But the use of his own words and his own personality make his experience real.

Andrew Flanagan, at left, on September 9, 1945. US National Archives

Both Flanagan and Wyse kept diaries that revealed the harsh conditions and suffering that POWs endured, as well as a record of events from before they were taken prisoner. This is even more important in Flanagan’s case as war diaries and message logs were ordered destroyed before Hong Kong was surrendered. One of Ando’s prized possessions was the short history of the events of the Battle for Hong Kong that he hid in his boot so he could keep it safe from the eyes of prison guards.

Andrew-Flanagan-remembers-his-fallen-comrades-at-a-cenotaph-in-Sussex-NB-during-a-reunion-of-Hong-Kong-veterans-circa-1984

Although important for the historical record, there was great risk to maintaining personal papers and difficulty acquiring paper and tools to write. Prison guards regularly inspected Flanagan’s diary and blacked out sections, ripped them out or beat him for what he wrote. Wyse, on the other hand had to keep his diary a secret and buried it at the camp so it would not be discovered. He only retrieved it after the war.

Keeping a diary of his experience was a small act of resistance for Flanagan. He recorded many of the inhumane acts he and his fellow POWs suffered at the hands of their prison guards as well as the small acts of kindness by Flanagan and others to preserve their own humanity. In this way, his writing became an act of resilience and hope in a very dark time. Risking his life in this way also provides this rich account of one New Brunswicker’s experience as a POW in Imperial Japan.

by

Remembrance Day sparks awe in the heart as we honour those who made the ultimate sacrifice in conflicts like the gruelling tragedy of the First World War and the unspeakable brutality of the Second World War.

Here are five (of the many fine) Atlantic Canadian books that pay tribute to those who fought and suffered in the front lines and on the home front.

I Remain, Your Loving Son: Intimate Stories of Beaumont-Hamel

On July 1, 1916, the 801 fighting men of the Newfoundland Regiment erupted out of their trenches to attack the enemy at Beamont-Hamel, France. Thirty minutes later, all but 68 were dead or wounded.

The devastating shock that sent back home is told in I Remain, Your Loving Son: Intimate Stories of Beaumont-Hamel, edited by Frances Ennis and Bob Wakeham. The non-fiction book brings you into the trench with the men as they write letters to loved ones ahead of the attack.

Readers also hear from the families left home to absorb the grief and the descendants who still honour the great sacrifice today.

Nova Scotia at War, 1914-1919

Author Brian Douglas Tennyson, professor emeritus at Cape Breton University, studies the devastation the Great War left in Nova Scotia. His new book tells of the Nova Scotian men who fought overseas, but also of the civilians left home to work the fishery, farms, forests, coal mines and steel mills.

In Nova Scotia At War, 1914-1919, he argues the economic impact of the war shattered Nova Scotia’s dream of becoming the gateway of the Atlantic and the industrial heartland of Canada. Tennyson’s earlier book, Percy Willmot: A Cape Bretoner at War focused on one man’s story but his new book pulls back for the bigger picture.

More than two dozen photos bring faces to the stories.

Rilla of Ingleside

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne Shirley is an adult with children of her own in Rilla of Ingleside. Montgomery wrote the second-to-last novel of the series in 1921, setting it in 1914 in a world on the brink of war.

Anne has married Gilbert Blythe and together they have a 15-year-old daughter named Rilla and two older boys, Walter and Jem. When the First World War erupts, all three men leave Prince Edward Island to fight in Europe.

Rilla of Ingleside is thought to be the first Canadian novel written by a woman to give a woman’s perspective on the war.

Captured Hearts: New Brunswick’s War Brides

Many Canadian soldiers left the European front of the world wars with more than memories. Thousands of European women fell for the dashing soldiers with tales of plenty from the new world and returned with them as war brides.

Melynda Jarratt’s short book Captured Hearts focuses on the Second World War brides and tells their stories, from finding love in war to settling in to life in New Brunswick after the war. Some 1,800 women and 900 children took the plunge and Jarratt captures their struggle to make a new life in New Brunswick.

The book mixes personal, heart-wrenching stories with a solid overview of the conflict and its aftermath.

A Halifax Christmas Carol

Nova Scotia novelist Steven Laffoley set his first fiction, The Blue Tattoo, in the First Word War and the Halifax Explosion. His second novel, A Halifax Christmas Carol, explores the city’s psyche in December 1918 as soldiers and citizens face the first anniversary of the warn-born disaster.

An elegant story framed around Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the novel tells the story of a maimed little boy who turns up at a newspaper with a quarter to give to other kids who “need it more” than he does and the soldier-turned-journalist who has to tell his story.

Laffoley paints a striking portrait of a Halifax stunned by the disaster and the just-ended war, yearning for hope and ultimately a peace that will allow them to begin to remember all that was lost.

by

Identity formation is a slippery, shifting and mutable affair, especially for children of immigrants. In the absence of extended family and a village infrastructure with common memory, the gaps in family history can be keenly felt. Being the child of immigrants who fled Poland after the Second World War, this was my experience, and it’s the experience that Jennifer Bowering Delisle captures so lyrically in her book The Bosun Chair.

“When I was growing up, I was angry with my parents for leaving Newfoundland,” confesses Delisle. “I wrote sentimental stories and poems set there, describing the pattern of tide against the rocky shore or the smell of salt in the air. On visits from St. John’s, my grandfather told tales of a conspiracy behind Confederation, how St. John’s was draped in black on the day Newfoundland joined Canada. We were taught in school that Canada is a mosaic. My friends were Ukrainian, Indian, Chinese—we were all born in Edmonton. My heritage was Newfoundland. This was where I looked for rootedness, a kind of belonging.”

In Delisle’s case, it was a family that moved within a country, but uprooting themselves in that way still has significant consequences for children born into the new or “foreign” landscape. When that dislocation happens, instead of being born into a sense of continuity, we have to actively search out who we are and make sense of our place in the world.

In my case, my grandparents were largely silent about their life in Poland, and I only ever met one relative, my great aunt, who didn’t speak English, my only language. She visited us for just 45 days and then went back behind the Iron Curtain, never to be seen again.

With what little information I was able to glean from my family over the years, I wrote poems and made a short film as a way of making sense of my origins. But there were always gaps in this construction of identity and it is those typical gaps that form an integral part of how Delisle has structured The Bosun Chair. It is a hybrid story that incorporates poetry, memoir fragments, news clippings and letters in a chronological yet elliptical narrative.

On the one hand, that structure is a bold choice and solves the dilemma that many people who do genealogy research have when trying to fashion a coherent story out of it all. I often have students who attend my writing classes believing that the story of their ancestry will reveal itself just by the mere fact of so much accumulation of facts, documents, photos and other artifacts. They soon realize that research and story are two different animals.

How we tame those animals into a coherent flowing narrative becomes the next challenge. The Bosun Chair artfully compiles Delisle’s research into loosely connected fragments and in doing so she allows the structure to mimic the gaps we necessarily experience when constructing an identity through snatches of stories.

On the other hand, it’s this exact brave choice in structure that makes The Bosun Chair a challenge to read. It doesn’t rest easily within the conventions of memoir and a lot of the work of constructing the story is up to the reader. However, the element that makes this challenging read such a rewarding one is Delisle’s  deft hand at planting evocative images that refer back to each other and build the narrative layer by layer. For example, in the Ballycater chapter, we’re introduced to the ice blocks called ‘ice pans’ that would fill the harbour and on which kids would play, trying to jump from one to the next without falling into the sea. Later in the chapter when Delisle talks about her ancestor who left the area: “She leaves this place to teach school in other towns on the coast. She worries about for her pupils balanced on the ice pans.” Then this remark from the narrator: “Stories too slippery to stand on.” The link is beautifully made between the physical location, the imagined place and the precariousness of forged identities.

It’s this poetic linking throughout the book that reminds us of the gaps in our own identity. In the end, Delisle helps us realize that construction of identity is an ongoing, slippery and deliberate journey.

The Bosun Chair
Jennifer Bowering Delisle
NeWest Press

by

Post Second World War German immigrants to Newfoundland found that “Freedom in all directions and in every respect” was the general order of things; an excerpt from Gerhard P. Bassler’s Escape Hatch: Newfoundland’s Quest for German Industry and Immigration, 1950–1970

The immigrants identified freedom from restraints and freedom to do things as one of Newfoundland’s chief attractions. Electrical engineer Joachim Heintze had not anticipated the relaxed social atmosphere he found on his arrival. At Christmas they were invited to their labourers’ homes for drinks. “And their Newfoundland labourers would say, ‘if no one’s home, just come in and take a drink from the bottle on the table.’ Imagine!” In Germany it would be unthinkable for a labourer to invite his boss to his home for a drink. On Christmas Day 1952, Joey invited all the Germans to his home on Circular Road and “we cleaned out his wine cellar.”

The sensation of freedom—personal, economic, social, political, and natural freedom—was one of the most exciting experiences for Germans used to the many restrictions on life in a highly urbanized, class-conscious, and overpopulated society. Heintze, a refugee from Germany’s Polish-annexed province of Silesia, was fed up with war. Like many other Germans, he had lived through two world wars and the lack of freedom. “Here was freedom,” Heintze exclaimed. “Here you don’t have to report your residence to police; if you went for a walk, there were no fences; you could go anywhere.” Houses didn’t have to be locked, the crimes of urbanized Europe were virtually non-existent, “and there was social freedom—not the titles, snobbery, and class consciousness of Germany.”

For William Binder, a Baltic German refugee from Latvia, Newfoundland was a wild country when he came in 1951 to help erect the cement plant. “That was exactly to my heart’s desire.” Many of the immigrants quickly fell in love with Newfoundland’s natural beauty—her vast wilderness areas; her invaluable opportunities for fishing, hunting, hiking, boating, and camping—opportunities that were fast becoming a world beyond reach for people in postwar Central Europe.

The most prominent friend of nature among the immigrants was Guenter Behr. Arriving in 1952 with an expected two-year stay as production manager of Atlantic Hardboard Industries at Donovans, he liked life in Newfoundland right away. He joined the Rod and Gun Club immediately, became its president, was co-founder of the Salmon Association, started a salmon enhancement program, promoted the idea of fish farming, and for years was president of the Canadian Wildlife Association. As a member of the Canadian Standards Association, he was the only German representing Canada internationally. According to his wife, Karla, he felt strongly that Newfoundlanders did not do enough to manage their wealth of natural resources. The Queen awarded him posthumously an order for his wildlife activities.

For immigrants like Fritz Haller, Fred Heistinger, Tim Neuss, and Franz Schinagl, the freedom to pursue outdoor and other activities was the main reason for staying. Haller decided to make Newfoundland his new home because this was “a free country in every way, not so crowded, great outdoors, fishing and hunting.” Heistinger came from Austria in 1953 by way of Boston to help build the Eckhardt Mills in Brigus. Despite offers of good jobs in Boston, he saw more things to do in Newfoundland. Neuss, too, who came to work with CMIC in 1952, and raised turkeys, chicken, ducks, goats, and bulls as a hobby, appreciated “the freedom to do what you want to do.”

For Austrian auto mechanic Franz Schinagl, who came by way of Toronto in 1958 to work for Volkswagen dealer Import Motors, life in St. John’s would have been unbearable had it not been for the freedom of boating, hunting, and fishing. Erwin Koster, as well as Erwin and Else Mosbacher (arrivals in 1951 and 1953), rejected the opportunity of a better paid job in Germany a few years later because they preferred the challenges of an unstructured lifestyle, that is, the freedom to do different things. Koster wanted more than a dull assembly-line job for the rest of his life. Although the Mosbachers missed the cultural life of Germany, they concluded that “we are happier here. Life is not so formal.” What was it that kept Germans in Newfoundland, Karla Behr pondered. Maybe the fact, she felt, “that they can let themselves go.”

Friedrich Kreyser concluded that life in Newfoundland could not be judged by German traditions, conventions, and regulations. Reporting to the German Ministry of Economics about his November 1950 trip to Newfoundland, he stressed that its natural resources were so abundant that its people did not have to make provision for tomorrow. The impression of “an absolute primordial condition” was putting its stamp on everything, the people and all happenings. Common sense was the supreme judge that made everyone determine whether and how long they wanted to work. “Freedom in all directions and in every respect” was the general order of things. The local people have a “fine sensitivity for everything that interferes with this conception of freedom or threatens it.”

Immigrants Karl Zenker and Lydia Darby understood freedom to mean above all the opportunity for self-improvement and self-fulfilment. Zenker, recruited in 1958 by CMIC, was fascinated by the country’s freedom and size. Even though he would have been better off financially in Germany, he enjoyed the liberty with fellow Germans “to be pioneers here.” The freedom of the country, as German immigrant Lydia Darby termed it, enabled her to rise from an au pair in 1957 to sewing instructor at the newly opened Trades College in 1963. Karl Peters and Klaus Wahrenburg jumped East German ships in St. John’s harbor in 1961 and 1966. For them Newfoundland offered a true escape hatch to political freedom from the Iron Curtain.

Escape Hatch: Newfoundland’s Quest for German Industry and Immigration, 1950-1970
by Gerhard P. Bassler
Flanker Press

by

The phenomenon of underaged soldiers is not new, but unlike the child soldiers around the world today, those Canadians of the Second World War were volunteers; and yet, they did not know what they were in for

There is a familiar, sad pattern to the stories of underage Canadian boys who signed up to fight in the Second World War.

Too Young to Die, by John Boileau and Dan Black, provides an exhaustive account of the lads, some as young as 14, who bluffed their way into the Canadian armed forces during the Second World War. They lied about their age or borrowed an older brother’s identity, puffed-up their often scrawny chests and signed on the dotted line.

The 490-page book provides multiple windows into the way youngsters, many of them excited about the prospect of overseas adventure and flush with the indestructible nature of youth, made it on to the battlefields of Europe and Asia, as well as the danger-plagued North Atlantic Ocean and equally fraught aerial missions of Bomber Command, long before celebrating their 18th birthdays.

Using firsthand accounts, interviews with veterans and their family members, personal correspondence, diary entries and official documentation, the book weaves together a narrative about recruiters often willing to look the other way to fill quotas. It lists heights and weights for new recruits that make it seem almost impossible that someone believed they were adults when they were still, obviously, young boys.

“Throughout the war, volunteers had to be between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two, but … birth certificates were rarely produced or asked for.”

One strapping 14-year-old, who wasn’t asked for a birth certificate, lied when asked to state his age. “Nobody questioned it. They were taking everybody and I looked a little older than my years. I didn’t have to prove anything because they did not ask. They weren’t interested. They just wanted bodies.”

Another underage reservist remembers being handed a registration card to make it overseas. “You had to be eighteen years old to get one of those, but they handed them out carte blanche.”

Several underage soldiers profiled in the book detail how they were turned away multiple times before successfully joining up. One didn’t get in until the seventh try. “People were getting into the military all around us — all except us fifteen-year-olds,” said another. “We thought, well everybody is getting in, why not us?”

The book paints portraits of families wracked by the poverty of the Great Depression willing to give up their sons to the military and the merchant marine. Many fathers, themselves veterans of the First World War, were willing participants in the recruitment of their underage boys.

Other parents successfully prevented their youngsters from joining up, only to be foiled by the unstoppable nature of boys bent on donning uniforms and joining the fight.

There are many examples throughout the book of young teens being refused by one branch and simply turning to the next, and the next, until they successfully managed to find recruiting sergeants willing to turn a blind eye to fulfill the nation’s need for willing muscle and bone.

The work provides in-depth accounts of how underage Canadians made their way to war, fought and, in many cases, died for their country, despite not being old enough to vote.

For Roméo Dallaire, the former senator and retired lieutenant-general who is working to end the use of child soldiers around the world, the difference between the boys who signed up willingly three quarters of a century ago and those being coerced into fighting today is abundantly clear. “They are recruited under duress by the country that is, in these cases, often an imploding nation or failing state,” Dallaire says of today’s child soldiers.

“They are, in the majority, recruited against their will at often horrific cost of life and limb to them and to their families. There are others who find themselves without any other option because families have been destroyed and there’s no other body out there that might give them any ability to survive.”

Today’s child soldiers – found in seven state-armed forces and 51 non-state armed groups around the world – are not volunteering in a stable nation, as they did in Canada during the Second World War, he says.

That said, underage Canuck volunteers “really didn’t have a clue what they were getting into,” Dallaire says. “There was adventure, getting away from the farm – which was the majority – getting away from the little village, getting away from the tedium of an isolated rural environment. And this projected an excitement and an opportunity, in a number of cases, to be free of the yolk of the continuum of life in that environment.”

Many of Canada’s underage soldiers weren’t made aware that they could be shot, “that they could actually suffer horrifically and become victims,” he says. “That dimension was not even in the training construct at the time. You were always working at destroying the enemy and you never looked at the fact that you yourself could become a victim.”

Fast forward to today and it’s impossible to make the argument that children as young as eight are voluntarily engaging in a conflict right on their doorstep. “They’re doing it … based on survival or having survived already an abduction-type situation.”

The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative tries to educate children before they’re recruited. The idea is to make it clear that what they might be promised, what they may see as an adventure, is false. “They are, in fact, entering a high-risk, low payoff scenario and, as such, to avoid getting sucked in.”

The global partnership, based at Dalhousie University in Halifax, trains militaries and police around the world in how to face child soldiers in a way that de-escalates the possible use of force, Dallaire says.

“We have people deployed as child protection officers training and assisting African Union missions, as an example, right now in Somalia.”

Dallaire’s people also work with non-governmental organizations in countries including Colombia and Sierra Leone to help child soldiers escape the fray.

He does see a parallel between child soldiers of today and the Canadians who volunteered to fight in the Second World War: neither had the mental capacity to make the decision to pick up a gun.

“That ability to discern risk and what is reasonable just isn’t there. They’re still kids.”

by

Flanker Press author Philip Riteman (Millions of Souls: The Philip Riteman Story) has been named to the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador! He and the other recipients will be honoured during a ceremony at Government House in St. John’s on December 14.

Philip Riteman has lived a long and varied life. He was born in a region of Poland that is now part of Belarus. In 1941 the Germans invaded his hometown and he, his family and thousands of other Jews were deported into Pruzhany ghetto.

The next year they were sent to Auschwitz where Philip’s parents, brothers and sisters died in the gas chambers. Philip, the only survivor, was used as slave labour until he was liberated by the American Seventh Army in 1945. After the war, and unsuccessful attempts to get into Canada or the United States, Riteman immigrated to Newfoundland where he had an aunt living. He made a life there for himself and eventually married and had two children.

One thing he didn’t do was talk about his experiences in the war.

Then, in 1989, having moved to Nova Scotia, he was inspired by Holocaust deniers to speak for those who could not, as he phrased it, speak for themselves – the dead victims of the Holocaust. He told his story for the first time at a school in Saint Stephen, New Brunswick and the floodgates opened. After that, Riteman continued to tell his story in schools, universities, churches, legions and businesses throughout Canada and the United States.

“He was the kind of speaker who never had a problem with speaking to very large crowds,” says Edna LeVine of the Atlantic Jewish Council in Halifax. “At his last event in Newfoundland it was held in a large hotel’s conference room that held thousands, and there were people in the lobby and on the street.

Riteman’s speaking engagements and commitment to spreading the word about the Holocaust to as many people as possible led to the book Millions of Souls: A Holocaust Memoir in 2010. The book is divided into three parts and talks about his life as a child and in the death camps, his life in Newfoundland and his subsequent work to disperse his message as far as possible.

For his work, Riteman has received honorary doctorates from both Memorial University of Newfoundland and St. Thomas University and earlier this year he received the Order of Nova Scotia. Now he is being inducted into the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador, the highest honour in the province.

Unfortunately, Riteman is not well enough to leave his home in Nova Scotia to attend the ceremony. “I cried many times,” he says. “I came to Newfoundland from Europe and I lived there 34 years. I’d love to go but I can hardly walk.”

His wife, Dorothy, concurs. “To him this would be the best place to be. He says he was a Newfoundlander before he was a Canadian.”

Riteman is grateful for the award. “I feel very happy and good,” he says. Yet, he notes that while the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador is an honour to receive, “it belongs to the veterans who went in harm’s way to bring an end to the Third Reich and liberate me from a brutal slavery and certain death.”

by

My Dear AliceDuring the summer of 1935 a young woman from Nova Scotia, engaged to be married, went to England to visit her relatives. That young woman was Alice Atherton, the “My Dear Alice” of the letters in this volume. Her father, J.P. Atherton (Percy), still remembered in Amherst for the Grey Cup in curling which preceded the Grey Cup in football and for the 1918 Homecoming, was the youngest of four siblings and the only boy. As a young man, he came to Canada, married and stayed. His three sisters remained in England, married and had families. From the outbreak of war to the end of rationing in 1950, Alice sent parcels to her relatives.

Fifty-six years later in 2006, Alice’s daughter, Clare, shared an old polythene bag filled with letters with her English cousin, Carol. The letters were bundled together with three rubber bands and there was a note attached, in Clare’s mother’s hand-writing, saying that “In case anyone should be interested in family letters written from England during the ’39-’45 war”. These were the “thank you” letters written from England.

1939

“… The War caught me at the beginning of my holiday in North Wales – I had exactly five days, and then had an urgent message from my Air Raids Precautions boss to return at once – that was two days before War was declared. I forget if I told you that during the 1938 Crisis Phyl & I both joined the Women’s Motor Transport Section of the A.R.P. That meant driving Ambulances, First Aid Parties, or Rescue & Decontamination Squads.…

“… Which brings me to “Evacuation”… I think it was a tremendous triumph for the country as a whole ever to have got that Evacuation [of children from the cities] at all – in the two days preceding the declaration of War. It was the most immense social task we’ve ever had to face, [yet] nobody can tell yet what the results will be.…

“The Black out is the blackest thing ever! But you will have read about that. For us Motor Transport people the night driving is a big strain, we are allowed so very little light to drive by – one tiny dimmed slit in one headlight, & hooded at that, so that light is only thrown downwards, and 2 inches of dimmed sidelights. On a dark & wet night it is almost impossible to see anything.

“We get free petrol allowed us for A.R.P. purposes – otherwise we are allowed only 6 gallons a month for private use. We are provided with Gum Boots, tin hats, drill overcoats, and Service Gas Masks – nothing else.…

“One of the most exciting and epoch-making events that has happened lately is this scheme for training the Air Force in Canada. Whoever thought it out has got a brain – it is marvellous. Are you thrilled about it in Canada too?

“Liverpool is completely surrounded by a balloon barrage – as are all the big towns. All the public buildings are sandbagged up to the first floor level, and most shops, and many private houses.”

1941

“Uncle Sep. is mad on the Kraft cheese which is so much superior to anything we can get here now which is very little, very hard and tasteless. Butter of course in any quantity is a great treat to us all as we only have 2 oz. a week each now, & for the rest of our ½ lb. ration we have margarine, very good margarine but it cannot compare with butter of course.

“I am carefully saving the sugar you sent for bottling fruit if I can get any; at present it is very scarce & dear [expensive] – 8 times its ordinary price, but we have nothing to complain about really dear for we never go hungry though we can’t always get the food we like & as for onions, oranges & lemons & bananas, we never see them now! “

“As you imply in your letter – we are doing very well in the Atlantic (touch wood!) and a good deal of success in this respect is due to the Canadian & U.S. navies – don’t think we are not well aware of what we owe in those directions. A merchant captain friend of ours has just come home from a seven months voyage, & has most interesting & exciting tales to tell of the methods used in combating bombers & submarines – nothing secret, you know (or he would not tell us about it)…. However I can mention that he had the good luck to ram a submarine more or less by accident! He was zig-zagging when its periscope suddenly rose up right in front of the ship, the force of the ship’s wash caused it to submerge, and it came up again right underneath his engine room – slap! – and that was the end of the submarine! Of course his ship was damaged but not seriously.”

1942

“Your reference to the feeling in Canada that the people have to push the government, instead of being led by the government, raised a responsive feeling in my mind, for to a certain extent that has been the trouble here. Everybody was ready for the most drastic things long before the government imposed them. I expect that is always the case with eager & spirited democracies. And let me tell you that whatever you think about Canada’s War effort it is considered very wonderful here. I enclose a cutting to that effect.”

1944

“There was a most interesting broadcast 2 nights ago, by an official (I forget his name) who had just come back from Canada – all about Canada’s marvellous war effort, & the extraordinary way she had been industrialised in so short a time. It was very impressive indeed.”

“PS I must tell you what a pleasure it was to open those hair nets, all done up in a piece of tissue paper. After having things handed to you naked over the counter it’s quite a joy to have a lovely big piece of tissue paper again, and every single piece found its use!”

Then there was D-day, the defeat of the German armies and navy, especially the dreaded U-boats, as well as extended post-war correspondence related to the political and social changes in the UK, Europe and much of the world as country after country struggled for independence in the war’s aftermath. The world order had surely changed.

My dear Alice: War letters 1937-1950
by Clare Christie and Carol Wills
$27.95, Paperback, 276 pp.
New World Publishing, October 2015

by

My Dear AliceJust when one might assume the voices of those who lived with hope through the uncertainty of the Second World War have been silenced by time, a collection of carefully saved letters allows them to speak again, eloquently and with immediacy in a way that history texts can’t.

When Carol Wills of Oxford, England visited her cousin Clare Christie on Nova Scotia’s Amherst Shore in 2005 she was in for a surprise when Clare shared her mother’s bundles of war-time correspondence. The cousins discovered descriptions of people bravely making do amid air raid blackouts, threats of invasion and rationing of food and fuel as they read aloud the 70-year old letters Alice received from relatives in England and on the front lines.

Before Alice died in 1984, she attached a note to the letters, “in case anyone is interested in family letters written from England during the ’39–’45 war”. Fortunately for readers, Clare and Carol were indeed interested. Ten years later the result is a fascinating social history, which is the second in New World Publishing’s World War II Series.

The letters in My dear Alice begin by thanking Alice for the parcels she sent from Amherst which was enjoying an economic boom as a result of the war effort, and continue with intelligent observations on the war’s progress and the politics surrounding it. While the writers are all articulate, Helen Williams’ letters are particularly insightful and indicate that more was known at the time about Hitler’s treatment of Jews than is commonly believed to be the case.

The letters have all been painstakingly transcribed, and copies of some original handwritten ones, along with their envelopes (stamped with a note that censor read them, gives the volume authenticity. A timeline on each page places the letters within the context of the global conflict. Also included is a memoir by Carol’s mother, Jan Richards, written for this book, in which she concludes, “What a terrible indictment of human beings that we can inflict such injustice and pain on other human beings.”

My dear Alice is a compelling look into the the lives of ordinary people who lived with courage and compassion through one of modern history’s most extraordinary periods and a testament to the determination of their descendants to ensure they continue to have a voice.

My dear Alice: War Letters 1937-1950
By Clare Christie and Carol Wills
$27.95, paperback, 276 pp
New World Publishing, November 2014

by

Kids History
Four historical books encourage exploration

It has always been easy for me to see why both writers and readers are so often drawn to the past. Despite the vast array of topics, times and places that “history” encompasses, both fiction and non-fiction historical works invite readers of every age to think about where we came from, the events that have brought the world to where it is today and how the actions of individuals ultimately change and define the course of history. For young readers especially, historical books can be a way of learning more about their own past, the events that have shaped their communities and perhaps even their own families. Flames and Ashes

As a series, the Dear Canada books are a noteworthy example of historical fiction that delves into very specific episodes in Canadian history. Written in diary format, they enable middle grade readers to empathize with the characters who are living through these traumatic events. The most recent installment in the series is Janet McNaughton’s Flame and Ashes: The Great Fire Diary of Triffie Winsor (Scholastic Canada).

Set in St. John’s, NL, in 1892, this fictional narrative provides a dramatic account of the horrific fire that destroyed almost two-thirds of the city. Triffie is the daughter of a wealthy merchant whose shop and warehouses, along with their fancy house and everything they owned, was lost. In her diary, Triffie describes the fire, as well as the aftermath in the days and weeks that followed. She creates a vivid picture of the event and its impact, and in the process, also manages to highlight the unique and irrepressible spirit of this place and its people. End of the Line

In Sharon McKay’s newest book, The End of the Line (Annick Press), young readers are transported well beyond the Canadian border. Set in Amsterdam during the Second World War, it is a beautifully crafted tale of two bachelor brothers who rescue a young Jewish girl and must then endeavour to keep her safe from the Nazis.

Unlike the diary format of the Dear Canada tales, this story is told in the third person from multiple points of view. It is simply told, but as the reader comes to see through the eyes of the various characters, a grim and ominous portrait emerges of that time and place. Yet it also depicts the simple heroism that ordinary people displayed on a daily basis and in a myriad of tiny ways. Without graphic depictions of the violence or the atrocities being committed, this book still enables contemporary readers to visualize what life was like in Amsterdam during the years of Nazi occupation.

Sink and Destroy

Meanwhile, Sink and Destroy: The Battle of the Atlantic (Scholastic Canada) by Edward Kay offers a different perspective on the Second World War. Part of another historical fiction series, I Am Canada, this book is the fictional account of Bill O’Connell’s experiences when he lies about his age to join the Navy. He describes the training in Halifax where the locals displayed open animosity towards them and seemed to bitterly resent their presence in the city; the tense ocean voyages spent scouring the seas for German U-boats; happier times in Scotland where they were hailed as heroes. He also recounts his friend’s death, and the experience of going to pay a surprise visit to his girlfriend Aileen and her family only to discover that a bomb had annihilated their home and all of its occupants. He provides a different perspective from the one in The End of the Line, which helps readers understand how Canadians fit into this sad and terrible picture. Birchtown

While fiction can be an excellent way of bringing history to life, non-fiction accounts can be equally compelling and eye-opening. Birchtown and the Black Loyalists (Nimbus Publishing) by Wanda Lauren Taylor gives a broad overview of the Black Loyalists and the ordeals that they faced.

It looks briefly at how Black slaves ended up in America, the American Revolutionary War and the promises made to the Black Loyalists who fought with the British and how, after the war, they left America. Many were transported to Shelburne where they eventually formed the settlement of Birchtown. Taylor goes on to describe the harsh conditions they endured there. It is an easily accessible and informative outline that relates the history of this group of people while also revealing this rocky portion of Nova Scotian history.

As these and so many other fine works of fiction and non-fiction for young readers demonstrate, history provides seemingly limitless opportunities for exploration and contemplation.

 

by

Blank white book w/pathIn 1942, 110 men lost their lives when the American destroyer USS Truxtun sunk off the coast of Newfoundland. Among the survivors was Lanier Phillips, an African-American serviceman who was rescued by the people of a tiny outport community called St. Lawrence.

Phillips had grown up in the segregated South where he experienced relentless racism that caused him to both fear and hate white people. His experience in St. Lawrence, where the townspeople treated him with compassion and respect, proved to be a turning point for Phillips. He went on to become the US navy’s first black sonar technician and a well-known civil rights activist who shared his transformative story throughout his life.

Young readers will be captivated by the exciting tale of a shipwreck and survival, but this book is more than just an adventure story. Author Christine Welldon has painted a compelling picture of the pervasive racism of the time, and while its grim realities are not sugar-coated, they have been sensitively presented with the target audience of ages 8 to 12 in mind.

The book is sprinkled throughout with photographs and blocks of interesting facts that compliment the narrative.

Life Lines is a well-told and important story about the power of kindness to inspire and uplift.