Canadians behind enemy lines, 1939-1945

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Jonathan F. Vance

"When Nazi Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated in 1945, its records revealed that two young Canadians, Ken Macalister and Frank Pickersgill, were among its countless victims. At 30 and 31 years of age, they had been agents of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE ), an undercover unit established by Winston Churchill that used sabotage and subversion to bring down the Nazi regime from within. Jonathan F. Vance brings us the dramatic, untold story of two men who were the most unlikely of soldiers. Pickersgill, an up-andcoming journalist, and Macalister, one of the finest law students ever to attend the University of Toronto, were both living in France when the Nazis seized power. Pickersgill, arrested as an enemy alien, spent two years in prison before escaping to England. The men’s intelligence, resourcefulness and familiarity with French customs and language caught the attention of the SOE. Trained in special-operations techniques, from radio control to killing, they were paired together and parachuted into France—just as the underground network they were to join was cracked open by the Germans. Unlikely Soldiers is an extraordinary tale of unsung heroes, intrigue and tragic error. With access to the recently opened SOE archives, Vance draws new material into a fascinating narrative that will appeal to anyone interested in military history, the evolution of espionage, or simply the remarkable story of two heroic Canadians."--pub. desc.

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Wesley B. Turner

Wesley Turner answers questions about the quality of the five British generals serving in the British North American colonies during the War of 1812, particularly with respect to Isaac Brock, the best known of the generals. He argues that Brock's charge up Queenston Heights - the basis for his heroic stature - was brave but hardly a demonstration of competent leadership. Turner also shows that while the other four generals displayed courage in combat, they had to face problems raised by American military successes and by the strains of warfare on the civilian population. British Generals in the War of 1812 explores why these commanders succeeded or failed and why, with the exception of Brock, they are all but forgotten.

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John Demos

"Early on the morning of February 29, 1704, before the settlers of Deerfield, Massachusetts, had stirred from their beds, a French and Indian war party opened fire, wielding hatchets and torches, on the lightly fortified town. What would otherwise have been a fairly commonplace episode of "Queen Anne's War" (as the War of the Spanish Succession was known in the colonies) achieved considerable notoriety in America and abroad. The reason: the Indians had managed to capture, among others, the eminent minister John Williams, his wife, Eunice Mather Williams, and their five children. This Puritan family par excellence, and more than a hundred of their good neighbors, were now at the mercy of "savages"--And the fact that these "savages" were French-speaking converts to Catholicism made the reversal of the rightful order of things no less shocking." "In The Unredeemed Captive, John Demos, Yale historian and winner of the Bancroft Prize for his book Entertaining Satan, tells the story of the minister's captured daughter Eunice, who was seven years old at the time of the Deerfield incident and was adopted by a Mohawk family living at a Jesuit mission-fort near Montreal. Two and a half years later, when Reverend Williams was released and returned to Boston amid much public rejoicing, Eunice remained behind - her Mohawk "master" unwilling to part with her. And so began a decades-long effort, alternately hopeful and demoralizing for her kin, to "redeem" her. Indeed, Eunice became a cause celebre across New England, the subject of edifying sermons, fervent prayers, and urgent envoys between the Massachusetts Bay Colony and New France. But somehow she always remained just out of reach - until eventually, her father's worst fears were confirmed: Eunice was not being held against her will. On the contrary, she had forgotten how to speak English, had married a young Mohawk man, and could not be prevailed upon to return to Deerfield." "Eunice's extraordinary and dramatic story speaks to broad, compelling themes that involve race, religion, the place of women in two societies, and, above all, contact between cultures ("Captivity, after all, meant 'contact' of a particularly vivid sort") and the crossing of cultural boundaries. For both colonists and Indians, the stakes were high in early-eighteenth-century America. Hence the boundaries were carefully patrolled: "To travel across them was costly and dangerous - and potentially transforming." The Unredeemed Captive traces just such a transformation - remarkable, profound, and uniquely American."--Jacket.

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Roy Jenkins

"In this evocation of twelve world cities which have either been intertwined with his life, or have otherwise aroused his particular interest, Roy Jenkins follows up Churchill with a book of a very different shape; short and semi-autobiographical, but also full of the wit, erudition and carefully chosen illustrations which made Churchill such a success. The cities are each described with a mixture of architectural interest, topographical insight and personal anecdote." "Jenkins has three British cities: Cardiff, which was the metropolis of his Monmouthshire childhood; Birmingham, which he represented in Parliament for twenty-seven years; and Glasgow, which he did not know well until he won a famous bye-election there in 1982, but which then aroused in him an enthusiasm far transcending politics." "There are four North European cities: Paris, of which his memories go back to 1931; Brussels, where he lived for four years as President of the European Commission; Bonn, not exactly a metropolis but the modest capital of the very successful West German polity for forty years; and Berlin, surveyed from its Wilhelmine splendour, through its 1945 degradation to its reunification and architectural resurgence in the 1990s. Then there are two essays on South European cities which both have a special and strong flavour - Naples and Barcelona." "From over a hundred visits to North America there emerge highly personal recollections of New York and a more objective view of the architectural sparkle of Chicago. Dublin, so near to home and yet so distant, concludes this delightful collection."--BOOK JACKET.