Wartime secrets and the men charged with manipulating Canadian public opinion are unveiled for the first time in this riveting account of media censorship by the government during World War II.

The Canadian government censored the news during World War II for two main reasons: to keep military and economic secrets out of enemy hands and to prevent civilian morale from breaking down. But in those tumultuous times -- with Nazi spies landing on our shores by raft, U-boat attacks in the St. Lawrence, army mutinies in British Columbia, and Ontario and pro-Hitler propaganda in the mainstream Quebec press -- censors had a hard time keeping news events contained.

Now, with freshly unsealed World War II press-censor files, many of the undocumented events that occurred in wartime Canada are finally revealed. In Mark Bourrie's illuminating and well-researched account, we learn about the capture of a Nazi spy-turned-double agent, the Japanese-Canadian editor who would one day help develop Canada's medicare system, the curious chiropractor from Saskatchewan who spilled atomic bomb secrets to a roomful of people and the use of censorship to stop balloon bomb attacks from Japan. The Fog of War investigates the realities of media censorship through the experiences of those deputized to act on the public's behalf.

MARK BOURRIE holds a PhD in Canadian media and military history; he is a National Magazine Award–winning journalist and has been a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1994. He has written hundreds of freelance pieces for most of the country’s major magazines and newspapers, which have resulted in several awards and nominations.

Bourrie lectures on propaganda and censorship at the Department of National Defence School of Public Affairs; media history and propaganda at Carleton University; and Canadian studies at the University of Ottawa, where he is also working on a Juris Doctor degree.

Bourrie’s book The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada’s Media in World War Two was the first examination of Canada’s wartime news-control system. It reached number six on the Maclean’s bestseller list. His academic paper “The Myth of the 'Gagged Clam': William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Press Relations,” published in Global Media Journal in 2010, is considered the authoritative analysis of the media strategies of Canada’s longest-serving prime minister. In 2011, Bourrie was invited to contribute to a collection of papers written by Canada’s top military historians. His essay “Harnessing Journalists to the War Machine” was published in 2012 in Canada and the Second World War.

Bourrie lives in Ottawa and is married to Marion Van de Wetering, a corporate lawyer working for the federal government. They have three children.

Mark Bourrie's profile page

"While it is a good read for any history buff, it's a better read for journalists and students of the media."

MeetPress.ca

"...Bourrie's book provides a fascinating account of World War Two censorship and the relationship between government, bureaucrats, the military and journalists who all helped shape the Canadian story of the war...It is quite clear from the text that the author sifted through piles of microfiche and government documents in order to create this historical record. The result is a text that should prove enlightening to any journalist or public affairs officer interested in this pivotal period for controlling the narrative of the war."

Esprit de Corps

"[Fog of War] shows a system in which the military was overly protective of information, the media willing participants and the censors themselves fiercely independent."

Montreal Gazette

"[Fog of War] is a well-researched chapter in Canadian history that has not been widely studied up to now. It raises important questions about how journalists should react when faced with difficult obstacles to their primary mission of reporting the truth."

Winnipeg Free Press

"Mark Bourrie...writes well, he has done yeoman archival research and he presents much excellent material. What is important and new is his account of how the censors...were prepared to argue against government and the military in an effort to get news out during the Second World War...Bourrie's book, written in good journalistic prose, is an entertaining one to read."

Globe & Mail

"This may well be the book of record on Canadian Second World War censorship."

National Post

"Mark Bourrie's most recent tome, The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada's Media in World War Two is an exhaustive researched and fascinating study of the Government of Canada's censorship during World War II."

bookpleasures.com

"[The Fog of War] lifts the veil on press censorship in Canada during the Second World War, and turns accepted wisdom on its head."

Canadian Press

"Veteran freelance journalist Mark Bourrie has plowed through newly unsealed World War II files to get at a hidden battlefield in The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada's media in World War II."

Toronto Star

"Mark Bourrie has given us a useful perspective on persisting issues of media freedom, as well as on how Canada fought on the home front -- with consequences that shaped the last 70 years."

The Tyee

"Bourrie writes well and has researched deeply; he has filled many holes in the nation's wartime history and has given us a new perspective on "all the news that's fit to print," as well as on that which was censored, killed, or distorted in the name of victory."

The Canadian

"[Bourrie] knows how to tell a good story, and this book is far removed from the usually arcane dissertations of academia."

 

Canada's History Magazine

"Fog of War deals with a fascinating aspect of Canada's Second World War history and is packed with anecdotes and examples of key information the military kept from Canadians, the tensions and suspicions between Quebec and the federal government -- and the anomaly of Newfoundland, which was not yet part of Confederation but certainly affected by war off its coastal waters...Bourrie has done an excellent job with what could easily have emerged as a dry treatise."

Ottawa Citizen

"Bourrie give us an in-depth study of Canadian censorship during the Second World War."

Sideroads of Simcoe Grey