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History Social History

Voices of the Left Behind

Project Roots and the Canadian War Children of World War II

by (author) Olga Rains, Lloyd Rains & Melynda Jarratt

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2006
Category
Social History, General, General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459712478
    Publish Date
    Feb 2006
    List Price
    $8.99

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Description

Voices of the Left Behind contains the personal stories of nearly 50 Canadian war children who have been helped by Project Roots. It is filled with fascinating archival images and documents as well as original wartime correspondence between the mothers, the Canadian fathers, and the Department of National Defence, Veterans Affairs, and other Canadian institutions. Letters from the war children to the Military Personnel Records Unit of the National Archives of Canada illustrate the historic pattern of denial. What these institutions all have in common is their consistent refusal to help war children find their Canadian fathers. Introductory essays frame the subject and give a historical context to the tragic situations these women and their children found themselves in.

About the authors

Olga Rains has written three books, We Became Canadians, Children of the Liberation, and The Summer of 46. She and co-author Lloyd Rains live together in the Netherlands, where they work with war children.

Olga Rains' profile page

Lloyd Rains is a Canadian veteran of the Second World War. After the liberation of Holland, he met Olga Irestorff, and she came to Canada as a war bride. In 1980 they founded Project Roots.

Lloyd Rains' profile page

Melynda Jarratt is internationally recognized as the leading expert on Canada's War Brides and is the author of three books on the subject. In 1995, Melynda wrote her master's thesis in history at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton on New Brunswick war brides, and went on to obtain a diploma in digital media and design in 1999. She has continued to document this fascinating chapter in Canadian military history for nearly thirty years. She is the co-author of Voices of the Left Behind(Dundurn Press, 2005), which was a Book of the Month Club selection, author of War Brides: The Stories of the Women Who Left Everything Behind to Follow the Men They Loved (Tempus Publishing, 2007; reissed by Dundurn Press, 2009), and of Captured Hearts: New Brunswick's War Brides (New Brunswick Miiltary Heritage Project and Goose Lane Editions, 2008). Melynda has also written on the history of Dutch immigration to Canada for Pier 21, and in 2012 she wrote the history of Bathurst's Brunswick Mines, entitled The End of an Era. Melynda has been the curator and outreach officer for the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in Fredericton since 2012.

Melynda Jarratt's profile page

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