November 11, 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the armistice which ended the War to End all Wars. To mark this event, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, in cooperation with our colleagues at Nimbus Publishing will be hosting two authors, who will be speaking about their research and the words of ordinary Canadian soldiers that inspired them.
In Their Own Words, edited by Ross Hebb
What was the First World War really like for Maritimers overseas? This epistolary book, edited by historian Ross Hebb, contains the letters home of three Maritimers with distinct wartime experiences: a front-line soldier from Nova Scotia, a nurse from New Brunswick, and a conscripted fisherman from Prince Edward Island. Up until now, these complete sets of handwritten letters have remained with the families, who agreed to share them in time for the one-hundredth anniversary of the Great War’s end in 2018. These letters not only give insight into the war but provide greater understanding of life in rural Maritime communities in the early 1900s.
This book includes a learned introduction and background information on letter writers Eugene A. Poole, Sister Pauline Balloch, and Herry Heckbert, enabling readers to appreciate the context of these letters and their importance. A welcome companion to Hebb’s earlier book, Letters Home: Maritimers and the Great War; 1914–1918.
Ross Hebb is a native of Nova Scotia's South Shore and an eighth-generation descendant of the area’s original Foreign Protestant settlers. A graduate of King's College and Dalhousie University, Dr. Hebb received his PhD from the University of Wales, Lampeter in 2002. Along with volumes on Maritime Church history, he has also written about the golden age of shipbuilding at St. Martins on the Bay of Fundy. In 2014 he edited the collection Letters Home: Maritimers and the Great War, 1914–1918.
A Soldier’s Place, edited by Thomas Hodd
Nova Scotia–born Will R. Bird miraculously survived the First World War and returned to Nova Scotia. Determined to tell the stories of the brave soldiers who served, Bird became one of the most prolific authors on the subject, completing both fiction and non-fiction works. For nearly two decades following the war, Bird published war stories in magazines and periodicals, which have now gone out of print and were never digitized, and the stories had long fallen into obscurity—until now.
Born in East Mapleton, NS, Will R. Bird (1891–1984) served with the 42nd Highlanders during the First World War. After returning to Canada, he embarked on a writing career that spanned several decades. Best known for his historical fiction and war writings, especially his soldier memoir, And We Go On (1930), Bird published more than twenty books and several hundred stories, including a handful of non-fiction works about the Maritimes. He also spent many years working in various Nova Scotia government departments and served briefly as president of the Canadian Authors Association.
Thomas Hodd is an Associate Professor of Canadian and Atlantic literature at Université de Moncton. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Literary Review of Canada, The Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, and Studies in Canadian Literature, among others. He is co-Editor of The Antigonish Review and author of #NOMORENOTES (Anstruther, 2016). His study of Charles G. D. Roberts’s writings on the First World War appeared recently in The Great War: From Memory to History (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015).
For additional information:
Richard MacMichael
902-424-8897
richard.macmichael@novascotia.ca