November 13, 2025 - Ted Barris
Talk Title: Days of Victory - Canadians Remember 1939 - 1945
Each spring since WWII, children and grandchildren of the generation of Dutch civilians who endured Nazi occupation of their country from 1940 to 1945, celebrate their liberation day – May 4, 1945. Indeed, every May 4, during silent marches in every hamlet and city in the Netherlands,
the Dutch continue to acknowledge the sacrifice that thousands made, in particular their "liberators”, Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen. More than 7,600 Canadians died in the nine-month campaign to liberate the Netherlands.
The Dutch have never forgotten that sacrifice. Ted Barris’s Days of Victory: Canadians Remember 1939-1945 talk/presentation offers accounts of Canadians’ participation in the liberation of Holland – Operation Market Garden, the Scheldt estuary, taking the German surrender at Wageningen and the famous food drops of Operation Mana in the 1945 “Hunger Winter.”
Not a soldier, but the soldier’s storyteller, not a veteran, but recognized by vets as keeper
of the flame. For 50 years, he has worked as a broadcaster in Canada and the US. He taught journalism and broadcasting at Toronto’s Centennial College for 18 years. And he continues to write a weekly newspaper column/weblog, called The Barris Beat.
Ted Barris has now published 22 non-fiction books, half of them wartime histories. His book The Great Escape: A Canadian Story won the 2014 Libris Award as Best Non-Fiction Book in Canada
His book Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany received the 2019 NORAD Trophy from the RCAF Association. And his book Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire was listed for the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction in Canada.
Next was Battle of the Atlantic:Gauntlet to Victory then last year Battle of Britain: Canadian Airmen in Their Finest Hour.
In 2024, Ted became a Member of the Order of Canada.
