Occupied St John's A Social History of a City at War 1939-1945

Edited by Steven High

978-0-7735-3750-7 2010-10-12 8.5 x 10 336pp 152 b&w photos $49.95

This book, edited by Steven High, Research Chair in Public History at Concordia University, is a compendium of essays written on St. John’s, Newfoundland during the Second World War, which at the time was a British Crown Colony. The sparsely populated city soon had grow in a hurry early in the war with a massive influx of US and Canadian military personnel. Service in Newfoundland for Canadians constituted foreign service for veteran’s benefits purposes.

An excellent “social” history of St John’s but was disappointed by the little coverage of the Royal Canadian Navy facility HMCS Avalon, whose history sadly remains untold.