Melynda Jarratt – författare

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.

For thousands of young British girls, the influx of Canadian soldiers conscripted to Britain during the Second World War meant throngs of handsome young men. The result was over 48,000 marriages to Canadian soldiers alone, and a mass emigration of British women to North America and around the world in the 1940’s. For many brides, the decision to leave their family and home to move to a country thousands of miles away with a man they hardly knew brought forth ensuing happiness. For others, the outcome was much different, and the darker side of the story reveals the infidelity, domestic violence, poverty, alcoholism and divorce that many lived through. War Brides draws on original archival documents, personal correspondence, and key first hand accounts to tell the amazing story of the War Brides in their own words-and shows the love, passion, tragedy and spirit of adventure of thousand of British women.