One Family’s War: The Wartime Letters of Clarence Bourassa, 1940-1944

For half a century a box had lain undisturbed, buried under years of accumulated clutter in the back room of a house. The contents of the box: stacks of letters, neatly bundled in chronological order, four years’ worth. The letter writer was Clarence Bourassa who had enlisted with the South Saskatchewan Regiment in March 1940. Clarence’s son, Rollie, had never known of the letters’ existence. His mother, to whom the letters were written, had never spoken of them. Then, in 1995, Rollie discovered the letters and he came to know the father who had never returned from war. The correspondence reveals the fear, hunger, fatigue, and loneliness of Clarence’s wartime experience. His firsthand account of his participation in the disastrous Dieppe Raid makes the book a valuable historical document and a major contribution to Canada’s military history. This New Edition features a postscript recounting the Bourassa family’s 2012 trip to Europe, retracing Clarence’s footsteps from England to the battlefields of France.