 History
- Canada; History - Military - Pictorial • Doubleday
Canada • Hardcover, 340 pages • October 2005
• $45.00 • 0-385-66000-6
ABOUT THE BOOK
Thousands of Canadians were moved by Testaments
of Honour. Now, with A Soldier’s
View, Blake Heathcote opens his extensive archive
of photos, rarely before published or seen, to share
with us the face of the Second World War as it was witnessed
by those who fought it. Blake Heathcote has spent
years crisscrossing the country, interviewing Canadian
war veterans on video so that their stories will be
preserved for generations to come. In the course of
these interviews he has compiled an archive of more
than 8,700 photographs digitally scanned from the
personal collections of the men and women he has met,
veterans who were involved in all branches of the
service and on all fronts of the war.
A Soldier’s View: The Personal Photographs
of Canadians at War 1939–1945 includes
five hundred images from this stunning collection.
Cameras were strictly forbidden by the military (for
fear of espionage), and individuals used them at significant
personal risk. Later generations should be grateful
that these contraband cameras were put to good use:
documenting a story that would otherwise have been
lost.
We see the images captured by Alex Gray, an RCAF
photographer who often saw war at its most devastating.
In addition to the pictures used for official purposes,
Gray captured many images that he kept for his personal
collection, a rich sample of which is included in
A Soldier’s View: pilots still in flight gear
celebrating their return from enemy airspace, and
a gravely prohibited shot of the acres of vehicles
and armour assembled for the Canadian assault on Normandy.
We meet Tom Ingham, a stoker on HMCS Iroquois,
and the crew’s forbidden Kodak Brownie, which
captured life aboard a combat destroyer: a boxing
match used to settle disputes between sailors, an
informal group of seamen singing around an accordion,
the spectacular explosion of a merchant ship.
We see the devastation of Europe through the lens
of Percy Loosemore, a paymaster who traveled the front
lines hot on the heels of the advancing Canadians.
His images of makeshift Canadian graves, Dutch street
urchins, and shattered towns are unforgettable.
A Soldier’s View captures
the diversity of human experience and emotion inspired
by war — life and death, destruction and hate,
adventure, bravery and sacrifice, friendship, hope
and the wisdom of experience — and offers a
unique and powerful way of entering a time in Canada’s
past so fundamental in shaping the country and the
world as we have come to know it.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Blake Heathcote studied architecture at the University
of Toronto before turning to a career in theatre. As
a director and playwright, he has worked in Canada,
Britain and the United States. Heathcote’s work
on the Testaments of Honour project
is being undertaken in cooperation with Veterans Affairs
Canada and Heritage Canada.
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