Dan Black

The remarkable story of how one ship — doomed by war — intersected lives and crossed into history. Completed in 1913 for Canadian Pacific, the Empress of Asia plied the oceans for nearly thirty years. Built for peacetime deep-sea travel, she saw wartime service as an armed merchant cruiser and troopship before Japanese dive bombers destroyed her off Singapore in 1942. Through the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression, she brought continents and people together, delivering mail and multi-million-dollar consignments of silk. As a luxurious passenger liner, she was the “Greyhound of the Pacific,” encountering enormous storms and smashing transpacific speed records. From stokehold to bridge, steerage to first-class staterooms, she steamed with a kaleidoscope of lives, including courageous and recalcitrant crew, immigrants and refugees seeking a better life or relief from disaster, drug smugglers and weapons dealers, and the idle and not-so idle rich. This is the dramatic story of how that one ship — and the lives of her passengers and crew — intersected during a tumultuous period of world history, culminating in her destruction off Singapore and the fate of her crew.

Harry Livingstone was a small town doctor from Listowel, Ontario when he felt the pull of patriotism that led him to volunteer in the First World War. In 1917, Livingstone found himself embarking on a strange journey that took him to China, where he would inspect, and ultimately travel back to Canada with, men who became known as the Chinese Labour Corps. Once in Canada, the Chinese under Livingstone's care travelled across Canada in secret trains bound for Halifax. All news about the trains and the men was censored. On board crowded ships, the men crossed the U-boat-infested Atlantic. They were then put to work to keep the war machine in motion - digging trenches, hauling supplies, repairing military vehicles, and the grisly job of cleaning up the battlefields. About 300,000 Chinese labourers were recruited by the British,French, and Russian allies during the First World War. Nearly 84,000 of them passed through Canada on their way to France. Livingstone and other officers kept diaries and journals, and wrote letters home telling of their experiences with the Chinese. From these first-person accounts as well as historical records and from rare letters written by Chinese labourers themselves, author Dan Black offers for the first time a full account of Canadians and the Chinese Labour Corps - a story that had mostly been unknown until now.

John Boileau and Dan Black tell the stories of some of the 30,000 underage youths - some as young as fourteen - who joined the Canadian Armed Forces in the Second World War. This is the companion volume to the authors'’ popular 2013 book Old Enough to Fight about boy soldiers in the First World War. Like their predecessors a generation before, these boys managed to enlist despite their youth. Most went on to face action overseas in what would become the deadliest military conflict in human history. They enlisted for a myriad of personal reasons -- ranging from the appeal of earning regular pay after the unemployment and poverty of the Depression to the desire to avenge the death of a brother or father killed overseas. Canada's boy soldiers, sailors and airmen saw themselves contributing to the war effort in a visible, meaningful way, even when that meant taking on very adult risks and dangers of combat. Meticulously researched and extensively illustrated with photographs, personal documents and specially commissioned maps, Too Young to Die provides a touching and fascinating perspective on the Canadian experience in the Second World War. Among the individuals whose stories are told: Ken Ewing, at age sixteen taken prisoner at Hong Kong and then a teenager in a Japanese prisoner of war camp Ralph Frayne, so determined to fight that he enlisted in the army, navy and Merchant Navy all before the age of seventeen Robert Boulanger, at age eighteen the youngest Canadian to die on the Dieppe beaches

Between 15,000 and 20,000 underage youths, some as young as ten, signed up to fight in Canada's armed forces in the First World War. They served in the trenches alongside their elders, and fought in all the major battles: Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge, and the rest. Many were injured or suffered psychological wounds. Many died. This is the first book to tell their story. Some boys joined up to escape unhappy homes and workplaces. Others went with their parents' blessing, carrying letters from fathers and mothers asking the recruiters to take their eager sons. The romantic notion of a short, victorious campaign was wiped out the second these boys arrived on the Western Front. The authors, who narrate the fighting with both military professionalism and humanity, portray many boys who, in the heat of battle, made a seamless transition from follower to leader to hero. Authors Dan Black and John Boileau combed the archives and collections to bring these stories to life. Passages from letters the boy soldiers wrote home reveal the range of emotions and experiences they underwent, from the humorous to the unspeakably horrible. Their parents' letters touch us with their concern, love, uncertainty, and often, grief. Meticulously researched and abundantly illustrated with photographs, paintings, and a collection of specially commissioned maps, Old Enough to Fight is military and social history at its most fascinating.