In The Great Escape: The Untold Story, bestselling author Ted Barris recounts this nearly mythical escape operation through the eyes and voices of those involved, many of whom trained in Canada, served in RCAF bomber and fighter squadrons, were shot down over Europe, imprisoned at Stalag Luft III, and ultimately became co-conspirators in the actual Great Escape.
On the night of March 24, 1944, eighty Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 400-foot-long tunnel, code-named “Harry,” and most slipped into the darkness of a pine forest beyond the wire of Stalag Luft III, a German prisoner-of-war compound near Sagan, Poland. The event became known as The Great Escape.
Not a soldier, but the soldier’s storyteller, not a veteran, but recognized by vets as ‘keeper of the flame’, Ted Barris has now published 19 non-fiction books, a dozen of them wartime histories.
In 2011, he was one of 19 civilians presented with the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs Commendation. The citation reads: “Ted Barris has made such exemplary contributions… benefiting veterans and making manifest the principle that Canada’s obligation to all who have served in the cause of Peace and Freedom, must not be forgotten.”
For 50 years, he has worked as a broadcaster in Canada and the USA. His book The Great Escape won the 2014 Libris Award for Best Non-fiction Book of the Year.
Barris’s writing has regularly appeared in the national press, as well as magazines as diverse as Air Force, esprit de corps, and Zoomer. He has also worked as host/contributor for most CBC Radio network programs, PBS in the U.S. and on TV Ontario. And after 18 years teaching, he recently retired as a full-time professor of
journalism at Toronto’s Centennial College.
In Sept. 2022, HarperCollins will publish Barris’s 20th non-fiction book, his largest work to date, on the longest battle of WWII, the Battle of the Atlantic.
Join the Kiwanis Club of Huntsville Muskoka at Trinity United Church on March 24 (7 p.m.) as Ted Barris vividly recounts that moonlit night in 1944. This Kiwanis-sponsored event supports the youth in the Huntsville/Lake of Bays communities.
To register, contact Rick Brooks at 705-635-2101. Tickets are $20 per person, cash or etransfer to [email protected].
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