Each year Community Care Durham- Uxbridge hosts a luncheon to recognize the enormous contribution volunteers they make in the lives of their clients. The annual luncheon takes place on Tuesday, April 19, at the Wooden Sticks Golf and Country Club.

Organizers have invited journalist/author and local resident, Ted Barris to address the event. Volunteerism is very much at the core of Barris’s research. Through the course of his 18 published books, Ted Barris has often delved into the origins of voluntary service, principally that of Canadian men and women who joined the armed services. He will offer examples of some local armed forces volunteers, based on the research and writing of his bestselling book Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan.

Ted Barris is an author, journalist and broadcaster. As well as hosting appearances on CBC Radio and regular contributions to the National Post and Legion, Air Force and Zoomer magazine, he is a full-time professor of journalism and broadcasting at Centennial College in Toronto. He has authored 18 published, non-fiction books.

In 2011 he received the Canadian Minister of Veterans’ Affairs Commendation and in 2012 the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. His book The Great Escape: A Canadian Story received the 2014 Libris Best Non-Fiction Book Award.