For the second year in a row (because of COVID-19 protocols) Ted Barris addresses the Southwold Remembrance observance via Zoom, on Sunday, Nov. 7. His topic this year is based on his bestselling book Deadlock in Korea, on Canadians’ service in the Korean War.

Between 1950 and 1953, nearly 30,000 Canadian volunteers joined the effort to contain communist incursions into South Korea and support the fledgling United Nations. All of the services were there and all served with distinction. The Royal Canadian Navy led a daring rescue of troops from the port of Chinnampo in 1950; members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry won the highest U.S. battle honour at Kap’yong in April 1951; the Vandoos turned the tide at Hill 355; and twice – at Hill 355 in October 1952 and Hill 187 in May 1953 – members of the Royal Canadian Regiment held firm against forces that greatly outnumbered them.

The navy and the infantry were bolstered by the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and Lord Strathcona Horse tanks, as well as members of the service, medical, engineers, provost, chaplain and intelligence corps. Still more, from RCAF Thunderbird Squadron, took part in the Korean Airlift – three years of non-stop supply flights across the Pacific.

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. For 50 years, he has worked as a broadcaster in Canada and the US. He taught journalism at Toronto’s Centennial College for 18 years. His book The Great Escape: A Canadian Story won the 2014 Libris Award for Best Non-fiction Book of the Year. And Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid against Nazi Germany received the RCAF Association NORAD Trophy in 2018. In 2019, Rush to Danger was long-listed for the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction.