Every year, the children and grandchildren of the generation of Dutch civilians who endured Nazi occupation of their country from 1940 to 1945, celebrated their liberation day – May 4, 1945.

Indeed, every May 4 since then, during silent marches in every hamlet and city in the Netherlands, the Dutch continue to acknowledge the sacrifice that thousands made, in particular their “liberators,” Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen.

More than 7,600 Canadians died in the nine-month campaign to liberate the Netherlands. The Dutch have never forgotten that sacrifice. On Nov. 7, 2023, Ted delivers his presentation on the subject to students, teachers and staff at the Rehoboth Christian School in Norwich, Ontario.

Ted Barris’s Days of Victory talk/presentation offers accounts of Canadians’ participation in the liberation of Holland – Operation Market Garden, the Scheldt estuary, taking the German surrender at Wageningen and the famous food drops of Operation Mana in the 1945 “Hunger Winter.” While the pandemic erased 75th anniversary observances of Dutch liberation overseas, the stories that remain from veterans and civilians of that time can never be erased. They live on in the remembrances of those who were there.

Ted Barris has published 20 non-fiction books, half of them wartime histories. His book, The Great Escape: A Canadian Story, won the 2014 Libris Award as Best Non-Fiction Book in Canada. His book, Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany, received the 2018 NORAD Trophy from the RCAF Association. And his book, Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire, was long-listed for the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction in Canada. In December 2022, Ted Barris was appointed Member of the Order of Canada.