On Thursday, Nov. 7, Richmond Hill Speakers’ Series features Ted Barris and a talk/presentation based on his award-winning and bestselling book The Great Escape: A Canadian Story. On the night of March 24, 1944, eighty Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 360-foot-long tunnel, code-named “Harry.” Most slipped into the darkness of a pine forest beyond the wire of Stalag Luft III, a German POW compound near Sagan, Poland. The event became known as “The Great Escape.” What audiences who’ve seen/heard Ted Barris present this story have learned is that “The Great Escape” was in many ways “made in Canada.”

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.