Volume VI Number 3 . . . . Review by Mary Thomas. My father was a secret agent in the Second World War. However, I grew up thinking that he had been a member of the Canadian Army Dental Corps. Dad kept his military vow of secrecy for fifty years, until one fateful Christmas when he gave each member of the Boulton family a neatly bound memoir of his derring-do service years.
History makes a great gift, especially when it is so unexpected.
As the above, fragmentary listing indicates, the stories range widely in times and subjects and therein lies both the strength and weakness of the format. A number of the essays present their subjects in such a one-dimensional, prosaic manner that it is hard to imagine their catching anyone's interest, and some are just plain sloppily written. This wording implies a long delay between the completion of the course and the granting of the degree, but, since no birth year is ever given, one cannot actually know how long. Only in Part Four, with the account of the Great Stork Derby and Marilyn Bell's swim across Lake Ontario did I get the feeling that the author really cared about her subjects and, therefore, she made me care as well. It is somewhat difficult to imagine an audience for these snippets of history.