Chapter Four
Continental War Brides
From: Captured Hearts
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Chapter Four examines the experience of the war bride who came from the continent. Unlike their British counterparts, these brides from France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands had very different experiences of the Second World War, as many suffered under foreign occupation and total warfare. This chapter highlights the experiences of these women and how they differed from most war brides, but looks, too, at how these women were a part of the larger story of the Canadian War brides. It also explores the women of New Brunswick who became war brides themselves as they fell in love, married, and left their lives in the province behind to live new lives in countries with allied soldiers who were stationed within the province during the war.
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Contributors
Melynda Jarratt
Melynda Jarratt is internationally recognized as the leading expert on Canada's war brides and is the author of three books on the subject. In 1995, Melynda wrote her master's thesis in history at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton on New Brunswick war brides, and went on to obtain a diploma in digital media and design in 1999. She has continued to document this fascinating chapter in Canadian military history for nearly thirty years. She is the co-author of Voices of the Left Behind (Dundurn Press, 2005), which was a Book of the Month Club selection, author of War Brides: The Stories of the Women Who Left Everything Behind to Follow the Men They Loved (Tempus Publishing, 2007; reissued by Dundurn Press, 2009), and of Captured Hearts: New Brunswick's War Brides (New Brunswick Military Heritage Project and Goose Lane Editions, 2008). Melynda has also written on the history of Dutch immigration to Canada for Pier 21, and in 2012 she wrote the history of Bathurst's Brunswick Mines, entitled The End of an Era. Melynda has been the curator and outreach officer for the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in Fredericton since 2012.
