The Front Page Story of World War II

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and the
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

In this very interesting coffee-table book, Robert Reid shares the
newspapers that he first read as a child, including the inaccurate
Vancouver Sun reports on the fall of France (“Great Britain has taken
over the bulk of the French fleet intact ...”) and in the aftermath of
the Dieppe raid (“French Raid Proves 2nd Front Possible”). On March
31, 1945, the Sun quoted Hitler as admitting “We’ve Lost [the]
War.” Given that the book is a review of Vancouver’s newspapers, and
not of the war itself, these factual errors are quite acceptable.

That said, Reid could have made it less idiosyncratic. Coverage for
1939, when Reid was only 8 years old, jumps from September 3 to November
30, completely ignoring Canada’s declaration of war (on September 10)
or the Polish campaign. Coverage of the German invasion of the Soviet
Union comes from the Los Angeles Examiner, because Reid was visiting his
brother in California at that time (June 1941). It would not have taken
much effort to resurrect the appropriate Vancouver newspapers, which
included such journalists of the day as Pierre Berton, Charles Lynch,
and Peter Stursburg.

In brief, the book brings a sense of immediacy. Yet as a source of
information on either World War II or the wartime press in Vancouver, it
has its limitations.