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Acknowledgements

Voices of the Left Behind is a unique mixture of personal narratives, oral histories, original photographs and documents that were gathered over the course of nearly twenty-five years by Olga and Lloyd Rains, founders of the Dutch-based Project Roots. Together with co-editor Melynda Jarratt in New Brunswick, Canada, the Rains worked via e-mail from their home in Haarlem, the Netherlands, for more than three years to bring these stories to life, choosing the stories, gathering the images and documents, getting permission from each participant, translating, editing, rewriting and sometimes rewriting a story again if necessary. This is truly a book that would not have been possible without the Internet.

Each chapter contains an introductory essay that provides a social, cultural and historical context for the war-child story, from the experiences of war children in Britain, Holland, Belgium or Germany to the unique circumstances facing war children who were adopted at birth, whose fathers were Native Canadians, whose mothers were war brides, or whose mothers were Canadian servicewomen stationed overseas during the war. Using original sources found in the Public Archives of Canada and elsewhere, these introductions — and the final chapter, “By Virtue of His Service” — are a call to action and serve to shed light on a heretofore-unknown part of our Canadian history. The Rains and Ms. Jarratt sincerely hope this book will motivate a student of history to pursue the subject of the Canadian war children and their treatment since the end of World War II as the basis of a master’s or doctoral thesis. Certainly, there are considerable gaps in our understanding of this period, and much research remains to be done in the Public Archives of Canada as well as in England and Holland if we are to fully understand the war-child story and the place it holds in our country’s history.

Many thousands of hours of volunteer work has gone into the production of this book, and for this the Rains and Ms. Jarratt have numerous persons to acknowledge. Thanks are due to George Butters, who faithfully guided the editing of the book; Bill Traer, for his amazing patience and skill; Jan Walker, for her editing skills, sharp eye and encouragement over the past few years; and Patsy Hennessy, for her careful edit of the final manuscript.

Most importantly, however, this book would never have been published if not for the courage of the Canadian war children, their mothers in Britain and Europe, as well as the war children’s relatives in Canada and others who contributed their stories, pictures and documents to bring this story to life. In alphabetical order, they are:

Alma	Irene Lynk
Margaret Atkinson	Diane and Ron Matthews
Sheila Blake	Nano Pennefeather-McConnell
Richard Bond	Jenny Moore
Johnny Bruggenkamp	Mary K.
Winnie Bullen	Pat K.
Robert Burwell	Katja
Celestine	Joan Kramer-Potts
Chris	Mia
Karen (Flintoff) Cockwell	Mira
Christine Coe	Nel
Sandra (Campbell) Connor	Peter
Diane	Kathleen Swann
Elly	Leona Tange
Eloise	Hans Kingma
Maureen Fletcher	Ralph Thompson
Alan Franklin	Sally
Simonne Gallis	Theo Timmer
Josephine Gee	Willy Van Ee
Carol Anne Hobbs	Jan Walker
Peter Hurricks	Pamela Walker
Jill	Susanne Werth
John	Christine Wilson
Willy Joormans	Heiko Windels

Lloyd and Olga Rains and Melynda Jarratt, September 2003.