Cette conférence sera en anglais.
This public lecture will be in English.
“The Ottawa Roundtable on Security and Intelligence”
Please join us for the fourth event in 2009 of the Security and Intelligence Roundtable, a series of public lectures and discussions organized by the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Ottawa, co-sponsored by the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies CASIS, www.casis.ca).
“Two Unlikely Soldiers go to their Deaths:
The SOE Mission of Frank Pickersgill and Ken Macalister
”
Professor Jonathan Vance
Canada Research Chair, The University of Western Ontario
12:30 to 2 p.m.
Desmarais Building, room 3120
55 Laurier East, Ottawa
Frank Pickersgill and Ken Macalister were young Canadian soldiers recruited into Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), famously charged by Prime Minister Winston Churchill with the objective to “set Europe ablaze.” They were parachuted into France in June 1943 but were quickly captured by German security forces. They were later executed at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Their ill-fated mission was symptomatic of the problems that faced SOE in its efforts to support the resistance in France.
Jonathan Vance is the author of Unlikely Soldiers: How Two Canadians Fought the Secret War against Nazi Occupation (Harper Collins Canada, 2008), the only book-length study of the Pickersgill/Macalister story. Professor Vance completed his Ph.D. in History from York University in 1993 and currently holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Western Ontario. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the author of several prize-winning books, including:
Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War (1997)
High Flight: Aviation and the Canadian Imagination (2002)
Building Canada: People and Projects that Shaped the Nation (2006)
A light lunch will be available. The Ottawa Roundtable on Security and Intelligence is open to faculty and students, to CASIS members, government officials, interested members of the public and the media. No registration for these events is required and no fee is charged.
For additional information about the Roundtable, please contact Professor Wesley Wark at wkwark@aol.com
613-562-5689
613-562-5241
www.sciencessociales.uOttawa.ca/api
www.socialsciences.uOttawa.ca/api