What to read after Dear Bill?

Dear Bill is, in many ways, a time capsule that illuminates and brilliantly colours the years of 1939-1945 from a uniquely Canadian pioneer perspective. Bill Treadgold was a young man from Kelowna, BC commissioned into the RCAF; while his war efforts were confined to air forces bases in Western Canada, he was separated from his family and friends and maintained contact through letter writing. The letters he received in response to his own, form the rich memoir Dear Bill.

While Dear Bill is a memoir from the war years, and brings to life Allied operations in Europe through letters from buddies who were commissioned overseas, it is, arguably, more so a memoir of battles on the home front, and of the triumphs of an incredibly resilient family.

by: Shelagh Ryan McNee who discovered from reading these letters that her grandfather-in-law was Bill’s commanding officer at Pat Bay, B.C.