Part of Series

Footprints

Series · 20 books

By Mary Frances Coady, Donald J. Savoie, Norman B. Keevil, and more

Elizabeth Hillman enrolled at McGill University the week World War II began. As a freshman writing for the McGill Daily, she covered torchlight football parades and dances at the Ritz Carleton hotel while elsewhere the paper reported U-boats torpedoing convoys and war planes plummeting into the British channel. Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs draws on her journal entries, articles from the Daily, and headlines from the Montreal Gazette to paint a vivid picture of day-to-day life on campus, alongside the civilian wartime experience in Canada. Part memoir, part history, the book touches on important feminist issues of the day, provides historical detail on both McGill University and Canada's participation in World War II, and is punctuated with candid glimpses into both the social and intellectual aspects of university life during a three-year tenure at McGill. Charmingly written with subtle ironies, Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs includes photos collected from scrapbooks, albums, and the McGill archives to vividly highlight aspects of wartime life as experienced far from the battlefields.

Avg Rating

4.00

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

30%

4 STARS

40%

3 STARS

30%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Elizabeth Hillman Waterston

Author · 1 book

Elizabeth Hillman Waterston was inducted into the Order of Canada in 2019. She is also a Member of the Order of Ontario and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She received these honors for her pioneering work in the fields of Canadian, children’s, women’s, and historical Canadian travel literature. These awards also recognized her far-reaching mentorship of fellow writers. She taught at the universities of Concordia and Western before moving to the University of Guelph where she is now Professor Emerita. Dr. Waterston fuses scholarly analysis with her personal memories as student, teacher, and inveterate reader and writer in her recent non-fiction: Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs, Rapt in Plaid: Canadian Literature and Scottish Tradition, and Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery.