Guardian of the Gulf : Sydney, Cape Breton, and the Atlantic wars / Brian Tennyson and Roger Sarty.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A vivid and long overdue account of one of the great untold Canadian military stories: Sydney's importance as a major convoy port, a base in the hunt for German submarines, and an industrial centre producing critically important coal and steel.

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CHOICE Review

Military history is among the less developed areas of Canadian history. There are official histories, memoirs, and biographies, but few sophisticated analyses of strategy and locality. This comprehensive study of Sydney, Nova Scotia, is therefore almost unique. A coal and steel town on Cape Breton Island, Sydney is ideally located to guard the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the entrance to the heartland of North America. It had real importance as France and England jostled for control of the continent. In both world wars, it was superbly located for convoy defense. In the Cold War, its importance continued, but today its military installations have been stripped away or left to decay. Tennyson (history, Univ. College of Cape Breton) and Sarty (the leading Canadian naval historian) have combined their talents. Tennyson knew the town, Sarty the broad subject and the archival sources; the result is comprehensive and detailed. Readers learn about the locals, the personnel billeted upon them, the reactions of British and Americans to Cape Bretoners, and the often dilatory treatment of the Maritime provinces by Ottawa. Notably, the clear strategic context in which Sydney operated is always kept to the forefront. Well-written, superbly researched, this is a master study of the history of a city, region, and nation. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections. J. L. Granatstein; emeritus, Canadian War Museum