One Family’s War: The Wartime Letters of Clarence Bourassa, 1940-1944 (Second Edition) Edited by Rollie Bourassa Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $34.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-320-2 One Family’s War: The Wartime Letters of Clarence Bourassa is a book that had to be written, a story that had to be told – and a story important enough to be retold. That’s why the University of Regina Press printed this second edition. The first edition sold out, and no one should be deprived of reading this fascinating first-hand account of a Saskatchewan hero in World War II. The story is told through the wartime letters of Clarence Bourassa, a lad from Lafleche, SK, who enlisted in the South Saskatchewan Regiment, leaving his wife Hazel and two young sons at home. He kept in touch by writing, almost daily, letters home. Clarence recounts both the drudgery and routine of army life, and the horror of combat. He also expresses the loneliness he felt being separated from his family. This 603-page book is supplemented with two dozen black and white photos of Clarence’s family and army life. A highlight of the book is Clarence’s firsthand account of his participation in the…

One Family’s War: The Wartime Letters of Clarence Bourassa, 1940-1944 Edited by Rollie Bourassa Published by Canadian Plains Research Center Review by Keith Foster $29.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-221-2 For the average soldier, war is mostly long periods of endless monotony, occasionally interrupted by spasms of sheer terror. This maxim is nowhere more clearly borne out than in One Family’s War: The Wartime Letters of Clarence Bourassa. As the title suggests, this really was a family war because it affected the entire family. By enlisting in the South Saskatchewan Regiment and being shipped overseas in 1940, Clarence had to leave his wife Hazel and two young sons, Rollie and Murray, back home at Lafleche, SK. Edited by his son Rollie, with an introduction by Regina Leader-Post reporter Will Chabun, these letters express Clarence’s abiding love for his wife and children, often with sentimental terms of endearment. Many of the letters are deeply personal. Right from the first, the reader can feel Clarence’s deep pangs of loneliness. And the further he got from his wife, the worse he felt: “I’m all alone in my tent with a great big lump in my throat, and I sure feel like crying.” Aside from letters, the…