01

Mona Parsons - From privilege to prison, from Nova Scotia to Nazi Europe

Nimbus Publishing, 2017 – ISBN 9781771085618
Mona Parsons was the only female Canadian civilian to be imprisoned by the Nazis in Occupied Holland. The story describes how Parsons, raised in rural Nova Scotia and trained as an actor, then a nurse, came to be involved in the nascent Dutch resistance in World War Two. Interrogated by the Gestapo, then sentenced to death by a Nazi military court, Parsons ultimately served three years at hard labour. An intense air attack by the Allies in March 1945 was the backdrop for her dramatic escape, aided by a young Dutch baroness. But freedom wasn’t the end of her life’s challenges.
View Project

02

A Mother’s Road to Kandahar

Nimbus Publishing, 2008 – ISBN: 9781895900965

As a mother and grandmother, Andria Hill-Lehr writes about her eldest son’s decision to join Cadets, then Reserves, and then to be deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. From the time she learned of his decision, throughout his deployment and after his return home, whether speaking publicly or privately, Hill-Lehr has emphasised that unconditional love and support for her son is not synonymous with support for the political agenda behind Canada’s presence in Afghanistan — an idea that gained increasing momentum in the last years of Canada’s involvement in the conflict.

 

A mothers road to Kandahar

Nimbus Publishing (2021)

03

Woman on a Mission

Katherine Bell Fraser in Armenia 1892-1897; From Christian Missionary to Refugee Advocate

Nimbus Publishing, 2021 – ISBN 978-1-77471-033-3

These days it’s common for twenty-something women to seek adventure and life experience through travel. Some people are moved to work in other countries to gain an understanding of other cultures, or to help in humanitarian crises.

Katherine Bell Fraser’s reasons for going to Armenia in 1892 weren’t much different. The young woman from Sherbrooke, NS, travelled as a young Christian missionary full of zeal, but relatively ignorant of the world and informed by untested ideals. Within a couple of years, she witnessed events that were previously unimaginable.

Such affronts to her notions of justice and human decency shaped her, and led her to speak passionately against humanity she witnessed. Her story sheds important light on the efforts by missionaries, many of them women, to provide relief and to save lives during the Armenian massacres of 1892 to 1897.