More than two thousand Canadian women served as army nurses overseas during the First World War. The opportunity to read a diary written by one of these women—a document which was, strictly speaking, not supposed to be kept in the first place—is a unique privilege. A Canadian Nurse in the Great War grants a peek, through the diary of Ruth Loggie, into a little-known moment of our history. It also offers a glimpse into forbidden territory—women at war. Loggie’s diary provides a daily commentary on life as she experienced it and as the events of the Great War unfolded. How did she cope? What were her thoughts as she lived through what she knew were world-altering events? Raw, fresh, unedited, and immediate, A Canadian Nurse in the Great War is a special document, and a welcome companion to Hebb’s earlier books, Letters Home: Maritimers and the Great War; 1914–1918, and In Their Own Words: Three Maritimers Experience the Great War.

Although originally from Nova Scotia's South Shore, Ross Hebb is now a long-term resident of New Brunswick. A graduate of King's College and Dalhousie University, Dr. Hebb received his PhD from the University of Wales, Lampeter, in 2002. Along with volumes on Maritime Church history, he has also written about the golden age of shipbuilding at St. Martins on the Bay of Fundy. In 2014 he edited the collection Letters Home: Maritimers and the Great War, 1914–1918; in 2018, In Their Own Words: Three Maritimers Experience the Great War, and in 2021, A Canadian Nurse in the Great War: The Diaries of Ruth Loggie, 1915–1916. Dr Hebb is an Honorary Research Associate at UNB's Historical Studies Department. He has authored academic articles on B. J. Murdock and on the literary accounts of Canadian First World War nurses. Dr. Hebb is married and lives in Fredericton, NB.

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