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From: Annette Fulford <>
Subject: [WARBRIDES] Book "Pardon My Parka"
Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 16:49:33 -0800


Has anyone read the book, "Pardon My Parka" by Joan Walker? I was wondering
if it was written by a war bride from WW1 or WW2.

It won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1954. It is about a
Londoner who was married to a Canadian Major and her hilarious story of life
in a Northern Quebec town.

Here is a snippet about the book: "Anyone can be a pioneer. All you need to
do is to fall in love with a Canadian major in the London blackout and find
that he is every bit as attractive when you get him into the light. I don't
even suppose that he has to be a major. Or that a London blackout is
essential to the romance. That is merely the way it happened to me. For me,
it had to happen in London because I am a Londoner born and bred - one of
those city slickers who can barely tell a cow from a sheep, and couldn't
care less. Jim tried to tell me that life in the Canadian mining town of Val
d'Or was just the smallest bit different from life in London, but I said, so
what? Then I tried to explain that I couldn't cook - couldn't even boil the
proverbial egg - and the least domesticated of women, and it was his turn to
say, so what? I could read a cook book, couldn't I? And he said he would
rather marry a sense of humour and starve, than marry some domesticated
little body, madly interested in the home, and suffer from mental
indigestion." Thus Joan Walker begins her hilarious account of a city girl's
sudden exposure to a domestic life in the Canadian north. "

Annette


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