Barbara Dickson’s writing brings life and humanity to Canadian history, making complex research accessible to a broad audience.
Her books explore the lives, labour, and legacy of women whose contributions shaped Canada during times of national crisis including the Second World War. Each work reflects extensive research and a commitment to honouring lived experience.
The vast majority of people who live in Ontario are unaware that an extensive abandoned tunnel system runs under the city of Toronto. During the Second World War, the Canadian Government built a sprawling top secret munitions plant outside the city limits in the rural community of Scarborough. The plant, called GECO, comprised 346 acres, over four kilometres of tunnels, and 172 buildings (built in seven months!)
Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo is a comprehensive, historical record of Canada’s biggest WWII munitions plant employing over 21,000 citizens, predominantly women, who courageously worked with high explosives around the clock over its four year history. The book offers a unique, intimate, and extraordinary glimpse into the lives and hearts of these dedicated Canadians. In-person interviews with the women who risked their lives every time they stepped onto the “cleanside” of the plant lend a personal, distinctive perspective to the book. Their stories reveal tenacity, dedication, patriotism, and resolve in a time when the concept of women working outside the home was a cultural anomaly. Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo captures, in a dramatic way, the dangerous work these brave young women performed.
Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo was published in 2015 by Dundurn Press.
Courage and Grit: The Legacy of Canada’s Bomb Girls recounts over ninety Canadian bomb girl stories, taken from every corner of society: from farmers’ daughters to lawyers, from impoverished immigrants to Rosedale elite, from high school students to great-grandmothers – all unique, intimately personal, and painstakingly researched biographies. The book offers a culturally rich, one-of-a-kind resource that will appeal to women of all ages, students, educators, historians, and aficionados of the Second World War.
Read their stories of faith, loss, love, sacrifice and devotion to family and country during Canada’s war years. Learn Canada’s history of the Second World War from the perspective of patriotic men and women who honoured their nation by labouring in its factories.
These Bomb Girls stories have neither been recorded nor will their patriotic legacy be given a voice like this again.
Publication Date: October 20, 2026
Maddi Madigan longs for what every woman wants – to be loved and accepted for who she is. Diagnosed with MS three years ago, Maddi struggles to manage her increasing disability. She participates in a clinical trial for an experimental drug, Pro-Axon, and her MS improves considerably. She is devastated when the medical team overseeing the trial cancels the final phase that would have allowed Pro-Axon to be available to the hundreds of thousands of MS sufferers around the world. Without Pro-Axon, Maddi’s MS relapses.
Dr. Greg Connor is the principal investigator for Pro-Axon. He’s dedicated his life’s work in finding a cure to end MS. When his clinical trial data proving the safety and efficacy of his drug is stolen through well-timed, large-scale robberies across several labs, he is left with no option but to cancel Phase III of his clinical trial.
Utterly defeated, he contemplates giving up and going home.
Maddi’s exuberance and optimistic outlook on life, despite a sadness radiating from her eyes, compels Greg to dig deep to find answers, not only to who master-minded the robberies, but to what’s truly valuable in his life.
Mountains for Maddi is a sweet romance that makes its readers root, not only for Maddi in her courageous struggle with MS, but for all people who deal with disability. Readers will rally, not only for Greg as he works through his professional loss, but for MS researchers world-wide as they strive to END MS.
Barbara Dickson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992 and retired from her career as a software analyst in 1995 after the birth of her third daughter and the death of her mother. She started writing as a means of grounding, helping her through the difficult years that followed. After years writing non-fiction, her dream for a fiction novel, focusing on what she knows best – life with MS – was born. The publication of Mountains for Maddi is the tangible evidence of that dream fulfilled.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord, striking three times as many women than men, often during their child-bearing years. Symptoms vary widely, and include optic neuritis, bladder dysfunction, numbness, impaired mobility, debilitating fatigue, and paralysis. In its most common form, MS remits and relapses, with disability worsening after each exacerbation.
There is no cure.
Police Officer Eric Baylor is hiding out in abandoned World War II service tunnels. A warrant’s been issued for his arrest with charges including contaminating a crime scene and aggravated assault. Eric’s goals are absolute: clear his name and hunt down the creep who killed his mother. Needing a steady food and water supply to keep him below ground, he seeks the help of Patti Whyte who owns a restaurant in one of the old wartime buildings above. Eric draws Patti and her troubled son, Rod into danger and espionage spanning four generations.
Patti wants an uncomplicated life, a fresh start to reenergize her heart and spirit after the death of her husband two years ago. She hopes that resettling in her hometown will help Rod reconnect with family and God. He needs to find purpose beyond schoolyard scuffles and skipping class, and taking up skateboarding in the creepy war tunnels that sit under her new restaurant doesn’t count. When Patti and Rod discover a cop holed up in the tunnels, their lives become as convoluted as the maze of ancient tunnels buried under their feet.
Can Eric find his mother’s killer before the killer finds him? And can Patti protect her heart, knowing that the tormented man hiding in the labyrinth under the city could end up behind bars, or worse, wind up dead?
A Unique Historical Backdrop for The War Below
While the people and events in The War Below are fictional, its backdrop is real, set under the city of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada in a maze of abandoned World War II service tunnels. Built during the 1940s under a top-secret munitions plant called GECO, the extensive tunnel system, over four kilometers long, was used to house the infrastructure needed to run a munitions arsenal, such as electrical conduit, clean water supply, sewers, steam, etc.
The world made its peace with Germany decades ago and the need for GECO has long since passed, but the tunnels of GECO live on, buried under the city, an invisible reminder of a world that went to war. GECO’s memory continues to live on, too, in the hearts and minds of those who worked, loved, and lost within the confines of GECO.
Welcome to Stonebridge Cove, a big-hearted town filled with enough small-town Nova Scotia charm to rival the innumerable stars hanging in the boundless sable skies above.
Nestled on a promontory jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, but with a natural harbour carved into its rocky shoreline, Stonebridge Cove endured the War of 1812, its rugged stone fort, wall, and bridge standing their ground like the craggy cliffs on which they are perched. Today these rough stone buildings still stand proud and strong against the most violent Atlantic winter storms and are a silent monument to the strength and tenacity of the town’s founding families. The descendants of the Barringtons, Prentisses, and Lawsons, with quiet dignity, are honoured to call Stonebridge Cove ‘home.’
A real-life castle, lying in ruins on an island offshore, is rumoured to be haunted, and adds to the town’s romantic air. There’s a lone lighthouse, still manually operated, one of the last along the Atlantic shore. And, of course, there’s a story behind every gravestone that marks a life lived in the cemetery lying beside the old stone church.
Stonebridge Cove garners its name from the many stone bridges that cross the mighty Pembrooke River. Each bridge — some are of remarkable historic value, up and beyond their incredible beauty — closes the chasm wrought by Pembrooke’s serpentine course as it empties into the sea.
What makes Stonebridge Cove truly unique, though, other than its spectacular vistas and its historical significance to the Sovereignty of Canada, is its ability to meld its history with leading-edge technology. A new regional cancer treatment hospital, along with a first-class golf resort, and a small airstrip, bring the world to its doorstep. Cruise ships and small private jets ferry in a regular wave of colourful individuals, seeking respite from work-weary lives, restoration to health, and Stonebridge Cove’s old-world appeal. Their sojourns help stoke the rich sea of characters of which page-turning romances are made. An old Celtic adage declares that a house full of love has expandable walls. Stonebridge Cove is bursting at its seams.
When a local citizen or a weary visitor sips a cup of Scottish Breakfast tea at the ‘Hard Tack and Oatcakes Tea Shop,’ or strolls down Main Street with the glorious amethyst and tangerine hues of a setting sun plastering a dusky horizon, the worries of the world seem to slip away on the outgoing tide.
Come, sit quietly and meet the Hearts of Stonebridge Cove. They’re eager to touch your heart, and if you’ll listen, they all have a story to tell—stories of love, of hope, of overcoming extraordinary odds, and of happily ever after.
They say less is more. Holly Prentiss agrees. Penny-less, family-less, home-less, and job-less, Holly is more hope-less then most.
Robbed of her inheritance, she moves back to her hometown, her beloved Stonebridge Cove. The only luxury she allows from her former life is a seasons’ ticket to the symphony.
Imagine her surprise when she finds a single white rose on her seat opening night. She looks around. No other seat has a rose. It must be a mistake, of course…
The mistake turns to hope, and hope to exquisite anticipation when a rose is waiting for her the next month…and the next month…
Holly strives to turn her life around, working hard from month to month, her heart soaring with the promise of mysterious roses.
Chase Barrington, successor to the Barrington fortune, is miserable when he discovers he doesn’t love his fiancée but is obligated to marry to ensure his family’s fine pedigree. A break-up would not only cause scandal in the tight-knit community of Stonebridge Cove but would break his father’s heart. He struggles to honour his father yet finds himself longing for the company of another woman—Holly Prentiss. With her family name disgraced, she’d be considered the worst possible choice from the Barringtons’ ostentatious viewpoint.
Chase panics when he learns Holly has a secret admirer. He doesn’t have a plan. How can he convince his family and Holly that he is all she needs before she makes a decision that will separate them forever?
Could elves hold the key to murder?
Estate lawyer Quinn O’Brien thinks so. When he visits the quaint seaside village of Stonebridge Cove to execute the last will of a local muralist, he is surprised to discover tiny elves sporting cryptic symbols on their clothing amidst the dead artist’s work. More so, he finds his own face painted into one of the paintings. With the help of the replacement muralist and her feisty six-year-old sidekick, he unearths clues hidden in the wall paintings and is compelled to draw three distressing conclusions:
The first artist was murdered.
The artist knew she was going to be murdered.
The elves painted in her murals hold the key to her killer.
Take weary ER Nurse Kelly, a washed-up rock star, and an abandoned baby – add in Old Man MacTier, the ghost who haunts the waterfront – and you get a match made in Stonebridge Cove.
Nahanni Nights opens in Algonquin Park in Northern Ontario at Nahanni Rest’s café with a slice of soggy meatloaf landing in a mess at Ann McKinnon’s feet. No problem. On the scale of catastrophes, soaring meatloaf isn’t a biggie.
But an irate man is hurled from the second-floor patio along with the flying meatloaf and he promises to sue the restaurant and kill the cook. Since Ann has just inherited Nahanni Rest, it’s good-bye peace of mind and hello headache.
To add to her pain, Park Warden JB Hambleton is on the scene when the meatloaf hits the ground. He makes it clear that her inheritance is temporary – the land, including the café, belongs to the Park.
What follows is the mother of all turf wars with Ann and JB becoming instant adversaries. Ann must prove her family’s land still belongs to her and JB is determined to prove it doesn’t.
Bitter over his late wife and daughter’s deaths, JB thinks his only hope for peace lays in a promotion when McKinnon cedes the land. But Ann and JB quickly learn that they must rely on each other when a deadly saboteur makes it clear that the land belongs to neither.
Can Ann keep her home and heritage, and can JB find the peace he craves? Can they learn that despite danger and their own misgivings, they’re in God’s hands?
Here you will find remarkable stories of everyday people who, through circumstance, courage, and tenacity, have overcome hardship, stepped boldly into the unknown, and kicked discouragement in the butt. What a privilege to write their stories–stories which will inspire, encourage, and challenge.
You’ll meet Bill MacPhee, who, as a young man sank into hopelessness and despair when he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He refused to let the disease take over his life, and with God’s help, founded the hugely successful magazine, “Schizophrenia Digest” to help people with mental health issues around the world.
You’ll meet Lillian Baker who is the mother of five children. She has buried four. Read how Lillian’s faith brought her through horrendous heartbreak to a place of peace.
There’s an everyday hero here who will touch your heart.
