Jonathan F. Vance grew up in what used to be a little town – Waterdown, Ontario – but spent the first years of his career researching and writing about history on a national or international level. Among his more than two dozen books are Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War (1997); High Flight: Aviation and the Canadian Imagination (2002); Building Canada: People and Projects That Shaped the Nation (2006); A Gallant Company: The True Story of “The Great Escape” (2009); and Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain and Two World Wars (2011). In 2018, he returned to his roots with A Township at War, an intimate account of the Township of East Flamboro – and its “little towns” – in the First World War.