Marc Milner, a native of Sackville, NB, attended the University of New Brunswick where he earned a BA in 1977, an MA in 1979, and his Doctorate in 1983. His dissertation was published by University of Toronto Press in 1985 as North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle for the Convoys. From 1983 to 1986, Milner was an historian with the Directorate of History, Department of National Defence, Ottawa. While there, he wrote portions of volume II of the RCAF’s official History dealing with maritime air operations and the first narrative of the new official history of the Royal Canadian Navy. Milner joined the History Department at UNB in 1986 and from then until 2005 was Director of UNB’s Military and Strategic Studies Program. Among his other chores, he was formerly Chairman of the Canadian Military Colleges Advisory Board; he served as an editor for the journal, Canadian Military History; and has conducted student study tours of battlefields in Europe on behalf of the Canadian Battlefields Foundation, of which he is a member of the Board of Directors, and the Canadian Armed Forces. He is currently the Vice-Chair of the Board of Visitors of the Canadian Forces College, Chair of the UNB History Department, and Director of UNB’s Brigadier Milton F. Gregg, VC, Centre for the Study of War and Society.
Milner is best known for his work on Canadian naval history. Since the appearance of his first major book in 1985, he has published The U-Boat Hunters: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Offensive against Germany’s Submarines (1995); Corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy (co-authored with Ken Macpherson in 1993); a novel, Incident at North Point (1998); a popular history, HMCS Sackville 1940-1985 (1998) for the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust; and Canada’s Navy: The First Century (1999). He has also edited Canadian Military History: Selected Readings (1993); and co-edited Military History and the Military Profession (1992). His articles have appeared in Military Affairs, Acadiensis, RCN in Retrospect, Canadian Defence Quarterly, Horizon Canada, The RUSI Journal, Journal of Strategic Studies, The New Canadian Encyclopaedia, The Oxford Companion to the Second World War and elsewhere. He is co-director of the New Brunswick Military Heritage Project and writes a regular column on naval history for Legion Magazine. His latest work, Battle of the Atlantic, was published by Tempus Publishing, UK, in 2003, and was awarded the Charles P. Stacey Prize for the best book on military history in Canada for 2003-2004.