Early Life
Born at Hythe, Kent, England in 1903, Raddall was the son of British army officer Thomas Head Raddall and Ellen (née Gifford) Raddall. In 1913, he and his family moved to Nova Scotia, where his father had assumed a training position with the Canadian Militia. When World War I began, the elder Raddall joined the war effort. He was killed in action in August 1918 at Amiens when Thomas was still a youth.
In Halifax, Raddall attended Chebucto School until 6 December 1917, when the school was converted into a temporary morgue in the wake of the Halifax Explosion. The Raddall family survived the explosion, and Raddall wrote about his experiences in his memoirs, In My Time.
Raddall's first job was as a wireless operator on seagoing ships (including the famous cable ship CS Mackay-Bennett), and at isolated wireless posts such as Sable Island. He later took a job as a clerk at a pulp and paper mill in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, where he began his writing career. Raddall was a prolific, award-winning writer. He received Governor General's Awards for three of his books, The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek (1943), Halifax, Warden of the North (1948) and The Path of Destiny (1957). In 1971, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
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