Honorary Colonel Marc Milner

Biography / June 15, 2016

Mr. Marc Milner, Director of the Brigadier Milton F Gregg VC Centre for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick, was appointed as the Honorary Colonel 403 Helicopter Operational Training Squadron, Gagetown, NB in February 2016.

A native of Sackville, NB, Honorary Colonel Milner was a member of 681 “Tantramar” Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Cadets (RCAC) and spent one summer in the air force reserve at Canadian Forces base (CFB) Greenwood teaching Ground Search and Survival to cadets. After receiving his PhD in 1983 from the University of New Brunswick he served for three years as an historian with the Directorate of History, Department of National Defence, where he worked on volume two of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) official history, The Creation of a National Air Force, and on the new official history of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Honorary Colonel Milner joined the History Department at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in 1986, served as Director of UNB’s Military and Strategic Studies Program for two decades, and Chair of UNB’s History Department for six years. He was appointed Director of the Gregg Centre in 2006. Honorary Colonel Milner has served on the Canadian Military Colleges Advisory Board 1989-1996, on the Board of Visitors of the Canadian Forces College 2002-09, and the Board of Governors of the Royal Military College of Canada 201-2016. In recognition of his work, he was appointed “University Research Scholar” by UNB in 2010.

Honorary Colonel Milner is widely published and best known for his work on naval history, including North Atlantic Run (1985), The U-Boat Hunters (1995), and Canada’s Navy: The First Century (1999). His 2003 book Battle of the Atlantic won the C.P. Stacey Prize for the best book in military history in Canada. His articles have appeared in numerous journals and scholarly publications, and for years he wrote a regular column on Canadian naval history for Legion Magazine. Honorary Colonel Milner’s latest research project is on the Normandy campaign of 1944. His latest book, Stopping the Panzers: The Untold Story of D-Day, was published by University Press of Kansas in 2014.