Norm Christie is an author and historian and leading battlefield guide. He has written twenty-four books on the roles played by Canadians in the First and Second World Wars.

Most recently, he has published the 700-page three-volume work, Sacred Places, which tells the amazing stories of the Canadians buried in hundreds of First World War cemeteries. He has hosted and written many historical documentary series including For King & Empire, For King and Country, In Korea, and The Great War Tour.

Norm originally trained and worked as a metallurgical engineer, but, on a holiday he crossed to Europe on a freighter, and then got a van and began to tour.

In a flea market, he had bought a Dead Man’s Penny – a medallion or plaque given to the families of men who died in the First World War 1914-1918. Norm became curious about how the man had died and where he was buried. He began a quest and search for the bodies of soldiers – wherever they were buried – and he discovered the existence of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission – which administers war graves at 23,000 locations throughout the world.

Turning a passion into a vocation, from 1990 to 1993, Norm was the Chief Records Officer of the Graves Commission, a huge task that involves detailed forensic and detective work. Norm succeeded in identifying the graves of 100 men, including famous cases such as the son of Rudyard Kipling. Norm is Canada’s leading expert on the battlefields and cemeteries of the two World Wars. The task is immense, in the First World War alone 700,000 Commonwealth and Empire servicemen and women were killed. 200,000 either lie in graves with no name or their remains – 100,000 of them – lie in an unknown location or have been scattered to the wind and lost in the soil.