Patrick M. Dennis is a retired Canadian Air Force colonel and fighter controller who served abroad for over twenty-two years, including tours as the chief of operational training for the NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control Wing in Geilenkirchen, Germany, as Canada’s deputy military representative to the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium, and as the Canadian defence attaché to Israel. He is a graduate of the United States Armed Forces Staff College, the NATO Defence College, and Canada’s National Security Studies Course.
After leaving the military, he lectured on global political-military affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, and was a part-time instructor with the Canadian Forces College, Toronto, specializing in command and management and the law of armed conflict. In addition, he has written articles for Canada's History, the Canadian Defence Quarterly, the Canadian Military Journal, Air Power History, and Esprit de Corps magazine.
His interest in history, and in particular Canada’s First World War history, first led him to write "A Canadian Conscript Goes to War – August 1918: Old Myths Re-examined" published by the journal of Canadian Military History (18, no. 1, Winter 2009). This research was followed by a more comprehensive examination of the combat role played by all Canadian conscripts in the First World War, and ultimately led to the publication of his first book, Reluctant Warriors: Canadian Conscripts and the Great War (University of British Columbia Press, 2017), which is now part of the Canadian War Museum's Studies in Canadian Military History series.
In 1986, Patrick Dennis was invested by Governor-General Jeanne Sauvé as an Officer in the Order of Military Merit. He is Honorary Vice-President of the Western Front Association for Canada and is currently working on his next book, the remarkable story of one decorated soldier from the First World War who triumphed over tragedy.