Wilhelmina "Willa" Magee was born in Montreal on April 3, 1913, one of four children of Allan and Madeline Magee. After finishing school, Willa travelled to Paris to study French language and culture. Upon her return to Canada in 1933, she worked her way around the world as postmistress on Canadian Pacific’s famous Empress of Britain ocean liner.
Back in Montreal, Willa was employed by a news agency, accompanying the photographers who took pictures of local debutantes and celebrities. Hearing that Sir Herbert Marler had been appointed as Canadian minister to Washington, D.C., Willa offered herself as social secretary to his wife, Lady Beatrice Marler, and spent the next two years in Washington before returning to Canada.
In 1939, Willa attended a party at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, residence of the Canadian Governor-General, where she met a young Scottish captain in the British Black Watch 51st Highland Division, named David Walker. The young couple married on July 27, 1939, and only a few days after their honeymoon, in David’s native Scotland, war was declared and he rejoined his division.
When David went to war with his regiment in France in 1940, Willa stayed with David’s parents at their home in Cupar, Scotland. Shortly before the evacuation of Allied troops at Dunkirk in June 1940, David's entire division was captured at Saint-Valery, Normandy, and he spent the next five years in a prison camp. He managed to escape three times, but was always recaptured. Eventually, he was sent to the infamous Colditz Castle in Germany, a fortress for incorrigible inmates who had repeatedly escaped from other camps.
When Willa discovered she was pregnant she returned to Canada for the birth of her son Patrick in November 1940, but he died of crib death in February 1941 at the age of three months. In July 1941, Parliament passed an Order-in-Council allowing women to enlist, and the Royal Canadian Air Force formed a branch called the Women’s Division. With her husband in prison, Willa decided to join the war effort. In October 1941, she graduated with the first group of air force recruits, and achieved the highest marks in officer training. Three months later, in January 1942, she was placed in charge of the new female recruits in Canada, all of whom entered Number 7 Manning Depot in Rockcliffe, Ontario, for basic training. In February 1943, Willa was promoted to commanding officer of the Women's Division in Canada. Given the rank of wing officer, from then on Willa became known among the ranks as “The Wing.”
Willa was a natural-born leader. She was responsible for setting up training depots all over Canada as well as the overall discipline and efficiency of the Women’s Division. It was also her duty to urge more women to enlist, and no doubt her enthusiasm convinced many young women to follow in her footsteps. For the next couple of years, she crisscrossed the country by land and air, speaking to groups and organizations, even church congregations, in an effort to change the public perception of women in uniform.
It was still very much a man's world, but privately, Willa waged a war for women’s equality. For example, at all the training depots, the officers' mess, or dining hall, was reserved for men only, so Willa was not allowed to eat with the male officers. Frustrated by this regulation, one day Willa ordered her driver to park in front of the officers' mess. In sub-zero temperatures, she sat inside the vehicle during a snowstorm, eating her cold crackers, until the male officers were so ashamed that they invited her inside.
In November 1943, Willa accepted a solid gold cup on behalf of the Women’s Division, a gift from the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, presented by Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. For her war work, Willa was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in London, England, in January 1944, presented by Queen Elizabeth, wife of King George VI.
During the long years that David was in prison, Willa came up with a code for communicating important news in seemingly innocent letters to her husband, which passed undetected by both the Canadian and German censors. She managed to smuggle escape maps to David in the soles of a pair of shoes contained in a Red Cross package. This time, Canadian military officers intercepted the package and found the maps. The ingeniousness of the scheme appealed to them, so they repacked the shoes and sent off the package.
Unfortunately, nobody escaped from Colditz Castle, not even David. Willa resigned her post in October 1944 after three years of service, but it wasn’t until May 1945 that the war finally ended and they were reunited. Willa Walker blazed a trail for women in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. The Wing Officer Willa Walker Park was dedicated in her honour on June 16, 2018.
