Deciding to Join

Two hundred and eighty thousand women left their homes to work in factories and do everything during the war that they could possibly do because Canada’s population wasn’t very big and when you think of our troops going overseas. And so they needed the women.We went to Hamilton and I worked in the GE plant making Bofor guns for the Navy. And I was there for, oh I guess about four months, five months and I thought, nah, this isn’t really what I want to do. And by that time they were letting women in the Canadian military and of course the British were a great example because the women were in the service in the military right from the beginning. So, but it wasn’t until that year in the summer that they decided to let the women in. So I decided I would join up. Because I had commercial training, I ended up being a steno. I was earmarked right then and there. But others coming in say sales people or just from home, or from a farm or whatever and they didn’t have anything, you’d have an aptitude test and they’d say you’re great with figures, alright we’ll put you in with drafting or you drove tractors, you could be a driver. You’d have to become a mechanic. I mean, so they placed you.It was a terrific experience. It was an adventure. But bottom line, we wanted to do something, we wanted to help. We had brothers over there. We had boyfriends over there. We had fathers over there and if we could help, we could. And we would do it again.