World War, 1939-1945--Women

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World War, 1939-1945--Women

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World War, 1939-1945--Women

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World War, 1939-1945--Women

10 Archival description results for World War, 1939-1945--Women

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Bill and Marguerite Morson interview ; Lillian Wardle interview

RECORDED: Mayne Island (B.C.), 1983-08-30 & 1983-09-03 SUMMARY: Bill and Marguerite Morson explain how they met in Belgium after World War I; married 1920. Life in Vancouver -- adjusting, family (five children) before [age?] 23. Marguerite's life in Huy, Belgium, under German occupation: 4.5 years. Lillian Wardle interview includes remembrances about the London blitz, immigration to Ontario 1946, war bride experience.

Bill White interview

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Bill White : women in the shipyards in World War II RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1978-08 SUMMARY: Bill White was president of the Boilermakers local in Prince Rupert during the war at the shipyards. Many women from the community entered the shipyards in 1941-42. Mr. White was active in defending women's rights to a job at the end of the war. In this interview, he describes conditions in Prince Rupert; the growth of the shipyards; battles between soldiers, workers and Native people; racism in Prince Rupert; response to the entry of women into the yards; attitudes towards the Japanese; anti-war sentiments; the no-strike pledge and the Labour Progressive Party. Mr. White was a member of the Trotskyist organisation at this time (1943). Women were brought into the Prince Rupert shipyards as helpers or improvers, after taking a several-months-long training course in welding. The helpers strung the burners' hoses, and the women were soon proficiently stringing their own hoses and cables. The shift would get off and drink at the Savoy Hotel; it became clear that women had been accepted into the yards when the crew accepted the women buying rounds of drinks. Women served as stewards in the union.

Buster Foster interview

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Harold (Buster) Foster : The IAM and union women in World War II RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-06-06 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Buster Foster was an engineer; burned in an accident in the early 1930s, he was forced onto relief. Social workers harassed relief recipients throughout the Depression. During both world wars, he worked in the shipyards. He participated in the 1919 solidarity strike with the OBU in BC. During World War II he supervised thirty-five to forty women in the shipyards as steward for the union. There were few grievances filed by the women. TRACK 2: After the war, he voiced his concern that two people in a family should not be working when there were only adequate numbers of jobs for one family member. Despite the no-strike pledge, the International Association of Machinists, which he represented, went out on a seven-day job action during the war, resulting in the Richards Commission. Conflicts existed in the IAM over Canadian autonomy and control by the International over Canadian funds and policy.

Correspondence and other material

Letters Miss Fletcher wrote to her father, J.H. Fletcher, and her brother, W.J. Fletcher, of Victoria, B.C. between 1942 and 1945 while she was serving as a Canadian Army Nursing Sister in Nanaimo, Quebec, England, and Europe. Miss Fletcher's letters of recommendation and various military documents, 1933-1945 are included in the collection. Photographs documenting Miss Fletcher's service as a nursing sister, Fletcher Bros. store, (owned by her father and brother) and the Fletcher family have been transferred to Visual Records accession, 98711-1.

Fletcher, Margaret Gwendolyn, 1909-

Edra McLeod interview

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Edra McLeod : women drive for BC Electric RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-08-23 SUMMARY: Edra McLeod worked at Boeing during the war to help with the war effort. While the plant was being unionized, she questioned whether or not to join the union. A management lock-out in retaliation for a sit-down by the workers resulted in a victory; one five-minute break each day. Mrs. McLeod's husband was overseas for the duration of the war. She left the aircraft industry to find work with BC Hydro [actually BC Electric] in 1944. Only women whose husbands were overseas and who were under 25 to be hired, as conductors. After the war it took five years for women to be allowed to drive. Out of thirty women drivers, eight stayed on, two for many years. From the beginning women received equal wages to men drivers. Only one woman was heavily involved in the union, but all of the women supported it. Mrs. McLeod consistently pushed for other women to be hired as drivers, participated in the fight for better wages and conditions, and was active on the sick committee. She describes the trauma which many young women experienced during the war as a result of separation from their newlywed husbands.

Heritage theatre : 1944-45 : demobilization of women workers

SUMMARY: "Heritage Theatre" was a series of short historical plays set in the Vancouver environs. These vignettes illustrate some of the significant events and interesting episodes from Vancouver's earliest ti;mes. First broadcast in 1977, the plays were made in co-operation with the Social Planning Department of the City of Vancouver. This series was broadcast during the summer of 1981. This episode, "1944;/45: The Demobilization of Women Workers" is by Cherie Thiessen. Anger grows as soldiers returning from the war claim the jobs that women had held during the war years.;

Jonnie Rankin interview

CALL NUMBER: T3628:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Jonnie Rankin : women in the B.C. shipyards in the 1940s RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1978-07-10 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Rankin wrote a column for the newspaper of the Shipyard and General Workers Union during the war, describing the experience of women working in the shipyards. She has also been involved in the HREU, OTEU and the IWA. She was an activist in the Labour Progressive Party during the war. In this interview, she describes the motivations of women taking industrial jobs; hiring procedures; attitudes of men to women entering the yards; the transformation of the craft unions into industrial unions; childcare; political differences in the unions; Soviet women on ships which came into the yards for repair. TRACK 2: Piecework; shop stewarding; layoffs and women; work as a journalist for "The People"; the LPP; left-wing theatre; the IWA strike of 1946; organizing in the restaurants; women's auxiliaries; equal pay struggles. Women were unwilling to leave their jobs after the war ended; working had brought them self-respect and economic autonomy.

CALL NUMBER: T3628:0002 RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1978-07-10 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Rankin worked in the IWA hiring hall and was involved in some of the early attempts to form the OPIEU from union employees (1947). [TRACK 2: blank?]

Lil Stoneman interview

CALL NUMBER: T3601:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Lil Stoneman : The Women's Labour League and the Mothers' Council RECORDED: North Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-07-30 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Lil Stoneman came to BC in 1913. Her father was a sail maker who hoped to start a canvas cover business in Saskatoon. She had an Oxford certificate and was able to teach with this, and so went to normal school. She first taught in Harris in a one-room school, and then in Lenning; living with a local family. In 1920, she married a master painter. In 1924, the BC economy was already in a slump, and by the early 1930s they were forced onto relief. They received eighteen dollars a month for two people. She became active in the unemployed movement as it formed to protest the distribution of food by gunnysack as opposed to script. She went to the relief office to represent recipients and participated in organisation on a local level; forming neighbourhood committees, block committees, halls and associations. Mrs. Stoneman joined the Women's Labour League. It organised for jobs, supported the unemployed's struggles, and fought for birth control. She returned briefly to Saskatchewan and organised there. The W.L.L. eventually became the Mothers' Council. They organised demonstrations for clothing, as well as food. TRACK 2: The Labour league grew in its membership and groups formed on Vancouver Island. She was secretary. The League was accepted into the local Council of Women. Mrs. Stoneman studied with Becky Buhay while she was in BC, researching the history of working women's struggles. Mrs. Stoneman was present at the "Battle of Ballantyne Pier" (1935), where she narrowly escaped from the police as they attacked striking longshoremen. CALL NUMBER: T3601:0002 RECORDED: North Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-07-30 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: During the war, the Mothers' Council fought for decent allowances for soldiers' wives. [TRACK 2: blank?]; CALL NUMBER: T3601:0003 RECORDED: North Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-07-30 SUMMARY: [No content summary available.];

[Military parade, ca. 1944]

Special event footage. Wartime parade showing US and Canadian troops, infantry units, bands, tanks, artillery, armoured vehicles, a mobile searchlight, a civil defence unit, women's military units (WAC: Women's Army Corps and Wrens: Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service), and a propaganda display with "slaves" towing a chariot marked with a swastika and guarded by "German soldiers".

Peggy Kennedy interview

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Peggy Kennedy : women war workers -- Boeing Aircraft RECORDED: Langley (B.C.), 1979-06-05 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Peggy Kennedy was born in [Hyder?], Alaska, emigrating to BC and studying at the University of Victoria. After the war was in its third year, she began to work at Boeing Aircraft. She was first a stores clerk and then a secretary to the foreman. She became involved in the union (IAM) and protested the lack of rest periods, participating in a sit-down which led to a lockout. Women at Boeing worked in electrical sub-assembly but not as machinists. Sub-assembly involved putting together a part of an aircraft. Women were working both in the Sea Island plant and the sub-plant of Georgia Street, where Mrs. Kennedy worked. Men and women received equal benefits and were paid for the job but did not receive equal promotion. Many of the women in war production were very young, both single and married, and for many it was their first job. Many women left their children with relatives; childcare was a major problem.. She worked monthly swing shift at Boeing and came to know many of the workers because of her job. She became involved with IAM as a rank and file member and began to write for the newspaper. She became a steward, secretary for the union and editor of the paper. The issues which faced the workers were rest periods, raises, consultation on production, and the abolition of supervision. After the war, both men and women were laid off, despite union efforts to shift the plant to consumer production through lobbies to Victoria and rallies.