Canada Remembers Women on The Home Front

It was not easy for women to fill the new roles that arose due to the demands of wartime, while maintaining the traditional female roles of the time. Many women worked tirelessly in the home, often combining their domestic labours with war-related volunteer work with women's organizations or in military canteens.

Women also contributed to the war effort by giving blood and buying war bonds. Many also tended their own gardens (known as Victory Gardens during the Second World War) or volunteered in community gardens so more vegetables and fruits could be grown to feed the local population.

On the Farm

Canadian farms felt their own pressures to meet the growing need for food for the war effort, while also losing many of their young male workers to military service. Many farm women were faced with the reality that they had to maintain the family farm themselves, as well as raise the children, while the husbands, sons and hired labourers were off at war.

Mothers and children worked side-by-side on the farm to ensure it survived and prospered, with responsibilities like planting, harvesting, caring for livestock, milking cows and managing the finances being added to women's normal farm chores. Women adjusted well to this shift in roles and, when the men returned after the war, many women continued helping on the farm in these new ways.

Women's Organizations

The WIs used their agricultural connections to cooperate with the government to establish farm labour bureaus to encourage city women to volunteer to help harvest crops. They also held “canning clubs” to keep up with the high demand for preserved fruits and vegetables. Their members' experiences in adapting recipes to wartime shortages also led them to publish special cookbooks. The average homemaker, struggling to prepare meals within the restrictions of food rationing, found these books to be a great resource.

In Industry

Many men left their civilian jobs to fight for their country during the First and Second World Wars. These jobs needed to be filled and, in the Second World War in particular, women quickly stepped forward to meet the surging demand for workers in a greatly expanding Canadian wartime economy. At the beginning of the war, approximately 570,000 women worked in Canadian industry, mostly at clerical jobs. Five years later, almost a million women would be employed, with many working in traditionally male factory jobs.

Initially, there was a reluctance to allow women into new fields of employment. As the war proceeded, however, it became evident that if the country was to make the most of its resources, women’s contributions would be vital. Many new factories were established to manufacture guns, ammunition, aircraft, ships and more, and women soon could be seen in almost every factory working alongside their male counterparts. This shift in gender roles took some getting used to, but by the end of the war, women had proved to themselves and to the country that they could do any job a man could—and do it well!

After the Second World War ended, incentives for women workers—such as company day care centres—ended and they were encouraged to leave the workforce. Many did stay on to work in the growing service industry, however. The war years had changed the face of Canada’s workplaces forever.

Canada's Own “Rosie the Riveter”

America may have made the fictional “Rosie the Riveter” famous during the Second World War, but Canada found its own female role model in a real person. Elsie MacGill was the first woman to receive an electrical engineering degree in Canada and the first female aircraft designer in the world. The 35-year-old aeronautical engineer supervised the production of Hawker Hurricane fighter planes at the Canadian Car and Foundry Company, which employed 200 women and produced more than 1,450 aircraft during the war. MacGill became a symbol of Canada's miraculous economic wartime transformation. She was even the subject of a comic book called “Queen of the Hurricanes” that was devoted to her achievements.

An Impressive Contribution

Canada's contributions during the war years would have been very different if it were not for the vital roles women played on the home front. The war effort encompassed all Canadians, and women did their fair share and more, achieving and sacrificing a great deal in the cause of peace and freedom. The impressive achievements of these trailblazing women still echo today.

Canada Remembers Program