DVD, book commemorate Canadian women in WW2

[Jim O]

WATERLOO, Ont. -- Margaret Haliburton was among the first people in the world to learn that Adolf Hitler was dead.

It was 1945 and she was a high-frequency direction finder at a Canadian military radio station outside Moncton, N.B., monitoring German U-boat traffic in the Atlantic.

As the admiralty of the German navy relayed the news of the Nazi leader's death to the fleet, Haliburton was among Canadian military eavesdroppers listening in.

"We knew first about Hitler's death and we knew first about the capitulation," the 84-year-old Toronto resident said, recalling the historic high points of her time in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRENS) during the Second World War.

The stories of Haliburton, her fellow WRENS, the Women's Division of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Women's Army Corps (CWAC) are featured in a DVD and book launched Sunday to commemorate their crucial but nearly forgotten role in wartime history.

Proudly She Marched, Training Canada's World War II Women in Waterloo County documents the untold story of the 21,634 women who enlisted in the military and worked as cooks, clerks, drivers, mechanics, medics, dental assistants, radio operators and countless other support positions to free up more men to fight. It was the first time in Canadian history that women served in uniform.

Forty-four of the remaining women vets travelled here from as far away as Vancouver and the United Kingdom for the unveiling of the first volume of the book and to reminisce with old friends an opportunity that's becoming increasingly rare as age takes its toll.

The women recalled various reasons for taking the unprecedented step of joining the military. Some saw it as a patriotic duty, others as a chance for adventure and travel.

Vi Hannah, who grew up in Brossard, Que., on the South Shore of Montreal, said she struggled to meet the 100-pound requirement to join in the idealistic belief it would bring her beloved brother home from the front lines faster.

"At 20 you think you can lick the world," chuckled Hannah, a former CWAC who is now 82.

She recalled her shock when she arrived at basic training at the Kitchener camp, which had just been vacated by the men, to find rustic toilets with no doors on them and showers without curtains.

Hannah trained as a supply clerk and was posted to the Longue Pointe Ordnance Depot (LPOD) where it was her job to wrap signal and optical parts for the war effort, a job that included dipping them in wax so they wouldn't rust on the journey overseas.

LPOD, she said, had another name among the female military personnel who worked there due to its ratio of 800 women to 2,000 men.

"We dubbed it Love Palace of Delight because of so many marriages there," Hannah said, including her own. "It wasn't like now where everybody's sleeping with each other though."

She left the service when she wed and got pregnant with her first child.

"He was born with very straight posture," Hannah said, squaring her shoulders to demonstrate. "I tell everyone he spent his first six months in the military."

While most of the enlisted women toiled behind the scenes in Canada, many went overseas and some were in mobile units that stayed just behind the front-line action, said the volume's author Ruth Russell.

Russell stumbled across the missing chapter of history when she read a small blurb in the local newspaper about a monument being dedicated to the military women who trained at two camps in the Kitchener-Waterloo area during the war.

Intrigued, she did a bit of digging, then travelled the country interviewing the women veterans, most now in their 80s, before their stories were lost forever.

"These women have really been forgotten," said Russell of the project sponsored by the Kitchener-Waterloo branch of the Canadian Federation of University Women "They were all volunteers and they were so patriotic and determined to serve. It was a really a different Canada then and they answered the call to help."

Few, if any, books recount the contributions of the CWACs and WRENs and the only monuments to mark their service were funded by the women themselves.

But the veterans recall their years of service with great fondness.

Helen Newman, age 81, who eventually went on to train new recruits at the Kitchener camp, laughed at the memory of the incredible shrinking summer uniform which contained rayon and would get tighter, stiffer and smaller when wet.

"It started to rain and we were standing on the parade square," she said. "You could almost see it going up before you eyes. The caps just shriveled."

Cecilia Levesque, who lied about her age to enlist at 16, was one of a small number of Aboriginal CWACs.

She told of being disciplined for arriving one-minute after curfew despite a heroic effort to get their on time, running up a long, steep hill.

"I could have taken my time since it didn't stop me being paraded," she said.

Levesque later went onto a supervisory position were she had to inspect the hair and dress of the other CWACs.

"If their hair was an inch over your collar, you had to report them," she said. Likewise if their stockings had seams running up the back. "You made some real friends that way and not the good kind."

The women say they forged a bond in the military that distance and time has failed to diminish.

"It's a shame it took a war to do this," said Janet Watt, 85, who enlisted as a WREN on a whim after a dispute with her cousin over Christmas shopping. "You make such wonderful friends that last."


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