Striding in style in 1939, women's fashion takes on a masculine appearance. Betty poses in trousers in keeping with the new fashion trend.

During the war, she was a Red Cross volunteer.

From the 11 November 2004 Port Hope Evening Guide

In the early spring of 1942, a new market for uranium opened with developmental work on the atomic bomb. Canadian scientists and laboratories were employed in the American project code-named The Manhattan Project.

Grace Brackenbury was the chief chemist of the laboratory at Eldorado Nuclear in Port Hope, where U3O8 (uranium oxide) was produced. This compound was a vital component in the manufacture of the atomic bomb.

During the latter years of the war, Brackenbury made several trips to Washington, D.C. At the end of the war, she was the only woman invited to Washington by the Corps of Engineers to attend a conference concerning the Manhattan Project.

Described as "an extremely dedicated Red Cross volunteer and homemaker", Ede followed her serviceman husband, John C. "Jack" Burger (the Port Hope sports complex is named for him), from Calgary when his job took him to Nitro, Quebec. Since she had not previously experienced much travel, she saw the trip as an adventure. “I came by myself by train, landed in Toronto first, and then went to Valleyfield, Quebec. And there were no bridges, only the railway bridges, so we had to take a ferry at Cornwall, Ontario. That was an adventure to go on the ferry.”

Ede died 11 May 2011 and was buried with her husband in Port Hope Union Cemetery.

Doris was born in Edmonton c1918, the second of four Alberta-born children of Roy Ezra & Catherine Sarah Frizzell. She married Serviceman Gordon Ralph Burton in Peterborough in 1941. While her husband was overseas, she lived for much of the time with her parents, and it was not until near the end of the war that she moved into an apartment of recycled crates. She reported

It was made out of airplane engine crates. When things were in short supply, it was a tremendous way of recycling. They repaired engines for the airforce in Edmonton and these were the big heavy crates the engines came in. They kept the boxes, and that’s what the apartment was built from. It was a two storey building with eight apartments. I lived on the lower floor. It was a central hall plan, square in shape. It had a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms. It looked like any other housing. You wouldn’t know it was erected from airplane crates. The apartment building was still occupied many years later.

Doris passed away 04 September 2003 in Peterborough. Her obituary does not indicate a burial place for her or for Gordon.

During the war, she was head of the typing pool (back row right) at Central Medical Supplies, Ottawa, supplying Canada and overseas with medical supplies (1945).

From Pushing the Boundaries

Some women escaped the confines and discomforts of wartime life and lived off base on a subsistence allowance. In Canada, due to overcrowding in some of the barracks, Mavis Dure and Sage German were allowed to live off the base with their parents. Both enjoyed the advantages of not having nearly as many rules and regulations while at the same time enjoying the respectability and security of their families. Dure and German related that they had the opportunity to wear civilian clothes rather than be in regulation uniform all the time as there was no one to report them. They thought this was an added bonus.”

Following the war, Mavis married serviceman John Alexander Dure, holder of the Military Cross and Commander in Chief certificate, 10 July 1946:Ottawa.

Mavis passed away 08 June 2001 and is buried with John in Port Hope Union Cemetery.

Born 15 October 1921, daughter of Clarence Herbert Dean Watson & Myrtle Adelle Williams, Margaret married Edward "Ted" Fulford in 1944. She travelled by train from Port Hope to Winnipeg, where Ted was posted. Until this trip, the farthest she had travelled was to her parents' cottage.

She died 20 April 2020 and is buried with her husband in Port Hope Union Cemetery.

Sage joined the Navy as a Wren in 1944 and after training in Galt and St. Hyacinthe, served in Victoria and then Bainbridge Island off Seattle during the war as one of 50 Canadian and American telegraphists intercepting high speed encrypted Japanese radio messages in Morse code. For this vital war work, she was awarded the Bletchley Badge in 2015. Following her demobilization, Sage travelled to England and experienced the aftermath of wartime London, working for a year as a stock broker.

The war was exciting, exhilarating, very maturing, and we felt we were essential to the war effort. It was wonderful to feel we were needed and that feeling is still with me today. I think we felt great pride. We loved the senior service and we were proud to be in uniform.
Sage German, WRCNS

On her return to Canada, Sage married Royal Navy officer Andrew Barry Crawford "Tony" German 27 March 1948:Victoria, raising four children as they took up postings in Halifax, London, England, Victoria, and Ottawa, where they stayed after Tony left the Navy in 1965. On retirement, the Germans moved to Port Hope, where Tony passed away in 12 July 2011.

Women saw traditional gender behaviour being challenged all the time so why should they be any different from other young women at this time?" Women were assuming many male roles so Helen would have felt that hitch-hiking was simply another means of crossing gender barriers.

Helen died 07 March 2017 and is buried with her husband in Port Hope Union Cemetery.

Like many other women, she was able to explore many parts of Canada while travelling with, or following her husband. From Pushing the Boundaries

Kate Hall was married early in the war. She travelled from Vancouver, British Columbia to Toronto, Ontario for her wedding, and then relocated to Montreal, Quebec where she travelled by car with her husband Ken, a teaching technician for General Electric X-Ray. Mr. Hall had become a teaching technician because so many x-ray technicians were required in war-related jobs. Her husband’s job provided Hall with the opportunity to “spend two years on the road driving a great little Ford coupe with Ken going around to all the little boon dock hospitals until the gas shortage, and we didn’t have enough to run a car." To a significant degree, Hall traveled extensively and respectably largely because she was married. Although she experienced a degree of freedom, this freedom was mediated by Ken’s presence.

In her capacity as a regulator, Barbara said that there were "lots of quick discharges" and part of her job was dealing with them. Her interview reflects the humiliation these women suffered. Jones describes how the regulators had to escort these women about the base and ensure that all the paper work which was required before the discharge was completed.

After the war, Barbara taught physical education at a Toronto private girl’s school until she retired to Port Hope, Ontario.

Canadian women did a great job in Canada and overseas. To my dying day, | will never forget entering St. John’s harbour, coming from the suffocating feeling of darkness into the lights.
Audrey Lindop

Jean was one of many women who travelled alone to join their husbands at military postings and jobs throughout Canada. She went on her first long-distance car trip to join her husband Frank at his posting in St. John, New Brunswick and later journeyed by train from Port Hope to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Jean related

I went by train. I sat up in a car full of service men. When I got to Winnipeg I was put on the wrong train and I went south to Calgary instead of north to Edmonton and that made me miss the other train. I had to stay overnight in Calgary. I didn’t know my way around. I only had $125.00. The taxi man said, "I’ll find you a good secure place to stay, but you are to lock yourself in and don’t come out ‘till I come for you in the morning." I think it must have been a red light district. It was cheap. I got to the train the next morning. From Edmonton I went to Prince Rupert. I think it took a day and a half. It was practically all men on the train.

Wartime housing was another eye-opener for Jean. Prior to the war, she came from a comfortable middle-class background and lived at home. During the war? When they moved from Alberni to Vernon, BC, she and some other wives lived in a converted chicken coop.

We had one pipe with cold water, and it went from the main house, through the chicken house. There were ten places with a partition between them and an army wife lived in every one. We used to have lots of fun because the one line (water) that went from number one to number ten could be turned off in any of the spots. I used to turn off my tap so that meant nobody else down the line got any water. We were down the hill about a mile and one half from the regimental quarters. Outside there was a pile of wood and you had a stove. But you had to chop your own wood.

Melodie joined the RCAF Womens' Division and was an ambulance driver at home and overseas. She also participated as part of a concert party which travelled and entertained throughout England. She related, "It was absolutely fabulous in London because you were billeted out rather than living in barracks.

It wasn’t always absolutely fabulous. During a mini blitz she remembers, "It was a bit scary—then the doodlebugs (V-1)...I don’t remember being terribly scared. There were blackouts all the time...if there was a raid, I remember that we slept below the stairs in the house where we lived. We slept there because it was the safest place. Ruby (Hughes) and I had gone to a bomb shelter and the smell was awful, so we decided that if we 'bought it' we would rather be where we were living."

Upon her return to Canada she learned that she was dyslexic, but in spite of this handicap she worked at the University of Ottawa’s Child Study Centre as a remedial teacher.

Melodie's first husband, Roland Fields Crisson, was an American serviceman she had only known for a short period of time. Following the birth of a daughter, Caroline, her marriage ended in divorce, and in 1948, she married Hart Massey, son of Governor General Vincent Massey. She died at her Port Hope home 07 June 2016 at the age of 93.

We could explore and break the bonds that bound us by the tradition that woman’ place was in the home. We could leave the home with respectability and honour as we were serving our country. War represented the beginning of freedom for me.
Melodie Willis-O’Connor Massey, RCAF, WD