Lest We Forget The Women

NOTE: Following is a feature in honour of Remembrance Day prepared by the Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

There wasn't much to keep a young woman with a twinkle in her eye and a sense of adventure in a small Cape Breton village in the late 1930s. So when war broke out, Margaret Gillis of Iona wrote to the Department of National Defence in Ottawa and asked if they planned to call women into service.

"There was no work in Iona, especially for a woman," says Margaret, who now lives in the Department of Veterans Affairs' annex at Harbour view Hospital in North Sydney. She asked that they call her into service.

That call came, and Margaret boarded the train for Halifax alone to enlist in the Canadian Women's Army Corps (CAC). She didn't hesitate. "Not for one second," she said recently.

In Halifax she was billeted at the YWCA on Barrington Street along with eight other women who had come from other parts of the province to sign up.

Following three weeks of basic training, Margaret was posted to number six district depot at the airport in the west end of Halifax, where the Westmount subdivision and the Halifax Shopping Centre now stand. She worked as a typist and a payroll clerk and, in September 1942, after one month in Halifax, she was called up to go overseas.

After overseas training in Ottawa she returned to Halifax to join 8,000 other recruits on the liner Queen Elizabeth. The Queen Elizabeth travelled alone across the North Atlantic, not as part of a convoy.

"We were too young to be afraid," said Margaret. "It was a great adventure."

In London, Margaret began as a payroll clerk at Canadian headquarters. She plays down the dangers they faced, but there were harrowing times.

During a bombing campaign, she and her fellow soldiers spent 90 nights in a row sleeping on the concrete floor with nothing but their clothes, a blanket, a helmet and a gas mask.

She also tells of the time she came home from work to find the ceiling of her room had fallen on her bed when a bomb exploded nearby.

Bombs were no excuse for being late for work though.

"Even if you were up on the roof all night looking for planes, you still had to be at work at 8 a.m. sharp," she said.

Margaret has no regrets about her time in the military. She said she'd go back tomorrow if she could work again with her former colleagues.

In 1983, Margaret attended a CAC reunion in London, Ont. Eighteen of her colleagues attended. After the opening dinner, the group ignored the rest of the program, choosing to reminisce, to laugh, cry and catch up with each other's lives.

Following the war, Margaret worked for the Unemployment Insurance Commission in Moncton and New Glasgow. She maintains strong ties with her hometown. In September, she took part in a celebration of veterans at the Royal Canadian Legion in Iona.

When Canadians think of veterans, we most often imagine the men in the trenches. But women have played an essential role in all the armed conflicts in which Canada has taken part, serving as nurses, stenographers, camp cooks, drivers, mechanics and pilots. Women also served at home, keeping farms, families, businesses, and factories running.

This is the Year of the Veteran in Canada, commemorating the end of the Second World War and acknowledging the contribution and sacrifices of the thousands of people who defended democracy 60 years ago.

The Advisory Council on the Status of Women honours and thanks women for their contributions in times of war and of peace.