The Canadian Home Front During WWII
Women During WWII
• Actively involved in Military– 1941 formation of
• CWAC• RCAF-Women’s
Division• “Wrens” (Women’s
Navy) 100 000 women served
What Did They Do ???
• Did not serve on the front– Served as
• Cooks• Nurses• Pilots• Mechanics• Welders• Radar operators
– Ferry Command planes flew from N.A. to G.B.• 500 women died during these flights
Women In Canada
• Factories operated longer hours– Increase in women in
Canadian workforce (WWI ???)
• Over 1 million women worked in Canada during WWII
• Still paid less than men and benefits taken away after war– Jobs lost when men came
home – Right here in Surrey !!!
The Female James Bond ???
• Women served as Special Operation Executive (SOE)– Secret Agents
• Parachuted into Nazi controlled France to find out information
• Served as saboteurs, couriers and radio operators
• The Heroines of the SOE• Andree Borrel, Vera
Leigh, Diana Rowden– All captured by Nazi secret
police and sent to prison camps
The Economy
• Start of WWII = End of Depression– Economy in war time production
• Canadian factories made– Bombs, bullets, ships, aircraft (war supplies)
• Total War ???
• War Supply Board by C.D. Howe– Organize Canadian industry to supply front– How Did Canada Pay for the War ???
• Rationing (Part of Total War)– 115 g of coffee, 1kg of meat (per adult person)
• Lend Lease Act and Hyde Park– Threat and resolution to Canadian wartime economy
Canadian Propaganda
• The spread of information to promote a particular cause
• NOT TRUTHFUL !!!• Used posters to
recruit and to inform citizens to help out war effort.
Canadian Training Facilities
• British Commonwealth Air Training Plan– Pilots from
Commonwealth all trained in Canada
– 130 000 air personnel were trained in Canada
– A way for Canada to be involved without actually sending troops overseas
Camp X
• Spy Training Facility– Yes, like James Bond
• Sabotage, silent killing
– For Canadian, British and US
– Oshawa, Ontario– So secret members of
government and the military did not know it existed
– Sent 500 agents into the field
Conscription Crisis
• Start of war P.M. King said there would be no conscription– 1940-National Resource Mobilization Act
• All men to help in war effort but not overseas
– 1942-Need for troops• King held a plebiscite asking Canadians to OK
conscription– What was the vote ??? Similar to WWI French
Canadians said "NO”, Anglos “YES”
Would It Tear The Country Apart?
• King tried to convince men in NRMA to go over
• No luck, eventually King conscripted 13 000 men to go overseas– Only 2463 reached the front
• King managed to avoid a total break in Anglo-Franco relations, but tensions were heightened
Enemy Aliens
• What are they ???• Canada banned
– Pro-Nazi and Communist parties– Religious Pacifists (Don’t want to go to war)– European refugees
• Jews especially (Anti-Semitism)• “None is too many”• “We don’t want to take too many Jews”
• Forced to register with government because of fear of sabotage against Canada- 100 000 people
The Shame of Canada
• Japanese Internment…Why did it happen?
• Brief history of Japanese in Canada– B.C. infamous for racism-1907 Race riot– 1928 P.M. King limited the number of
Japanese immigrants to 150/year– Not allowed to vote
But, then this happened
Japanese Internment
• Japanese Canadians were held in Concentration Camps…What does that word mean?
• After Pearl Harbour and due to racist attitudes there was a fear that Japanese Canadians would rise up and supply Japan with information for a Japanese invasion of Canada!!!– COMPLETELY FALSE…RCMP and
Government said there was no threat but both craved to public pressure
Internment Begins
• 1942-They were stripped of their rights
• Fingerprinted, photographed and given an ID number and forced to carry ID card
– Just like criminals…except they had committed no crime
– Forced to either be deported or relocate away from coast…Housed at Hastings Park before shipped off to B.C. interior
– 22 000 Japanese Canadians sent to internment camps-14 000 were born in Canada
HASTINGS PARK
Japanese Internment
• 1943-Custodian of Aliens Act– Took all Japanese
Canadian possessions without their permission
– Sold at low prices to white people
– Money went to pay for internment
• Japanese paid for themselves
Conditions in the Camp• “They stopped [the train] at the
elevators and we were just herded out.”
• “ I was in that camp for four years. When it got cold the temperature went down to as much as 60 below. The buildings stood on flat land beside a lake. We lived in huts with no insulation. Even if we had the stove burning the inside of the windows would all be frosted up and white, really white. I had to lie in bed with everything on that I had... at one time there were 720 people there, all men, and a lot of them were old men."
Internment Camps in B.C.
What Does This Look Like ???
The Embarrassment of 1944
• In 1944 a new law passed– Said that the Japanese could be deported
from Canada even if they were born in Canada !!!!
• 3964 Japanese Canadians were deported of which 2600 were Canadian citizens
• 1946– The war was finally over and Japanese
Canadians were released from the internment camps
Compensation ???
• 1988– $21 000 was given by the Canadian
government to any detainee still living– WAS THAT ENOUGH ????
• Was there any justifiable reason to put the Japanese in concentration camps or was it a policy based on racism ???