Wartime history of Ontario Farmerettes an untold tale until this chance photo discovery
CBC
Betty Lou Clark of Guelph, Ont., never thought she was being patriotic when she signed up to work on a Canadian farm during the Second World War.
Instead, she considered it an opportunity to gain personal freedom and live away from home for the first time.
"We went because we could get out of chemistry exams and we would get away from the watchful eyes of our parents," Clark said.
"That was a big inducement — not patriotism — when you're 16 years of age."
Clark, now 95, was one of thousands of young women who answered the call to be part of the Farmerette Brigade. It consisted of women 16 years of age and older to work in the Ontario Farm Service program. They worked on fruit, vegetable and truck farms — where produce goes to local markets —in southwestern Ontario and the Niagara region.
With so many men involved in combat overseas, there was a labour shortage and people were needed to farm in order to feed the people of the province and send food to the fight troops overseas.
The government organized groups of people to work the fields including The Famerette Brigade. The program, which started in 1941, was so popular it lasted for several years after the war ended.
Bonnie Sitter of Exeter, Ont., found an old photo while going through her late husband Conrad's belongings. It showed three young women sitting on a running board of a vehicle. It was taken on her late husband's family farm near Thedford, northwest of London close to Lake Huron.
On the back of the photo was written: Farmerettes 1946.
Sitter's curiosity led her to do some research and eventually, she wrote a letter to a local newspaper asking for women who served as Farmerettes to get in touch with her.
Shirleyan English, a former Farmerette, got in touch with Sitter. English had written a similar newspaper article in 1995 and received letters from 300 women who worked in the Second World War program.
The two would go on to co-author the book Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of Ontario Farmerettes in 2019.
That book has inspired a documentary film that's in production and the theatrical production is set to take the stage in Millbrook and at the Blyth Festival in 2024.
Sitter still keeps in touch with many of the former Farmerettes.
The Rachel Notley government's consumer carbon tax wound up becoming a weapon the UCP wielded to drum the Alberta NDP out of office. But that levy-and-repayment program, and the wide-ranging "climate leadership plan" around it, also stood as the NDP's boldest, provincial-reputation-altering move in their single-term tenure.