Socks and Smokes

American Poster, artist unknown, 1918

Many people on the Home Front sent care packages to the men and women overseas. In Edith Adams Ninth Annual Cookbook she gives detailed instructions on what to pack and how to pack it. Some acceptable items include butter in a sealed container, sugar cubes, evaporated milk, chocolate milk powder, tinned meats and fish, dried vegetables and fruit, cheese, jams, jellies, pickles, maple syrup, honey, fruit cake, plum puddings, shortbread, powdered milk, fruit juice (concentrated), powdered eggs, and tinned nuts. Ms. Adams also recommends using popcorn as a packing material and stuffing empty spaces with little extras such as shoelaces, chocolate, gum, and "smokes." Of course, there's always got to be room for an extra pair of hand-knitted socks.

What happens when the men received their packages? Well, according to Harry Rankin, some of it was sold to civilians:

In London too, we'd visit Canada House and be given socks and balaklavas knitted by dear old ladies for the war effort. Some of those socks were so enormous that they'd go up over our knees. So we'd take them out and sell them to civilians who'd unravel them and knit them up into something useful. My family would send cigarettes, but since I never smoked, they got flogged too. All this went for a few drinks and a little extra grub.

Sometimes my mother would send a food parcel and I'd share some of it with my buddies just as they'd share theirs. But you didn't go handing it out to civilians like they show in the old war movies; food supplies may have been bad for civilians but they were just as bad in the army cookhouses.

--Rankin's Law: Reflections of a Radical by Harry Rankin, 1975. November House, Vancouver

Rankin says the food was so bad sometimes the soldiers would go on strike and refuse to get leave the bunkhouse. This conflict came to a head just before the men from the Seaforth Highlanders were about to fight the Battle of Ortona.

On the invasion practices, everything was laid on as if it were the real event--including the food. In our pockets we'd carry a couple of cheese or jam sandwiches to hold off starvation. Then, at night we'd arrive back at camp, soaking wet and chilled to the bone to be fed a scoop of applesauce, a piece of cheese, a couple of chunks of bread and a mug of tea. By this time the first division had been around long enough that we weren't going to take this kind of shit. So we went on strike. Lt. Colonel B.M Hoffmeister was commanding at the time and I'm sure he could see his whole career going down the drain with that strike. After all, this was mutiny among the troops selected to invade Sicily! That night he sent a truck to Glasgow for more rations. We ate a little better after that.

--Harry Rankin, Ibid.

Invisible Women: WWII Aboriginal Servicewomen in Canada by Grace Poulin

Isn't it fantastic when you're digging for historical information and you've found someone has written a book based on the very topic you're after? Such was my luck when I discovered that Grace Poulin has written about Aboriginal women in Canada who served in WWII. I chatted with Grace on the phone today and she told me that she became interested in Canada's Aboriginal history after she took a course on the changing roles of Aboriginal women. The professor showed the class a photo of a woman in uniform and remarked "There's a thesis for someone...." Well, Grace decided she would research that photograph which lead her spending several months tracking down vets and traveling to interview them.

One of the women she interviewed was Mary Greyeyes, a woman from Saskatchewan who eventually married and settled in Vancouver. She was the first aboriginal woman to join the Canadian Women's Army Corps. After the war she became Mary Reid and eventually moved to Vancouver and lived on Commercial Drive for 36 years. Sadly, she died in March, 2011.

You can order the book directly from Grace Poulin and proceeds from the publication go towards the making of a documentary based on the book. I can't wait to read it!

Mrs. Vancouver

I have been getting re-acquainted with micro-fiche, which I hate. Maybe I can make friends with the medium because it does contain some lovely gems such as this piece from the Vancouver Sun (Jan 15, 1943), written in that particularly chipper and patronizing tone of wartime cheerleading directed at women. How would you rate as Mrs Vancouver?

Feeling Proud, Mrs. Vancouver?

Well, You've Every Right To

by Ruth Millet

When Mrs. Vancouver started counting up the new skills she had acquired in the last year she couldn't help feeling a little proud of herself.

She had learned enough first aid so that she wouldn't stand and wring her hands if she should see someone badly hurt.

She had learned how to make sick patients comfortable.

She had learned what to do if an incendiary bomb should fall on the roof of her house.

She had learned what is under the hood of her automobile, and how to change a tire.

BACK TO SIMPLE LIFE

She had learned to grow something for her dining room table besides a floral centrepiece.

She had learned to can fruits and vegetables.

She had learned how to knit.

She had learned a simple yardstick for a balanced diet.

She had learned to carry her own packages instead of saying "Send it, please."

She had learned to get places without a car.

She had learned to put the money she would like to spend on a new hat into war bonds.

She had learned to entertain simply and inexpensively.

She had learned to save--everything from paper and bacon to grease.

She had learned how to ride a bicycle--if not with grace, still without serious accident.

That is quite a list for one year's time. No wonder Mrs. Vancouver feels she is quite a girl.

The Red Cross

Some of my earliest memories are from Red Cross meetings in Cactus Lake, Saskatchewan. My mother was a member for over fifty years, meeting with a group of women who were always working on a relief project of some sort. In the Cactus Lake hall there's a black and white photo of the group from the 1960's and there I am as an infant on my mom's knee. I remember the women making up kits of school supplies to send to some faraway country and they were always sewing--making quilts and "layettes". (Layettes are kits for new moms including blankets, bibs, burping cloths and diapers, usually all handmade.) Red Cross suppers with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cabbage rolls, spaeztle, jellied salads and a wide variety of pies reflected the German and Ukrainian heritage of our hamlet and the surrounding farms. My grandma May was in the Red Cross during WWII and so she was one of the many women of Canada creating "ditty bags" and "comfort kits" for sailors and soldiers. Red Cross kits for able bodied men contained 1 small diary, 1 pencil, 1 jack knife, 1 comb, 1 small note book and envelope, 1 tube shaving cream, 1 deck of cards, 1 "housewife" (sewing case), and 5 postcards. They sewed up the cloth bags, filled them, and sent them off. Red Cross volunteers also prepared surgical supplies. Five years ago the Cactus Lake Red Cross celebrated their 65th anniversary.

The North Vancouver branch of the Red Cross was formed in 1914 and its first mobile blood donor clinic was held in 1947.

During the First World War the hall of the West Vancouver Presbyterian Church was utilized for Red Cross quarters as well as for church services. The Vancouver Red Cross operated a WWII version of a food truck: a mobile canteen for the Air Raid Precaution events such as this spectacular fire drill on Kits Beach.

November 12, 1941

The first person to donate blood to the Red Cross in Vancouver was a “bantamweight” New Westminster grocer named Jimmy Muir. “Last week,” the Province reported, “the mayor (Jack Cornett) drew Muir's name from a hat and gave him the honor of being the first person in Vancouver to contribute blood in the Red Cross 'blood bank'.” Another early donor was David Smith, of West 12th Avenue, “a carpenter in the Boeing factory on Coal Harbour, where 500 workmen have each offered a pint of blood.” The blood was to be sent to the war zones.

http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/chronology1941.htm

The Numbers:

The Canadian Red Cross Corps eventually numbered 15,000 women. Of that group, the Overseas Detachment of 641 volunteers served in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and parts of Africa.

They drove ambulances - often in blackouts, supported patients and assisted staff in military hospitals. In London, they staffed four “Maple Leaf” hostels and two canteens as well as assisting civilians in England. A number of volunteers served as welfare officers with military hospitals in the United Kingdom, Africa, Italy, northern Europe and Korea. Other activities included helping with the rehabilitation of the war-blinded and coordinating the distribution of parcels to prisoners of war.

http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=13079&tid=001

Buddies of Bud the Spud

A honeybee laden with pollen sips nectar at the Vancouver City Hall Community Garden

Besides being morale boosters, Victory gardens in Vancouver gave people "pep and energy" for the war effort and provided food for forces and the people of Britain. After the war Canadians sent food overseas to nourish people in war torn countries. Today I chatted with John from Texas who has a community plot at Vancouver city hall. He said his mother grew up in a town that was called Victory Gardens, Texas.

One gets the impression that people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean ate a lot of potatoes. While Canada has "Bud the Bud," wartime Britain had "Pete the Potato" who was one of the personified tubers created to promote healthy eating during WWIII. I recently watched an episode of Foyle's war called "They Fought in the Fields" in which three Land Girls (women in the Land Army) struggle to plant a field of potatoes before dark. Members of Land Army get to wear snappy uniforms and their diet is supplemented by farm food, but it is back-breaking work and they must have ate, slept, and dreamed of potatoes. Not to mention the turnips, which were another war time staple, even in the gardens at Buckingham Palace.

The Canadian war artist Bruno Bobak remembers being invited in to a family's home in appreciation for the liberation of Almelo, Holland:

"We had a four-course meal, but every course was potato,'' he says. "We had potato soup, potatoes with gravy, potatoes with brown sugar. They had almost no food left."

--The Telegraph Journal

Woolton Pie was a famous recipe named after the British Ministry of food made with simple, cheap, and wholesome ingredients.

"It was named after Frederick Marquis, Lord Woolton, the ex-managing director of a store chain called Lewis (mainly in the north of England) and ex-social worker, who was appointed Minister of Food in April 1940. Unglamorous his position may have been, but it was vital to the war effort. It says much for Woolton's personal charm that he was remarkably popular with the public, even when singing the praises of rissoles without beef, cakes without sugar and tea without tea leaves."

--www.carrotmuseum.com

Those who have the will to win,

Cook potatoes in their skin,

Knowing that the sight of peelings,

Deeply hurts Lord Woolton's feelings.

--http://www.homesweethomefront.co.uk

To Make Woolton pie you cut up potatoes (with the skins on so as not to hurt Wooly's feelings), "swedes", cauliflower and carrots, and spring onions, cover with vegtable stock and a teaspoon of oatmeal and cook it. By this I gather they mean boil it to within an inch of its life. This is your pie filling. You put this in a baking dish, cover it with more potatoes or pastry and cook it in the oven. You can read more about the fascinating story behind Woolton pie at the World Carrot Museum website.

Today in France, farmers plant potatoes in former battlefields which is still hazardous. In 2007 A woman in Italy found a WWII grenade in a bag of potatoes.

"Police said the pine cone-shaped grenade, which had no pin and was still active, was the same type used by U.S. soldiers in Europe in World War Two. Authorities believe the mix-up happened at a farm in France, where the grenade was plucked from the ground along with potatoes.

To the woman's relief, police and explosives experts in the small town of San Giorgio a Cremano, near Naples, recovered the grenade and safely detonated it on Wednesday."

--Reuters

Check out this website from Dundry Nurseries where you can here Potato Pete's song and even order a reproduction of his own cookbook. You can also watch a clip of a British tv show where they show how to plant and store potatoes and grow squash on top of your bomb shelter. You can also learn how to make your own potash!(?)

The Numbers:

It was estimated that between 1917 and 1919, over five million Victory Gardens had been planted in North America, which had produced some $1.2 billion in foodstuff productions.

By the end of 1943, there were more than 200 000 Victory Gardens in Canada producing 550 lbs of produce.

--wartimehouses.com

A lovely victory zucchini grown at the Simon Fraser Elementary garden at the community garden, Vancouver City Hall.

Dig for Victory!

The Vancouver Police Museum: Where Death Rejoices

I went to the Vancouver Police Museum to see if they had any photos of Vancouver during the war years. Ironically, the most beautiful room in the museum is the autopsy room, a quiet, peaceful room suffused with natural light. The inscription above the door reads: Let idle talk be silenced. Let laughter be banished. This is the place where death rejoices to teach those who live."


Hanging on one wall is a tribute to members of the VPD who served in WWI.

There's also a display that tells the story of Raiichi Shirokawa, a police officer who served during the First World War:

Chief Constable Malcom Maclennan hired the first policeman belonging to a visible ethnic minority. Constable Raiichi Shirokawa (PC 198), a Japanese Canadian, was hired December 14, 1917 but served only a few months before members of the Japanese community allegedly complained he was being used only to spy on them. Faced with this opposition, Shirokawa resigned the following year on December 12, 1918. No negative remarks appear anywhere in his VPD records. He died in Vancouver May 30, 1959.

--Vancouver Police Museum

The Numbers:

WWI: The Canadian Japanese Association in British Columbia put forward a volunteer reserve force of 227 men, some of whom were later admitted into the military.

--Wikipedia

WWII: 22,000 Japanese Canadians (14,000 of whom were born in Canada) were interned in the 1940s.

--Ibid

A War Artist with Chutzpah: Molly Lamb Bobak

War Artist: Did you know the first woman war artist is from Vancouver? Molly Lamb Bobak joined the Canadian Women's Army Corps in 1942. Her mentors included A.Y. Jackson and Jack Shadbolt.

"You joined the navy if you wanted to be chic because they had the nicest uniforms, but I preferred the army,'' she says. " My mother drove me to the old Vancouver Hotel at the intersection of Georgia and Granville, and waited outside while I signed up."

After washing dishes and other menial chores for three years she had the moxy to hitchhike to Ottawa to convince the director of the National Gallery to get her a job as a war artist.

"I was an optimist more than a feminist, and I had to work very hard to become a war artist, to the point of making a damn nuisance of myself,'' she says.

She sketched and painted her fellow officers in Canada during the war and was sent to post-war Holland. She made sketches in the field and then was set up in a studio she was supposed to share with another war artist, Bruno Bobak. He wasn't happy about having to share a studio with a woman and said they'd divide the studio down the middle to avoid one another. However, the two ended up sharing the rest of their lives together they still live in Fredricton New Brunswick.

I highly recommend this article by Marty Klinkenberg from the Telegraph Journal (which I sourced the quotes from above) on Molly Lamb Bobak and Bruno Bobak, particularly the story of the meeting with Lord Beaverbrooke. The article also states:

"Bruno Bobak and Molly Lamb were engaged through a similar government initiative three decades later, and most of their works are now part of the collection at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. In all, Canada enlisted 32 official artists in the Second World War, and between them they produced approximately 5,000 drawings.

Together, the Bobaks accounted for 241."

Their work from the war is in several collections around Canada and you can buy some of their recent war from their website. One of my favorite of Molly's paintings is an image of one of her fellow CWACs, Private Roy.

The description of the work from the Canadian War Museum website states:

"Bobak sketched Private Roy several times in a canteen in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before undertaking the finished portrait. In a 1985 interview the artist commented: 'The painting has caught her at a point in time; she'll always be young and she'll always be Private Roy to those who see her.'"

Our Jewish Heroes

When I spoke with Donna Spencer, director of the play Vimy at the Firehall Arts Centre I was struck by an image she described from her visit to Vimy Ridge this summer. She said there are rows and rows of crosses on the graves of the German soldiers, and occasionally a headstone marking a Jewish German soldier's grave. In both World Wars Jewish Vancouverites from Germany, the Ukraine and other countries went back to Europe to fight as Canadian soldiers.


Joseph Seidelman was the first Jewish person to enter the University of British Columbia. He was one of the Jewish men who enlisted as Canadian soldiers even though they often faced suspicion and prejudice towards their German heritage. He fought valiantly and died in the battle of Paschendale. The online Jewish Museum and Archives Archives of British Columbia displays a letter from Joseph to his sister.

Somewhere in France

July 3, 1917

Dear Rachel,

I just received your letters of June 4 and June 6 and was glad to find out that the official telegram from Ottawa to the effect that I was wounded on May 5 was so long delayed, because it gave my letter of May 6 which I sent you a chance of getting to you first. I was in the hospital 5 weeks altogether and it is now almost a month since I am back with the battalion. I have not yet got a gold stripe for men who were wounded and that they should come to him for the strip. According to military rules and regulations, however, it is not easy to approach an officer, and for this reason I will not ask for the stripe, but if offered it I will take it. Perhaps you would like to know how I got hit. On the night of May 5 we attacked and captured some German trenches and it was then that I got hit in the leg. It was somewhat difficult for me to walk out to the dressing station, but finally succeeded in doing so. On my way out at first, I happened to meet one of our own officers lying wounded in front of the German barbed wire. I did not notice him in the dark as he was lying still but he saw me moving along and called to me. When I found out who he was and that he was more seriously hurt than I was, I went back again to where the fighting was going on and got a stretcher bearer for this officer and, by a very accident, I happened to meet his batman. Then after bringing them to where he was lying, I proceeded on my way to the dressing station as best I could. This officer is Lieut. Hall who, I remember was for a time an instructor in the old 196th Bat. O.T.C. that used to be at Seaford, Eng.
I did not tell you this before because I have so much in my mind to write you that I really get tired writing, so that the result is that you may get a story of my experiences by spasms in different letters. You asked me once when the war will end. Well, I think it may end this winter and perhaps next year.

Well, Rachel, so long for the present, as usual E. Joseph Seidelman.


Many Jewish Canadians also fought in the Second World War including Harry Rankin of Vancouver who joined the Seaforth Highlanders three days after war was declared. According to Tom Hawthorn from the Globe and Mail: "Mr. Rankin was hurt once in training, wounded during the bloody Battle of Ortona in Italy, and suffered a third injury on May 23, 1944, when he was hit in the back by shrapnel while fighting in Italy." Harry became a celebrated "champion of the underdog" in Vancouver and died in Vancouver on Feb. 26, 2002.

Rosie the Riveter, Canuck Style

I am a fan of the television series Foyle's War so this project gives me a good excuse to watch it all over again. The series is about the life of a policeman in England during WWII. I am a HUGE fan of Michael Kitchen's understated acting and Honeysuckle Weeks'plucky character. Last night I watched the episode called Bleak Midwinter based around the female worker's death in the munitions factory. It really drives home the point of how dangerous this work was.

In Vancouver women worked in the shipyards, the Boeing Factory, and the lumber industry ("lumberjills"). I also found out that the Canadian women worked making "light" machine in guns Toronto were represented by Veronica Foster, known as the Ronnie the Brenn gun girl. Images of her have a smoldering, sexy edge.

Some interesting stats and trivia from the Veterans Affairs Canada website:

Out of a total Canadian population of 11 million people, only about 600,000 Canadian women held permanent jobs when the war started. During the war, their numbers doubled to 1,200,000.

At the peak of wartime employment in 1943-44, 439,000 women worked in the service sector, 373,000 in manufacturing and 4,000 in construction.

Ruins into Radishes

GARDENS (aka BOMB CRATER, BLITZED GARDENS) (issue title - WHAT GOES ON?)

Thanks to Michael Levenston's blog at City Farmer, I found an excellent British Pathé film of an extraordinary Victory Garden planted by Mr. Hayes in a bomb crater located in "the shadow of Westminster Cathedral. The text has some great slogans:

Everything the average allotment grows on his plot, Mr Hayes grows in his crater.

Mr Hayes certainly how many beans make five.

That patch was one a bomb crater but Jerry didn't know he was going to say it with flowers.

What was once a bomb has now been transformed into a boon.

Ruins into radishes, litter into leeks and do these girls know their onions!

...Cabbages where cabs were ranked, Londoners can take it and grow it!

• I am currently looking for photos of Victory gardens in Vancouver. Also, I am wondering if city hall had victory gardens in WWII where the community garden is planted right now. You can comment below or contact me here: beespeaker[at]gmail[dot]com.