male announcer: "Heroines in the Storm" is funded by Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum, the Milsom-Ferrabee Family, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 458 Tamworth, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 105 Cardinal, and Roger and Sandra Harris.

female announcer: On a cold January day in 1942, the first six women workers reported for work at Gibbard's Furniture in small town Napanee, Ontario.

Fresh from picking up their blue overalls and hairnets from the local Eaton's, they were joining an ever growing national workforce of women factory workers and clerks, who would number almost a million by the time the war ended.

Deb Simpson: They wanted to do anything they could do for the war effort, and if that meant it made sense to make--go to a furniture company and do whatever they could, that's what they did.

female announcer: Women found themselves being increasingly called upon to shed their traditional roles and embrace new ones as farm laborers and factory personnel.

Just east of Toronto, the creation of a massive munitions plant ultimately led to the formation of a new town.

male announcer: Two teams are working out, the Fort Wayne Daisies, and the race-- female announcer: In the US, a scheme was being hatched to create a professional baseball league with young women as its stars.

Well, in Canada, even before the war ended, the country saw its first waves of war brides arrive in Halifax.

Chelsea Barranger: And in Canada, it came to kind of represent this class of like, special immigrants, right, these British women, these European women, and they're coming over, and they've chosen our soldiers, and they're going to make Canada great.

female announcer: All this happened during the war at home, a time of hardship and reward for women who found themselves and their contributions valued, even if it was for a brief time.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male: This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

female announcer: When World War II began, Britain looked down on Canada's industry as nothing more than a collection of garages.

One of these small industries was Gibbard's, a furniture factory in Napanee, Ontario that predated confederation.

Over the years, the small company grew in both size and reputation, even as it was passed on from one generation of Gibbard to the next.

It even survived the labor and material shortages of the Great War to roar back in the Twenties.

When the Great Depression appeared to have the once proud company on the cusp of closure, an unlikely savior arrived.

Deb: 1930, the Depression, everything, affected Gibbard's tremendously.

By 1939, 1940, the company was, you know, not doing so great, and Jack McPherson, who had been a sales manager for Gibbard's, came to Gibbard's in 1915 and stayed with the company until 1933, he came back in 1940 and bought the company and restructured it.

female announcer: By 1940, the honorable C.D.

Howe oversaw the newly formed Ministry of Munitions and Supply.

He was charged with transforming Canada's industrial sector and improving productivity at a time of ever increasing material and labor shortages.

As the war progressed, the ministry became one of the largest businesses in the world, with some 28 crown corporations producing everything from rifles to synthetic rubber.

Howe also brought in General Motors of Canada Vice President Harry J. Carmichael to help head up the ministry.

Under Carmichael's leadership, the Bits and Pieces scheme was introduced.

It allowed scores of small, previously unproductive factories to tool up for wartime production.

One of the beneficiaries of the new scheme was Gibbard's.

Deb: The men were off to war, and furniture was still being made, and in fact, this new company basically, was just in its startup mode, and war breaks out, and they lose quite a bit of their workforce.

Jack was a very successful man.

He was--he had vision.

He had a great vision for Gibbard's, and wanted to keep the company alive, and they were able to obtain war contracts for making shell boxes.

female: Yeah, we, I was at the head of the line.

There was a girl that made the ends of the boxes, then it was given to us, and we put--another girl, and I put the sides on.

Boy, I'm telling you, you, spikes like that and pow, one hand, pow, and then you flip it over and you do the other side.

Then it went on to put the bottom on.

It just, one right after the other.

female: Right after-- female: I remember those little cleats, not nails, those little cleats they used to--boy, you'd hit your fingers on those.

male announcer: Sheet metal riveting makes craftsmen of girls who once envied their brothers's toolboxes.

Women learn to turn the domestic needle and thread into tools of war.

♪♪♪ female announcer: Small and large factories across Canada benefited from Carmichael's approach to subcontracting.

In Quebec, a soda fountain company used its facilities to create parts for tanks.

In Weston, a neighborhood of Toronto, the Canadian Cycle and Motor Company, which had made bicycles and hockey skates before the war, shifted production to gun parts, tripods for Bren guns, and cradles for anti-tank guns, and then there was the Defense Industries Limited plant, which sprang up seemingly overnight on a tract of vacant land near Pickering just outside of Toronto.

On Valentine's Day 1940, survey crews arrived to begin the process of turning 3,000 acres of land on the shore of Lake Ontario into a secure munitions assembly compound.

By the time construction was finished, the complex had 30 miles of road, 30 miles of rail, and at its height employed 9,000 people, most of them women.

Louise Johnson: And all my friends were joining services, and I really wasn't inclined to put on a uniform for some reason.

So this was my chance to help out in the war effort.

female announcer: Louise Johnson was born Louise Morris to homesteader parents in rural Saskatchewan.

Louise: We lived in Sturgeon River, Saskatchewan, and I grew up there for the first seven years of my life.

I grew up in Sturgeon River.

When I was seven I had to go to school, but the school was four and a half miles away.

So I went to live with my grandma Campbell who lived in--near Shellbrook, and the school was only two and a half miles away, which was a much shorter walk for a little guy.

female announcer: The prairie provinces were hit particularly hard during the Great Depression, with staggering droughts of dust storms destroying wheat crops and wiping out farms and ranches at a time when other employment was almost impossible to find.

Louise Johnson was lucky.

She found work in Saskatoon.

Louise: I made $1 a week looking after children, and feeding them, and so forth.

Some of the work didn't last six months, and neighbors would hear about me and I would get another job, and then I found a job at Saskatoon City Hospital, which was a steady job, and I lived in a rooming house nearby.

female announcer: During the Great War, women were valued members of the workforce, only to be tossed aside when soldiers returned home to take back their old jobs.

It wasn't until the early Twenties when women made back many of their earlier social gains.

In the workforce women dominated fields of physiotherapy and sociology, but many found themselves in secretarial work.

Canadian women made greater strides in higher education.

Roughly a quarter of undergrads were women, while a third of graduate students were women, a marked increase in women's presence at campus before the Great War.

As the Great Depression dragged on, those numbers fell sharply.

Women re-entered the workforce to help supplement family incomes and bolster pogie schemes, but at the same time, married women were often discriminated against in favor of married men or single women in need of work.

male announcer: In Canada, women in overalls are a familiar sight.

Replacing men in war industries, these wives and sisters of soldiers.

female announcer: With the coming of the Second World War, women were needed to bolster the labor pool, regardless of marital status.

By mid 1941, the reserve pool of male workers in Canada was depleted as men were joining the war effort overseas.

Studies by the Canadian government noted a large reserve of women workers would be needed to be mobilized to ensure the success of the war effort.

It was calculated that over 560,000 women would be available to fill the labor reserve in Canada, and that didn't include women in rural Canada or those considered to be homemakers.

It also left out 85% of urban homemakers on the notion that pulling them from the home to do wartime work could lead to disastrous disruptions to family life.

Sherry Pringle: Prior to the war it was traditional for the woman to stay at home, but with the shortage of men at war, women wanted to step up to the plate to do their bit, and often they had a boyfriend or a brother or an uncle or someone close to them was off fighting.

male announcer: Tossing red hot rivets with all the skill of veterans, these girls are helping Canada turn out 10,000 ton victory ships.

female announcer: By the fall of 1942, a special women's division of the National Selective Service was created to register women aged 20 to 24.

Registration was compulsory, regardless of marital status.

As much as possible, employment permits were restricted to single women and women without children.

The recruitment efforts paid off, and by 1944 more than 1 million were working full time in paid wartime related industries.

This doesn't include the 800,000 women who worked on farms, with or without pay, or the many more women who worked part time.

Women worked in many industries.

By the fall of 1943, 439,000 women were in the service industry, 373,000 were in manufacturing, 180,000 were trades and the financial sector, and 31,000 were in transportation and communication, while another 4,000 women occupied jobs in construction.

A shipbuilder in Nova Scotia employed 300 women in its wartime labor force of 1,300, and soon other shipyards in Nova Scotia and British Columbia followed their lead.

Sherry: Beth Robinson, for example, was an occupational therapist.

Number one, I didn't know we had occupational therapists during the war, and she was stationed at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Hospital, outside Quebec City.

So the troop ships returning with injured soldiers and sailors and military would come up the river, and they would deliver their patients to Sainte-Anne-to-Bellevue, and she would work with them.

female announcer: Wartime factories like Defense Industries Limited actively recruited single women and married women without children to fill jobs at its new location east of Toronto.

Louise: The DIL had built--I wouldn't want to call them barracks.

I would call them residences.

They were lovely living accommodation, 100 girls in each one of them, and I was--my name was called, and I was to go to a residence 721 to room, and I've forgotten the room number.

So it was all slick, and the first thing they did when you get settled, go over to the cafeteria, which was just across the street, and get yourself some food.

So we were well treated.

female announcer: Louise Johnson and thousands of women from the prairies, as well as the maritimes, flocked to the new factory, drawn by promises of high pay and benefits, with only subtle hints about the potential dangers of the work waiting for them.

Louise: So I wrote to my father and said this opportunity presents itself.

What do you say?

Should I go or not, and that was the only handwritten letter I ever got from my father.

Came back immediately to say, take the opportunity.

What's to lose, you know.

Maybe you should do this.

female announcer: Like so many of the young women who signed up for work, Johnson had limited travel experience, and the cross country train ride that awaited her and her fellow munitions plant recruits was the start of a great adventure.

Louise: They were coaches, and you didn't lie down.

I mean, you sat in a regular seat.

I believe they brought us a pillow and a light blanket, and there was a place where you could buy muffins and something to drink, but there really wasn't a food car.

I mean, you--that was your chair, and you were there till you got there.

At Union Station, there were ladies from the plant there to meet us, signs that said that they knew who was coming.

They had a list of everybody.

They had it all figured out as to where we were going to live.

♪♪♪ female announcer: In Napanee, the first women workers for Gibbard's visited the town's Eaton store for their blue coveralls and hair nets.

Deb: They were lined up in a row, and Mr.

Jack McPherson came out of his office smoking his pipe, and he walked up and down in front of them.

He says, "Well, girls, we really need you here," and he walked up and down with his hand behind his back and his pipe, and he said, "We really, really need you here, but I want you to know, when the boys come back from the war, you're back in the kitchen."

female announcer: Soon the original six were joined by more women at Gibbard's.

From 1942 to 1946, 232 women worked at the company, all making well below their male co-workers due to the wage disparity mandated by the Canadian government.

Even a brief strike by some of the women plant workers in 1944 failed to garner a raise in wages.

Deb: The management at that time said to them, you know, we're--we'll be happy to accept your resignation, but we're happy to take you back right now, and the War Office also said at that time, we want you to know that we're stepping things up.

You're going to be getting more contracts, and we need your help, and so they all went back to work.

female announcer: Wage disparities weren't unique to Gibbard's.

War industries paid good wages, this much is true.

While women still earned only two thirds of what men did, they could still earn more in the war industry than other jobs.

From 1939 to 1949, women's industrial wages increased more rapidly than men's wages.

female: We used to have to pay mom.

She just charged us a little bit of rent to make us responsible when we stayed at home, and we had-- female: $4 a week.

female: It was what, $5 out of our $10 or whatever it was?

female: I got--I remember $4.

female: Out of our wages, and I think maybe I had six or--$6 left that I had to buy my clothes and my treats or whatever.

female announcer: Small town factories provided decent pay, while women who worked in the aircraft industry could easily pull down 83 cents an hour.

It's little wonder that the defense industry's limited compound was constantly expanding to meet demand for its product, as well as its ever growing workforce.

The compound grew to house a bowling alley, hospital, movie house, dance hall, and other amenities to keep its employees, many of them women, content during their limited off hours.

Louise Johnson settled into this world and her new life manufacturing munitions for the war effort.

She was billeted in a women's dormitory.

Each residence housed 100 young women with a house matron to oversee them.

Johnson was one of the thousands of women who took part in shift work at the plant, working six day weeks with only Sundays off.

Louise: It was life.

We made do with what was available to us, you know, and what energy we had.

It wasn't money-wise, that things didn't cost a lot.

We were supposed to put our money into victory bonds and et cetera, yeah.

male announcer: Preparation for ditching.

The ground must be cleared before the excavator can get to work.

female announcer: From the earliest days of the war, it became clear food would be crucial for success.

In Great Britain, approximately 80,000 women, many of whom had never set foot on a farm before wartime, joined the Women's Land Army.

They worked in harsh and remote conditions in rural England, helping farmers generate food and prevent Britain from being starved out by Germany.

Meanwhile, in Canada the Federal Department of Agriculture and the Ontario Farm Service Force helped bring back farmerette camps, a popular work scheme from the Great War.

Sherry: So by the time we get to World War II, there's a shortage of labor to get--help get crops planted and harvested too.

These young women, most of them teenage girls, had never been away from home before.

This was their first time living with strangers, living and working with strangers, but they knew that it was something that they could do to help the war effort.

female announcer: Ontario was the first province to take part in the farmerette program in 1941.

British Columbia followed two years later.

In BC, schoolgirls and boys, along with female teachers, mobilized during school holidays for farm work.

In Ontario, the Farm Service Force was created with three divisions, the Farmerette Brigade for female students 16 and older, along with their female teachers, the Women's Land Brigade for older women with no previous farm experience, and a Farm Girls' Brigade for women under 26 who could work full time on a farm as necessary.

Food, housing, and a small wage were provided to young women who spent summers planting and harvesting field crops and tending livestock.

Temporary living accommodation was set up in high school gymnasiums or other available areas, and each camp had a camp mother and a cook.

Each morning, area farmers would arrive to pick up the girls and take them to their farms to work.

Sherry: Women had to step up to fill the gaps for the soldiers that were off at the warfront, and there was no one else to do it.

So they filled in.

They--a lot of them had never been on a farm before.

Some of them were city girls.

They did what was necessary to help bring the crops in.

female announcer: Volunteerism and unpaid work accounted for the largest contribution made by women during the war.

Domestic work was assigned new value, and Canada saw a rise in communal kitchens and communal laundries to ease the burden of women working in essential industries.

To increase Canada's food production and ease the strain on the nation's transportation infrastructure that was needed for moving wartime goods and troops, the victory garden made a comeback.

First introduced during the Great War, the victory garden was transformed into relief gardens, giving the unemployed a sense of purpose while mitigating food shortages.

By 1943, 50% of public land in Toronto had been tilled for victory gardens, along with countless front lawn plots by homeowners.

Sherry: And the victory gardens were very important because the government laid out what plans that they could use, what were the most important vegetables and easiest to grow, root crops, potatoes, beans, carrots, things like that, and so it was satisfying for them because it was within their realm.

It was not a tough stretch to go out there in a place that was very foreign to them, in a factory perhaps.

It was easier for them to do such thing and make a large contribution.

female announcer: As women were told to dig in, they were also told to dig out the scrap and save metals, rags, paper, bones, rubber, glass, and other materials.

Volunteer drivers collected materials and handed out pamphlets outlining collection and recycling needs.

Women were also being called on increasingly as preppers of food, clothes makers, and managers of family budgets.

Many women were also, for the first time, to save scraps and oils for the ammunition industry and pennies to buy war stamps.

male announcer: -- pitches, Williams swings.

There's a high drive.

female announcer: In 1941, baseball was having a great year.

Ted Williams batted ,406, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games, and 41-year-old Lefty Grove got his 300th career win.

Only Brooklyn Dodgers fans were left heartbroken again.

Mickey Owen would go down in history when he mishandled a pitch that cost the Dodgers the World Series, crushing the entire borough in the process.

Lost in all the action of 1941, the Major League Baseball's first two players reported for the draft.

Hugh Mulcahy left the pitching mound for the Philadelphia Phillies, while future hall of famer Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers gave up his $55,000 annual salary for $21 per month Army pay when he reported to Fort Cluster, Michigan.

"If there's any last message to be given to the public," he told the sporting news, "I'm going to be a good soldier."

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Mr.

Vice President, Mr.

Speaker, Members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives, yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

female announcer: On December 7, 1941, Japan shocked Americans with a devastating attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Within days, the United States, which had managed to avoid the growing world war, was pulled into the global conflict.

Just as quickly, Philip Wrigley, owner of Wrigley Chewing Gum, ordered his company's larger than life light up sign in New York City's Times Square dismantled, and the scrap metal donated to the war effort.

The sign consumed enough electricity to light up a town of 20,000 people.

Wrigley's order wasn't just patriotic, it was good marketing.

The move garnered more publicity than he could have possibly purchased.

He also quickly sponsored radio programs about armed forces and women joining the war effort.

Philip Wrigley also owned the popular but hapless Chicago Cubs, and the war and baseball were about to collide.

William Humber: Come the Second World War, men were being drafted, men were choosing to go into the armed forces, and the quality of Major League Baseball was declining, to such an extent that Philip Wrigley, who owned the Chicago Cubs of the National League of Baseball, felt that there was a need to find other means of attracting spectators to games.

female announcer: While Major League Baseball was declared essential to American morale by the US government, the sport and its owners were about to face wartime problems, not the least of which was labor shortages due to a military draft.

Team owners said loudly players should not be exempt from the draft, quietly hoping they might keep their players on the field.

When the draft came and players started to report, baseball faced a crisis on and off the field as a result.

William: It--there was a labor shortage in terms of Major League ballplayers.

Now, I suppose, had they been totally sincere in the process, they might have hired women to play Major League Baseball, but there was no way that was going to happen in the 1940s.

We've not seen it ever happen as yet, so.

It may happen one day, who knows, but I think the opportunity was seen as a means of expanding the reach of the game.

female announcer: With this challenge in mind, Wrigley turned to an unlikely ball and bat game, softball.

Since its invention in 1887, softball had steadily grown in popularity, and by the 1920s leagues had spread across North America.

Many of the teams had women as their star players.

The 1920s and 1930s also represented a golden age in women's sports.

William: Women suddenly were active in track and field in the Olympic Games.

In Canada the women played professional hockey.

They made money.

They barnstormed across the country.

Obviously softball was a major sport for women in certain American and Canadian cities, and so it was kind of natural that they might pick up and play during the Second World War.

female announcer: Faced with diminishing talent on the field as players left for the war effort, and the very real threat of travel restrictions, Wrigley launched his new adventure.

It was aimed at small Midwestern towns within easy travel distance for the new teams.

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League would bring a brand of professional baseball to small town Middle America.

William: Initially I think he might have thought that, you know, maybe we could put a women's game before a Major League game, but in time he came to see that perhaps attracting women, largely from the game of softball, he could actually build up an alternative audience for sports and for baseball--bat and ball type games generally.

male announcer: Two teams are working out, the Fort Wayne Daisies and the Racine Bells, getting in shape for an opening day doubleheader.

Dottie Schroeder-- female announcer: In the spring of 1943, Wrigley Field was bustling with activity as young women from across North America tried out for the fledgling league.

One of these women was a one-time model from Saskatchewan who grew up with eight siblings, all baseball catchers.

Mary Bonnie Baker, whose husband Maurice was away serving his country in the Canadian Armed Forces, was working as a clerk for the Army and Navy store by day and catching for a local team at night and on weekends when she was scouted by Hub Bishop.

Bishop was the same man who would later discover Gordie Howe for the Detroit Red Wings.

William: She was discouraged from playing as a child by her father.

It was her mother who pushed her into the game.

Then when she got married, her husband was reluctant to have her continue to play the game, but he went overseas.

He was part of the Canadian Army, and when he was overseas, his mother, i.e., Bonnie Baker's mother-in-law, said, "You go.

You go and play in that league.

You have the talent and you have the ability to do it."

So it was--in many respects, the society itself was ahead of the rest of society in other places.

female announcer: During the spring of 1943, Bonnie Baker was one of many young women crowded into Wrigley Field hoping to be noticed and make one of the teams in the fledgling league.

Not only was she noticed by the league's coaching staff, but she also caught the eye of Wrigley too, and soon Baker was face to face with the Cubs owner and his wife.

"The closest thing I had ever got was chewing his gum, so I was quite excited, but when I took my mask off my hair was hanging down.

It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life," recalled Baker, "and they were very nice, very ordinary kind people.

I thanked them kindly for starting the league because it had been one of my dreams to play professional baseball."

Another ballplayer from Canada's prairies was Audrey Haine.

Born in Winnipeg, she grew up during the Depression, raised mostly by her mother.

A natural athlete, Haine quickly picked up baseball.

female: Well, the kids on the street, I mean, we always played baseball, and, you know, we didn't have to stop the game too often to let cars go by, 'cause where I lived in those days, there weren't too many cars.

The doctor went by occasionally, and we didn't really have, you know, a good bat or a good ball.

The balls were usually half ripped in there, but I don't think it ever bothered us.

We were out there playing and had a great time.

female announcer: As a teenager, Haine caught the eye of scouts for Wrigley's league, and by the time she was 17, Audrey had signed her contract and was on her first train trip on her way to Chicago for spring training.

female: I was just about as green as the grass we were gonna play on, you know.

I'd never had any experience being away, and so it was a pretty exciting and nerve-wracking experience for me to join the other players from Western Canada and get on the train out of Winnipeg and head for Chicago.

female: ♪ We're the members of the All-American League.

♪ ♪ We come from cities near and far.

♪ ♪ We're all for one.

♪ ♪ We're one for all.

♪ ♪ We're All-American.

♪ female announcer: As spring training broke up, successful women candidates were divided into teams like the Rockford Peaches, Racine Bells, and the Kenosha Comets, to name a few.

female: Because it was fun and I got paid for it.

I mean, it was something I loved to do, and I got paid for--quite well, and I was able to send money home to my mother, and oh, yeah.

No on--if you're a ballplayer and you're playing on a team and you're doing okay, you're not leaving it, no.

female announcer: Ball players in Wrigley's new league started the season with a set of rules his Chicago Cubs never had to worry about.

No public displays of smoking, drinking, or swearing were allowed.

A ballplayer couldn't be seen with a man unless she was married to him or accompanied by a chaperone.

Then there was charm school.

All players had to attend Helena Rubinstein's charm school during the evenings, where they were taught proper dress code, etiquette, and beauty tips to make the girls as attractive as possible.

female: Yes, and we learned how to pour tea if we--you know, and how to sit properly, stand properly.

How to walk with a book on your head, straight and tall, and we learned all those essential things.

We only--I think they only had the charm school for one year as I recall, but we were all so bright, we picked everything up in one year.

female announcer: Lipstick was mandatory, and the girls, as they were called, were only allowed to wear skirts or dresses when in public and away from the playing field.

Then there was the less than practical uniform.

In its earliest forms, a tunic style designed less for baseball practicality and more to make sure the public knew they were watching young women round the base paths.

William: One of the hazards, of course, of wearing skirts is if you're going to play baseball, or softball as the game initially started out as, you're going to slide into base, and when you slide into base, you slide on your legs, and massive strawberries, as they were called, were the fate of women athletes who did this, and they would have these enormous blotches, blood curdling to the surface of their upper legs, which when treated, looked pretty disgusting, but were the fate of those who wore dresses to play baseball.

female: It didn't matter what kind of uniform they'd have given us, we would have put it on.

We were playing baseball, and we were so thrilled to be there, but there was a lot of, you know, laughing, et cetera, about the uniforms, especially by fans in the first year, but no, I think most of us liked to play in that.

Now, I cannot speak for all of them.

I mean, I know some didn't.

female announcer: Not all women were lucky enough to play in Wrigley's league.

Kathleen Myers, who was born Kathleen Kent, December 1921 in Napanee, Ontario, was a natural athlete who excelled in all school sports, but never got the chance to play in the professional baseball loop set up by the chewing gum magnate.

The oldest of seven children born to Joe and Estella Kent, Kathleen was a star on the basketball and volleyball courts for Napanee District Collegiate, while excelling at high jump.

While she was a stellar basketball player, once scoring 40 of her school team's 48 points during a convincing victory in January 1944, Kathleen was an equally impressive baseball player.

Her opportunities to play professional baseball were limited, so she contented herself with semi-organized local leagues and making a few dollars under the table for each game.

Sherry: Kay joined a professional industrial league baseball team, being paid a couple of dollars for every game under the table, but it was rivaling her husband's paycheck from the Air Force.

That's how much she was making.

female announcer: Even as Kathleen Meyers continued to play in semi-organized leagues close to home, other women were drawn to the opportunity to play professional softball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

At its height during World War II, the league employed 600 women from a large contingent coming from Canada, mostly from the prairie provinces.

William: Even though it was largely a rural society, it had been settled by homesteaders who had married women who in many respects had more education than them.

They had come west as school teachers, and so they married farmers whose education was not as pronounced as the women, and as a result, it was a very kind of liberal, open society, and particularly in regards to the roles that women would play.

female announcer: As women stepped up to fill more and more roles left behind by men departing for war, there was a sense of security knowing they were far removed from a threat of invasion.

Then in 1942, an invasion of another kind took place as the first war brides arrived on Canada's shores.

male announcer: At an eastern Canadian port, a happy cargo arrives.

It is made up of some of the wives and kiddies Johnny Canuck has sent home from England.

female announcer: The majority of those war brides came from the United Kingdom.

Some 45,000 brides arrived in Canada from the British Isles by the time the war ended.

Lilian Harper Phibbs: We came through Pier 21 at Halifax, landed on my father's birthday.

Daddy never got over the fact that I said, "Landed safely.

Happy birthday, Dad," and then we rode for three days on this train that every time another train had to go through we had to go in a siding, and then we finally got to Ottawa, and there is Murray standing there, and I was in tears.

Chelsea: And in Canada, it came to kind of represent this class of like, special immigrants, right, these British women, these European women, and they're coming over, and they've chosen our soldiers, and they're going to make Canada great, and some war brides were really uncomfortable with the term because some of them got married in like, 1940, and they already had a four year old child with them when they came to Canada.

So war bride to them meant like, young woman, recently married, and in their minds they were established and had a family, and it was a title that didn't really click with them, and some women also didn't like it, 'cause Canadian women would use it against them, as, you know, those war brides "stole our men."

So it's kind of a weird mix for the community.

Some of the women really like it, some of the women don't like it, and the moniker has stuck, right?

We're 70, 80 years on, and we're still calling them war brides.

female announcer: Many of the war brides entering Canada arrived in Nova Scotia after a long and brutal ocean crossing.

Lilian: But everybody was so sick.

There were 11 of us in a cabin, and the swimming pool area was just solid rows of babies nappies, you know.

They were--we didn't--everything had to be washed by hand, remember?

I didn't have a washing machine.

I used to wash in a bathtub when I first came over.

We had a room, and I had to wash in the bathtub.

but they--we came over, and everybody was sick.

It was a very rough crossing.

Chelsea: So that would have been very traumatic with small children, and when you're coming across, even after the war, 'cause the Department of National Defense and the Canadian Wives' Bureau tried really hard to make it a comfortable experience for the women.

They worked with the Canadian Red Cross so that there'd be pillows, blankets, nurseries, nurses to help take care of the children if they got sick, and they created these very elaborate menus to show that Canada was welcoming to them and it was really excited to have them, but for women who'd been on strict rationing for almost five years, this sumptuous diet of like, bread, butter, chocolate, candy, was making them really sick, 'cause the women would gorge themselves.

If you ever read a war bride account, there's always a description of what she ate coming on the trip because after years of very tight rationing, that food was amazing to them, but they'd get seasick, and then they'd get food poisoning depending on what they ate and how much they ate, and then they had young children to take care of.

So the intention of making this, you know, a fun journey for them inadvertently made it rougher for some women actually.

female announcer: For many war brides, their experience fit the popular narrative of love at first sight or being swept off their feet by a dashing Canadian serviceman.

Lilian: Told me how much I meant to him, and could we meet up again.

So we--well, we met on May the 7th, I was posted the end of July, and then we didn't manage to--we were communicating with telephoning back and forth.

We didn't manage to communicate--see each other again until the end of July, and he was getting ready to go overseas.

So we arranged to meet in Paisley.

I got up--I was at Dunfermline, and I got a 36 hour pass and stayed with the parents of Eren and we saw each other.

We met up in the graveyard.

female announcer: Lost in the notions of wartime romance is the harsh reality that these women were victims of war.

They were witness to assaults on their homeland as sirens wailed and bombs fell from the sky, lying waste to those towns and cities, jolting them to adulthood.

Chelsea: They had nothing left in the UK.

Their homes had been bombed, their families had died during the war or during the bombings, and these young men represented a new beginning for them, and in some cases, you also had, you know, young men and women trying to live for the moment.

They thought they were going to die, and you had some people who got married because of some unplanned pregnancies.

male announcer: On the subject of household science, notes taken will be valuable later on.

Many subjects-- female announcer: When the brides of Canadian servicemen arrived in their new homeland, they faced culture shock and backlash from a society that wasn't always keen to have them as new members of the family and the community.

Chelsea: What I thought was really interesting in Ontario is there's rejection from English-speaking Ontarians because they're British.

There's this idea that, you know, you should have married a Canadian girl.

Like, why did you marry this British girl, and I think that's tied to Canada kind of coming into its own in the war period.

I mean, at the beginning of the war Canadians are British subjects.

By the end of the war we are British subjects, but we are first and foremost Canadian citizens under the creation of the Citizenship Act.

So I think that attitude is kind of tied to that and how they treated these women.

female announcer: By the time the war started to wind down, a large defense plant outside Pickering had become a sprawling complex, a town unto itself.

Louise Johnson had fallen in love with and married a co-worker, and the two had settled in a cozy prefab house near Defense Industries Limited, then slowly their time at the defense plant started to draw to an end.

Louise: They brought me the quick slips to type, and they were in a nice alphabetical order.

So I took the J and put it on the bottom, so I was the last production group, sneaky.

So I like to say I was the last production person.

I wasn't the first one, but I was the last one.

male: It's time for the experts to meet our first challenger whose job they've got to spot.

So would you sign in, please, ma'am.

Bonnie?

Bonnie Baker.

Miss or Mrs?

Bonnie Baker: It's Mrs.

male: Mrs.

Baker, where are you from, Mrs.

Baker?

Bonnie: I'm from Regina, Canada.

male: Regina, that's up in Saskatchewan country, isn't it?

Well, for heaven's sake.

Well, then, there's some people over there that I know you want to see a little closer on.

They want to see a little more of you.

So would you be good enough to walk down in front of the panel?

female announcer: As Mary Bonnie Baker impressed on television's "What's My Line," she was nearing the end of her career as a professional baseball player.

After the war, she had contemplated quitting the game she loved and returning to a quiet life as a housewife.

"And my intentions were good.

I was going to stay home and be a good wife," she recalled, "but the closer it came to the time to go, the more miserable I got."

Instead, she continued to play ball and rose to become player-manager by the time she retired in 1952.

The league itself continued until 1956.

Meanwhile, Canada's popular history began to turn war brides into almost mythical people with far-reaching influence on the nation's culture.

Chelsea: Well, if we're going off of the official government narrative, for example, the commemorative Canada Post envelope that they released a couple of years ago, they build the nation, right?

You know, their children are the future of the nation of Canada, and I think that's a very interesting claim, because while those children are definitely here, and they've made an impact, there were 45,000 war brides.

There were over 2 million soldiers from Canada during the Second World War.

So I think that's a little bit of a stretch.

female announcer: As the second half of the 20th century unfolded, the legacy of the women of World War II would not be just about what they did or what they survived during the war years.

It would just as importantly, be about the strength and passion passed into another generation.

Chelsea: What I think is particularly interesting is all of these women engaged in service, and I think these women, as well as the Canadian women who were involved in war work or service work, probably influenced their daughters in the next generation, and that really helped with what you see the, you know, the second wave feminism in the 60s and 70s.

Their children would be a part of that.

female announcer: In Napanee, Ontario, the hulking remains of Gibbard's furniture sits on the edge of downtown.

Established in 1835, it survived the Great Depression and two World Wars, receiving numerous awards for its craftsmanship and designs.

During the dark years of World War II, the company proudly sold war bonds and supplied the war effort with materials.

During the post-war years, the factory continued to be both economic and industrial soul of the town until it closed its doors for good in June of 2010.

Now it sits awaiting its new life as a condominium development.

If you listen closely, you can almost hear the distant voices of the women who kept the factory going during the war at home.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male announcer: More information on this program can be found at: wanderingjournalist.com/heroines -in-the-storm.

"Heroines in the Storm" is funded by Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum, the Milsom-Ferrabee Family, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 458 Tamworth, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 105 Cardinal, and Roger and Sandra Harris.