Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 22.
The Gatineau Hills: Love at First Sight
Norma E. Waimsley
The question is often asked of people who have moved to the Gatineau, “What made you settle here?” And the unspoken corollary is, “Why would you consciously choose to put up with the inconveniences of country living, when Canada’s beautiful capital city is only a few miles away?”
For others, the answers are legion and varied. But my attachment to this area was sparked by an experience during World War II. Stationed at Air Force Headquarters in Ottawa and on a weekend leave, I found myself in the company of a friend, walking the Skyridge trails in Gatineau Park amid the glorious fall colours which to me were so magnificent they became emblazoned on my mind. I fell in love with the whole locale, the hills, the river, the winding roads. That vision, first seen over 50 years ago, has never left me.
The year 1995 was an occasion that prompted remembering “fifty years ago.” The year of 1945 and the six years preceding it are particularly etched in the psyche of each individual who was in military service, but they hold significant memories and a variety of emntions for everyone who was involved during the war.
The experiences recalled by women who were of enlistment age for the armed services at that time are especially unique. In a society where nursing, teaching and secretarial work were the conventional careers open to women — and these, in the minds of many, to be only until “the right man came along” — a significant event occurred on July 2, 1941. On that date, the Government of Canada passed an Order-in-Council authorizing “the formation of a component of the Royal Canadian Air Force to be known as the Canadian Auxiliary Air Force, its function being to release to heavier duties those members of the RCAF employed in administrative, clerical and other comparable types of service employment.”
Canadian nursing sisters had served in World War I on active service and had won an outstanding place in history. But otherwise, Canadian women had never been recruited for military service. The RCAF had been considering the idea of enlisting women along the model of the British RAF auxiliary, WAAF, but it was not until the Canadian Government passed the Order-in-Council in 1941 that authorization was granted for them to officially recruit women.
And so it was that after several months of organizing and planning by the RCAF authorities, the first Canadian women were recruited for military service, operating under the motto, “We serve that men may fly.” Officially they were known as the Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (CWAAF), re-named in 1942 the RCAF Women’s Division or WDs.
The RCAF was the first of the Canadian armed forces to recruit women — a good six weeks before the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWACs), followed by the ‘WRENS, women who joined the Royal Canadian Navy from late 1942 onwards. Taking up the opportunity to serve was more or less automatic for me, a 21 yearold with a family military history. My brother had earlier enlisted in the RCAF aircrew, my father and two uncles served overseas in World War I, and my grandfather served 22 years in the British Imperial Army in India (1879-1901) plus several more years at the War Office in London, England before coming to Canada.
Thus it was not surprising that in November of 1941 I enlisted in Winnipeg and was ordered to report for basic training to Toronto, at the old Havergal College which had been converted for use as the RCAF Training Depot for women. After receiving our uniforms, learning the rudiments of marching and saluting and taking our basic trade training, we were ready to be sent out for duty. On January 25, 1942 1 was among the 120 women of Original Number 4 Squadron posted to a Service Flying Training School — Number 6 SFTS Dunnville — where, despite the bitter weather, we settled in to urheated barracks on the wind-swept shore of Lake Ontario. We were, of course, the first women to be sent to that station. Upon our arrival, the Commanding Officer (who was later to apologize for his remarks) made no secret of his displeasure as he greeted the shivering group of women lined up on the parade square. He had not even made any real effort to see that our barracks were ready.
Our Squadron consisted of women hospital assistants, telephone and wireless operators, secretaries, transport drivers, cooks and “messwomen” (as waitresses were called), accountants, photographers and equipment assistants — the category in which I had enlisted.
I was placed in charge of the station’s aircraft supplies and equipment section. Six months later I was informed that I had done “such an excellent job” that I was to be commissioned! August 1942 found me undergoing Officer’s training in Toronto and I was thence posted to Air Force Headquarters in Ottawa, as the Officer-in-Charge of all RCAF supplies for the Women’s Division in Canada and Overseas. I remained in that post for the duration of the war.
Those were years of high-pressure work: competing with other branches of the armed services for scarce production capacity of materials (to make greatcoats, uniforms, etc.) at the weekly meeting of The Honorable C. D. Howe’s Department of Munitions and Supply; raising contracts for the manufacture of our clothing requirements as well as purchasing footwear and other items; and keeping the different equipment depots supplied, wherever Air Force women were stationed within Canada and abroad. We had no computers in those days, and we had only the most basic of telephone and telegraph communications. Deadlines were real, needs were great and urgent, and the tension was constant. The number of women for whom clothing and other supplies had to be found reached around the 20,000 mark before the war ended.
Along with its tragedies and destruction, war time meant the forging of new friendships. And though, for me, there was always disappointment that my position was classified as essential, so that an overseas posting was continually denied by my Air Vice-Marshal, the privilege of spending 48-hour “passes” or leaves up the Gatineau was an experience which was to have a lasting impact.
It is impossible for me to describe the amazement of that first autumn day in 1942. At a time when coloured photos and television had not impressed such scenes upon our minds, the prairie autumns of my home in Manitoba were suddenly supplanted by a riot of colour as far as the eye could see. The Gatineau hills and the whole area caught me by surprise.
Though our free time was at a premium, I persuaded four other WDs to join with me in renting a non-winterized cottage at Kirk’s Ferry for the forthcoming ski season. So whenever we had a weekend off, the routine was to catch the Friday evening train which stopped very briefly at the tiny Kirk’s Ferry station. This necessitated dropping off our skis and packs as we approached the station, and then walking back along the tracks to retrieve them after we had jumped off, as the train had continued north.
We kept the fire stoked throughout the night to keep warm, and skied at Camp Fortune all day Saturday. Then on Sunday, we skied back by way of Scott Road (then only a trail), through the Park, across the open field, past the Sacré Coeur Hospital (then on Laurier Street in Hull) through areas that are now built up, and caught the Wrightville streetcar back across the river to Ottawa.
I marvel at the enthusiasm which, when winter ended, inspired us to accept the invitation of one of our WDs, Eileen Mahon, to go to her grandparents’ (at that time unoccupied) “Homestead” on the shores of Mahon Lake at Rupert for the rare weekend “48s” in the summer. This time the train trip was longer, and we detrained at Alcove and sat atop the mailbags in the mailman’s trailer as we hitched our pre-arranged ride to our destination. Our hours of swimming and biking, just plain lazing in the sun, and taking turns preparing food were interspersed with “dressing up” our summer cottage and making it more home-like.
Present-day drives past that spot are haunted with happy memories of bygone days which hardly seem possible — days when there were no cottages on that part of the Lake’s shore. Days of respite from the weeks of hard work and the anxious moments when we learned from the radio (and from newsreels at the movies) of action at the war front, where our relatives and school pals were risking their lives, with far too many becoming casualties in our common cause. The outcome of the ‘war was uncertain but we did know, or thought we knew, that if we could win this fight for freedom we would surely find a better way to solve conflicts in the future. Certainly we were convinced that all the tragedies and sacrifices were worthwhile.
For women, the war opened a Pandora’s box which would never again be closed. ‘Women proved their ability in so many fields, and though after the war there was an apparent return to the status quo, some now knew that they had choices. I cannot, of course, really speak for anyone but myself. For me, everything after those fateful years — undergraduate and graduate study at McGill, university teaching, work with governmental and non-governmental agencies to try to bring some social justice into situations here and throughout the world - everything has been coloured by the experiences and “service” orientation of those intense years from 1941 to post-war wind-down in 1946.
It was with great relief and profound thankfulness that we all experienced the end of the war. And the establishment of the United Nations, which held out the hope that such a conflict would be avoided for all future generations. It seems ironic, however, that it is to wartime dislocation that I owe my introduction to the Gatineau!
In 1967 I was drawn back and became a permanent resident in this area. These beautiful hills, the river and the rhythm of seasonal changes have continued to be for me, as for literally thousands of people since pioneer days, a source of spiritnal strength and great happiness — a happiness that gives special meaning to the word “home.”