Since Barbara had her first magazine article published in 1997, she has been afforded many opportunities to expand her repertoire of work to include best-selling author, sought-after public speaker, founder and Chair of a national foundation, documentarian and film producer, World War II expert, and MS Ambassador. Below are a sampling of her many achievements.
On September 10, 1939, CBC Radio interrupted their broadcast with the historic announcement that Canada had declared war on Nazi Germany. From that moment, hundreds of thousands of war workers — predominantly women — conclusively forged a new culture within the nation’s labour, home, and political environs.
Courage and Grit offers ninety amazing stories gleaned from every corner of society, from farmers’ daughters to lawyers, from impoverished immigrants to Rosedale elite, from high school students to great-grandmothers with every narrative unique, intimately personal, and painstakingly examined. In this book, you’ll find stories of faith, loss, love, sacrifice, and devotion to family and country.
These never-before-told stories offer a culturally rich history of the women who served at home during the Second World War.
Publication Date: October 20, 2026
Pre-orders now available at Amazon and Dundurn.
In Barbara’s first book about Canada’s efforts on the home front, Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo gives an account of thousands of women working in high-security, dangerous conditions making bombs in Toronto during the Second World War.
What was it like to work in a Canadian Second World War munitions factory? What were working conditions like? Did anyone die? Just how closely did female employees embody the image of “Rosie the Riveter” so popularly advertised to promote factory work in war propaganda posters? How closely does the TV show, Bomb Girls, resemble the actual historical record of the day-to-day lives of bomb-making employees?
Bomb Girls delivers a dramatic, personal, and detailed review of Canada’s largest fuse-filling munitions factory, situated in Scarborough, Ontario. First-hand accounts, technical records, photographic evidence, business documentation, and site maps all come together to offer a rare, complete account into the lives of over twenty-one thousand brave men and women who risked their lives daily while handling high explosives in a dedicated effort to help win the war.
Release Date: September 2015
Barbara is featured in an episode of the Scarborough Spots Show, which aired in late 2025. According to Jesse Asido, founder of Scarborough Spots, “The Scarborough Show is a celebration of our city, our stories, and our people. We’re filming the podcast inside an actual Scarborough RT car, now preserved at the Toronto Zoo. It doesn’t get more Scarborough than that!”
From notable guests to untold local history, a new podcast is putting Scarborough in the spotlight.
The Scarborough Show launched its first episode on December 1, 2025 across audio and video platforms, featuring sit-down conversations between host Jesse Asido and guests from Scarborough, all filmed inside a decommissioned RT train at the Toronto Zoo.
Episodes run between 20 and 30 minutes and have already featured prominent names, including former NBA All-Star and NBA Champion Jamaal Magloire, actor Tony Nappo as well as Locals Welcome host Suresh Doss and Barbara Dickson.
Watch Scarborough Spots Show:
Barbara appeared on the hit TV show, Secret Nazi Bases, Season 3 as a Second World War expert in 2024.
“From the impossibly massive bunker that gives hints to Hitlerrsquos last attempt to turn the tides to a mysterious installation on a remote icy island in Northern Canada that was discovered only decades after the Nazis were defeated to the long hunted gold the SS stole we decipher the clues to these secret Nazi bases.”
Watch Secret Nazi Bases Season 3 on Prime Video.
In 2023, Barbara established the Bomb Girls Legacy Foundation to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who served their country on the home front during the Second World War. The foundation has many initiatives underway, including a National Bomb Girls Quilt, updating school curriculums, installing commemorative plaques, erecting a national War Worker Monument in Ottawa, and establishing a Home Front Museum, its first in Canadian history.
Please visit the Bomb Girls Legacy Foundation for more information.
On June 6, 2024, on the 80th anniversary of the historic Normandy Invasion, the Bomb Girls Legacy Foundation unfurled 35 memorial banners along Eglinton Avenue in Scarborough where the GECO munitions factory once operated. Over 400 people attended the signature event, held in an airplane hangar at Centennial College in Scarborough. Social Media Director Kate Ritson modeled an authentic reproduction of a classic cotton uniform worn by Bomb Girls.
Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo was nominated for the 2016 Heritage Toronto Award. This prestigious award celebrates outstanding contributions in the promotion and conservation of Toronto’s history and heritage by professionals and volunteers. Competition included works by John Sewell and former Ontario Premier Bob Rae.
Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo was recognized as a 2016 Finalist in the prestigious Speaker’s Book Award of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Competition included former Ontario Premiers Bill Davis and Dalton McGinty.
The Legislative Assembly of Ontario is made up of members of provincial Parliament (MPPs) who are elected by Ontarians to represent them and their constituencies. The Legislative Assembly’s main responsibilities are to debate and pass legislation, to hold the government to account, and to approve government spending. The Legislative Assembly meets in the Legislative Building located in Queen’s Park in Toronto.
“Bomb Girls: A Documentary” features five Canadian bomb girls sharing their incredible personal experiences of filling ammunition containers with explosives at the GECO munitions plant in Scarborough, Ontario during the Second World War. The film includes interviews with historian Barbara Dickson. Actual war-time footage of the Scarborough plant’s construction, its secretive tunnel system, and dangerous fuse-filling operations are portrayed. The story offers a softer, more light-hearted story, a welcome respite from the heaviness that can accompany a traditional war-time documentary.
Along with Producer, Ian Daffern, Barbara helped produce the film, “Bomb Girls: A Documentary,” sponsored by Bell Media and directed by Mike Palmer. The film garnered international acclaim when it was short-listed in the prestigious 2018 Imperial War Museum’s International Short Film Festival in London, England for the Annie Dodds Award for best documentary.
Release Date: 2017
Watch the trailer for Bomb Girls: A Documentary:
Stream the documentary: (https://www.mcintyre.ca/titles/BADI00)
Metrolinx’s Eglinton Crosstown LRT asked Barbara to select photos from the GECO fonds at the Archives of Ontario that are now featured in the Golden Mile area of the city. The large photos depict scenes from the GECO munitions factory which was in Scarborough, Ontario at Eglinton and Warden Avenues. Transformer vaults where the images are displayed can be found along Eglinton Avenue East, just east of Birchmount Road, just south of Eglinton on Warden Avenue, and on the northwest corner of Eglinton and Victoria Park Avenue.
In 2017, Barbara was commissioned by the City of Toronto to name two streets in a new residential neighbourhood in Scarborough, Ontario, in memory of the legacy of Canada’s Bomb Girls. The streets, “Cleanside Road” and “Fusilier Drive” can be found east of Warden Avenue and north of St. Clair Avenue East in South Scarborough, not far from where the original factory once stood.
Barbara worked with former Councillor Michelle (Berardinetti) Holland – Scarborough Southwest – to paint a mural depicting Canada’s Bomb Girls – in particular, the women who filled ammunition at the GECO plant. Councillor Berardinetti commissioned urban muralist Mitchell Lanecki—Omen514—and in just two weeks in September 2014, the 200-foot absolutely stunning mural was completed. The mural is located on St. Clair Avenue East, east of Warden Avenue, on the north side of the Warden subway underpass in Scarborough, Ontario.
Barbara’s first fiction novel, Mountains for Maddi was released in 2009. The publication of Mountains for Maddi is the tangible evidence of her search for a life worth living after being diagnoses with multiple sclerosis in 1992.
Mountains for Maddi is a sweet romance that makes its readers root, not only for Maddi in her courageous struggle with MS, but for all people who deal with disability. Readers will rally, not only for Maddi’s love interest, Greg, as he works through his professional loss, but for MS researchers world-wide as they strive to END MS.
Mountains for Maddi now out of print.
Barbara became an MS Ambassador with the MS Society of Canada in 2005. She continues to support the Society’s mandate to support people with multiple sclerosis and to fund research to find effective treatments, and to ultimately to find a cure for this incurable, progressive, often debilitating disease. Canada has the highest rate of MS in the world. MS Ambassadors work with provincial and federal governments to advocate for effective treatments, request better financial and social support, and fund research.
Barbara is an MS Mentor. People with multiple sclerosis can seek out Barbara for support and guidance from someone who has MS, who understands intimately the struggles of living with a chronic, yet progressive, oft-times debilitating disease.
