Canadian Bomb Girl Stories: United for Peace

Bomb Girls: United for Peace

Bomb Girls: United for Peace is author and historian Barbara Dickson’s follow-on book to Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo, and features one hundred and one inspiring Canadian bomb girl stories. Every story is as unique as the bomb girl behind the narrative; their stories offering an intimate glimpse into life amid the sometimes tragic vagaries of a nation at war. These courageous women lived in a society where rationing was their “new normal;” where the fate of beloved husbands, fathers, and sons fighting overseas hung in the balance; where victory gardens and victory bonds became more than mere catch phrases; where food security and financial survival were ever on their minds.

Canadian Bomb Girl Stories Hard to Find

With close to a million men and women engaged in war work on the home front in Canada, one might expect it easy to compile a book with one hundred tales. Over 21,000 employees worked at GECO alone; a top-secret munitions factory located in Scarborough, Ontario that became the largest ammunition plant in Canadian history.  Remarkably, though, for many reasons, these amazing bomb girl stories are hard to find:

1. After the Second World War ended, the Canadian government ordered all employee records and all documents and specifications destroyed. There are no surviving employee records from which to draw;
2. Every employee engaged in war work took an oath of secrecy. Divulging what they did at work was considered a treasonous act against Canada. Many took that oath so solemnly, they carried their war-time secrets to their graves;
3. For some, decades later, women shared mere snippets of their work life and personal struggles with children and grandchildren, wispy vague recollections of events dulled by time and memory.
4. Some employees, devastated by the personal tragedy of a loved one killed in action, find the retelling of their war service too painful;
5. The vast majority of these brave men and women who worked in war-time plants across the nation have passed away, their almost-forgotten stories now reduced to a growing anthology of a long-ago time in Canada’s military and social history.

In Bomb Girls: United for Peace, Dickson not only sought out and researched  over one hundred stories — each incredible on their own merit — she captures each narrative with compassion and reverence, a thorough and profoundly personal look into the lives of these determined, courageous Canadians.

Bomb Girl Demographics

Suicide, murder, child abuse, battered spouse syndrome, alcoholism, abject poverty, secret pregnancies, forbidden war diaries can be found not only within the culture and society into which these women lived and worked, but are found within the pages of Bomb Girls: United for Peace. Tragic circumstances of loved ones serving overseas in all theatres of war are told — some of which are heart-breaking and yet sadly commonplace. Fiercely proud women with fathers and brothers who fought in the First World War, are doubly proud when their men sign up again to fight for freedom in this new terrifying global conflict. 

Bomb Girls: United for Peace unpacks and uncovers issues that Canadian women courageously faced and valiantly overcame in their private and professional lives. Canadians are forever grateful for their service to their country.

Dickson is actively looking for a publisher for Bomb Girls: United for Peace.