Barbara is always moving forward, looking for a new passion project. Have a look to see what Barbara currently is pursuing in earnest.
Barbara established the Bomb Girls Legacy Foundation in 2023 to commemorate the vital and invaluable work carried out by hundreds of thousands of Canadians on the home front during the Second World War. Since then, the foundation has initiated many projects, with some already coming to fruition. Barbara and her dedicated team of volunteers work hard to ensure that future generations recognize what our forebears did to help win the war.
Barbara and her team are working with all levels of government to erect a national war worker monument in Ottawa, our nation’s capital. Currently there is no recognition of the work carried out at home during the First or Second World Wars. London, England established a touching monument to its women. It’s time we remember the over 800,000 Canadians – mostly women – who toiled in wartime factories in Canada during the 1940s.
The foundation is working to establish a program for youth in Canada, who epitomize the traits of Canada’s bomb girls. Two pilot projects are running currently – in Scarborough, Ontario and Burnaby, British Columbia – with more to launch next year. Being a Diamond Girl means learning to lead, to gain confidence, to be courageous, to be kind and caring, to look out for their fellow schoolmates and community. The motto is: “In Service to Their Country.”
Barbara continues to urge municipalities across the nation to step up to erect plaques acknowledging the work carried out by Bomb Girls so long ago. Most wartime factories are gone now – all that’s left are ruins, crumbling foundations, or nothing at all. There are only a handful of plaques remembering Bomb Girls throughout the country. Two plaques were unveiled in 2025 – in Brownsburg, Quebec, and in Scarborough, Ontario. In Ajax, Ontario where the Defence Industries Limited munitions plant operated, there is a striking monument to Ajax’s war workers.
Barbara is fleshing out a series of fictional novels based the lives of actual Bomb Girls. Truly a unique perspective, Barbara has already begun the layout of several of these books – the first entitled Loose Lips Sink Ships – and will feature the life of Dottie, at sixteen years of age, was hired by GECO President, Bob Hamilton, in January 1941. Dottie could have easily ‘spilled the beans’ to her friends; a slip that may have caused irreparable harm to the world defeating Hitler. But she didn’t. She guarded the military secrets she overheard and typed up with integrity, courage, and grit.
Barbara and her daughter, Emily, are writing a book, entitled, At the Heart of Hope, a story of Emily’s journey to heart transplant. The book will be unique in that its narrative will be taken from two perspectives: from Emily’s viewpoint of what it was like to be a teenager who wanted just to be “normal;” and from Barbara standpoint – Emily’s mom – as she supported and cared for Emily as her youngest child bravely faced her own death, knowing that for Emily to live, someone had to die.
Barbara and her husband, David, are writing a book about the Irish immigration during the 19th century in Canada.
The Irish came – homeless, penniless, and starving – onboard ships bound for Canada. The Great Famine – caused by political and religious oppression, along with a potato blight – sent upwards of half of the population of Ireland fleeing for their lives. Irish Monuments are scattered along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in Canada, a ribbon of blue seawater marred by the death and despair of the Irish people during the summer of 1847. From Partridge Island at Saint John, New Brunswick, to Hospital Island off the coast of St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, to Grosse Ile at Quebec City, to Montreal, Quebec, to Toronto, Ontario; tens of thousands of Irish, dead from “the fever” were laid to rest, along with countless immigration staff and clergy who died while serving at immigration stations.
Canada was their last chance at life. If they survived the voyage, they were quarantined off the coast. All around was a sea of ragged humanity, living and dying, waiting to be given a doctor’s blessing, declaring they were fit to occupy the land. If they were not infected with one of the dreaded viruses while they sailed, they were bound to catch the ‘bug’ while they waited – sometimes days – for inspection amongst thousands of other poor immigrants.
And, if they didn’t pass? They died, their dreams forever interred in mass graves along with them – no longer a subject of their homeland, yet neither a citizen of their new land.
The plight of the Irish people was truly tragic, but, unfortunately, the way they have been remembered in Canada is almost as tragic. Canadian monuments to the Irish stand eerily forlorn and almost forgotten. Most have been built in socially and economically depressed areas. Even for those who earnestly search for them, they are not easily discovered. Local people – from police officers to townsfolk – and even historical societies barely are aware of their existence.
Canada was built on the backs of the Irish people, strong and proud, and eager to build a new life in the New World. Currently, Barbara and her husband have discovered over 200 Irish memorials in Canada. Their book, Where the Irish Died: The Stones Cry Out, will study Irish immigration from the unique perspective of how our nation has remembered their incredible contribution to the making of Canada through memorials.
Barbara hopes to get back to her novel-writing to continue to write stories set in the fictional town of Stonebridge Cove, Nova Scotia. She sees the series as a robust collection of at least a dozen books, with the town of Stonebridge Cove becoming a ‘living’ character. Secondary characters introduced in one book become the hero/heroine in another. Readers would not only get to know the current protagonists but their families as well. Barbara has written five novels set in Stonebridge Cove. She has fleshed out several new stories:
A lonely Scottish university professor starts a long-distance friendship with a lovely PhD student in Stonebridge Cove – by silently meeting through a magical looking-glass…
Stone Barrington, the black sheep of the Barrington dynasty of Stonebridge Cove, asked his father for his inheritance early, spent it all on a farm that’s failing because of a corn blight and has resorted to digging graves to earn a bit of extra income. He guards his ‘dirty’ little secret as not to embarrass his father and family. Hope Fitzpatrick, government inspector, arrives in Stonebridge Cove because she’s heard there’s a farm whose crop has been infected with a deadly virus. She must insist that the crop is destroyed…even it bankrupts the owner…some guy named Stone. But first she must figure out a way to climb out of a newly-dug grave that she fell into while walking through Stonebridge’s quiet cemetery…
Little Molly Prentiss, at ten years of age, is living in Stonebridge Cove where she visits the local tea shop regularly for their delicious scones and cookies. She loves the old-fashioned China cups and saucers in which Deb serves her tea. Deb tells Molly that when she drinks from a cup and saucer, she’s sipping her tea like the Queen of England. Molly gets a great idea – invite the Queen for tea. It all sounds like a simple, wishful idea until Buckingham Palace replies with a “yes.” The Queen is coming to Stonebridge Cove.
