Rations, Victory Gardens, and the Red Cross, by Margaret Matheson
Speaker: Margaret C. Matheson\r\nDate: 1939-44
I was eleven when World War II broke out, and still remember our family clustering around the Philco console radio in our living room to hear the announcement that Canada was at war. There were newsboys walking up and down the streets, shouting "Extra! Extra!" My cousin Nancy and I thought it was very exciting, but our parents' mood was very somber. It was only many years later that I realized that they recognized and feared what lay ahead. As an adult, I understood more fully that my mother and aunt had lost their beloved younger brother, aged 18, in the trenches in France at the very end of World War I, and that for people of their generation, war held no glamour.
The war didn't impinge on my life much, except in little ways. I can only relate a few vignettes to try to capture some of the atmosphere of Edmonton during that time, as seen through the eyes of a young girl.
The rationing of butter, meat and sugar didn't cause us too much hardship; there were five of us in our household, including my grandfather, which as I recall gave us enough ration stamps so that we didn't usually want for anything. My mother had had a thrifty Scottish upbringing, and was a good cook, so the cake recipes soon became tasty "sugar and butter free" ones. Her favorite, and the first cake I ever made, was a wartime recipe for spice cake that used cold coffee and raisins, and featured lard as the fat. Not exactly cholesterol-free! I remember how upset my mother was one Sunday when we arrive home from church to find that our dog had somehow got at a pound of butter and had eaten the whole thing. The dog wisely hid for the rest of the day! Meanwhile, my grandfather, who was then in his eighties, leased a plot of land a couple of blocks away (I think it was on the corner of 118 Street and Jasper Avenue). There he planted a "victory garden", like so many on the home front. The idea, I think, was to grow your own and send any extra for use by the armed forces.
Soon my older cousins were joining up; we girls thought they were so glamorous in their Navy and Air Force uniforms. I was determined that I would join the Navy when I was old enough – I think I liked their uniforms the best. There were lots of airmen in Edmonton, from all over, in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. My parents often met young airmen at church, and invited them home for Sunday Dinner. Later on, after the United States had entered the war in 1941, there were many American servicemen here too, because Edmonton was the jumping off point for the new Alaska Highway. Some Edmontonians referred to the huge American presence in our city as the "American Invasion". Now young U.S. service personnel often appeared at our dinner table too, and we rarely sat down to a special meal Thanksgiving, Christmas – without young servicemen as guests.
Dinner! That reminds me of my younger brother, who despite protestations from my parents, would go rushing outside from the dinner table to watch every aircraft that flew over the house – we lived quite close to the airport, and in those days there was lots of yellow Harvard overhead.
From 1942 on there were hundreds of American aircraft in the skies over Edmonton, on supply runs to Russia via the polar route; Russia was then our ally. My young brother was also very patriotic, and if, "God Save the King" was played on the radio – which it frequently was in those days, at the end of news broadcasts, for instance – my brother would stand stiffly at attention, whether or not we were in the middle of dinner. My parents always felt we must join him, so as not to discourage this youthful display of patriotism, but I was always terribly embarrassed by the whole thing.
My mother immersed herself in war work from the very outbreak of war, as did all her women friends. She sewed and knitted and quilted indefatigably for the armed forces, and organized other women in war support activities at our church. She was away from home a good deal of time as a result, and I think that was very common amongst her women friends. I remember my mother sewing flannelette pajamas to send to our young minister, the Rev. J. Gordon Brown of Robertson United Church, when he went overseas as an Air Force chaplain. He was killed by a V¬2 rocket in Antwerp, Belgium on November 27, 1944 (his 35th birthday), and everyone who was in our church that terrible day will always remember the announcement that came at the end of Sunday service, when it was sorrowfully announced from the pulpit that our beloved Gordon Brown was "missing, believed killed".
I also remember Mrs. G.D.K. Kinnaird, a friend of our family, who lost her only son, Jock, in the R.C.A.F. Mrs. Kinnaird organized a group of us teenage girls into a support group for the
Royal Canadian Navy. We called ourselves the "Ripples" (a play on the word WAVES, which was the women's branch of the RCN). We met weekly, at first at Mrs. Kinnaird's and later in the basement of the church, to knit turtleneck tuck ins, which were a kind of wool dickey to keep a sailor's neck warm. I think we probably drove kindly Mrs. Kinnaird to distraction. We would be so busy gossiping amongst ourselves that our knitting was often peppered with little "portholes" where we had dropped stitches. I am sure Mrs. Kinnaird often took our humble offerings home and corrected the errors in the tuck ins before they were sent off to the Navy.
My aunt, Ruth Johnson, worked with the Canadian Red Cross as a volunteer throughout the war, under the leadership of Mrs. Alison Proctor. Mrs. Proctor organized all the fundraising activities for the Red Cross in Edmonton, or maybe it was for northern Alberta. The Red Cross also gave out wool for knitting, material for sewing, and scraps for making quilts. Mrs. Proctor was an indomitable woman. She eventually lost both her sons in the war. Each time she suffered such a terrible bereavement, she put on a pair of dark glasses and was back at work at the Red Cross the next day. She was awarded the O.B.E. after the war.
The Red Cross had a second hand shop, called the Superfluity Shop, on 102 St. north of Jasper Avenue, which operated as another fundraiser for the Red Cross. The space for the shop was donated by Charlie Frost Plumbers. The Superfluity Shop was started by Isobel Debney (Mrs. Philip) and Nora McLaughlin (Mrs. Robert E.) at the beginning of the war. Mrs. Debney went on to other wartime projects, but throughout the war Mrs. McLaughlin coordinated the volunteers who worked in the shop. It was open six days a week, and once a month they held a huge bake sale. My aunt was one of many other women who worked at Superfluity – Mrs. Field, Mrs. Conrad Geggie and Mrs. Strong are others who come to mind – many women, incidentally, who were among the originals in the Women's Canadian Club. They raised $25,000. by their efforts during the war, an amount which in those days would have been enough to buy a Spitfire.
My cousin and I often found ourselves taking part in tag days for the Red Cross, dressed in White uniforms with red crosses on our bib fronts, and with white scarves over our hair; we felt like real nurses! We sold yellow crepe paper primroses, which Edmonton children made by hand in school, and the money raised went to the Red Cross.
When my aunt and my mother weren't at the Red Cross or the Superfluity Shop they, like other women, were knitting socks, scarves and toques, or sewing and quilting at the church for the war effort. A Mrs. Field organized a group to make "ditty bags" for the Navy. Ditty bags were cloth bags filled with toiletries, mitts and other useful things that a service person might not normally get in their kit. She became known as Mrs. "Ditty bag" Field for her efforts. My future mother¬in law, Eva Matheson, was a fine pianist, and played by the hour at serviceman's functions. A Mrs. Conquest had a radio program to drum up more support for the war effort.
There were continuous salvage drives in Edmonton, like the recycling that goes on now, only the money raised went to the war effort.
After school my cousin and I would take a toboggan around the neighbourhood to collect newspapers, coat hangers, metal and fat (the fat was used to make soap, I believe). My cousin remembers that you could get in to see a Saturday show at the Capitol Theatre free if you brought a pail of fat!! One summer the two of us worked on a salvage truck, which went all over the city collecting salvage. One time we found a lot of silverware that had been thrown into the salvage by mistake; it was returned to the owner.
I remember how exciting it would be when my uncle, who worked in a wholesale drygoods business, would call home to say there was a shipment of knitting wool in, and would my cousin and I like to share a box? Of course we would. Wool to knit our favorite sloppy joe sweaters was hard come by in wartime, and there was certainly no buying "store boughten" sweaters – at least, not in an average family like ours. It didn't matter what color the wool was, we were delighted to get it, and soon our knitting needles were clicking away.
When I was at Victoria High School (the old brick school, not Victoria Composite), I worked for the school newspaper, the Vie Argosy. My first year I was the "Bugle Notes" editor, charged with gathering and passing on news of the young men and women who had left VHS as soon as they were old enough to join up. I also got to write about the ones who were wounded, missing in action, taken prisoner or killed in action. I was young, and it all seemed very far away.
I remember VE Day, when the war in Europe was finally over, going downtown with my cousin to join the crowds milling around happily on Jasper Avenue. There was a feeling of some regret that we and our friends had been too young to be involved in the services. A Street photographer took our picture that sunny day, and I still have it. The end of hostilities in the Pacific the following August had less meaning for me and my family, because my mother, who had worked so hard throughout the war, suddenly fell ill and died at the age of 50, just three weeks before the war ended.