The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2014, Page 36

178
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
Vol. 66 #4
Ontario (now incorporated
into the city of Thunder Bay)
to staff the Canadian Car and
Foundry factory that was being
ramped into high gear for the
war effort. Can Car retooled
from assembling trolley cars to
producing hundreds of airplanes
per month. Margret agreed to
take a job there and was given a
ticket for the train east.
The women, by the hundreds,
were housed in barracks at the
site. At the factory, Margret
donned the classic head kerchief
and company coveralls that
became the iconic symbol of
“Rosie the Riveter” and riveted
public domain /u.k. ministry of information photo division, photographer airnlane wine's and fuselages
They were manufacturing
Hawker Hurricanes for the
Women assembling Hawker Hurricanes 1942
crowded into the room. Every day Lily
walked up to Ellice Avenue and took the
streetcar to the end of the line where the
block of several large assembly plants had
sprung up.
Lily was a ‘tool girl’. Her job was to
check tools in and out, keep accounts of
what went where and who signed out
what. As well, she had to clean and repair
tools and equipment as they came back
from the repair shop floors and organize
everything in the tool room so it could
be checked out for the next shift. Many
years later, she took a job at the University
Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Her job there was an operating room
orderly, in charge of counting, cleaning
and organizing medical instruments. She
used to laugh and say that the two jobs
were not that much different and her war-
years experience had been good training
for the hospital job.
A call came up for a large number of
assembly workers to move to Fort William,
British Royal Navy. In a period
of sixteen months, over fourteen
hundred Hurricanes were produced from
the Fort William plant.