GEERAERT MECHANICAL


Painting by Manly MacDonald


Land Girls Hoeing was created for the Canadian War Memorials Fund,an organization established to document Canada's First World War effort. In this painting,MacDonald depicts farmerettes in the Niagara Region.In 1918, 2,400 women served as farmerettes and assisted fruit farmers in the Niagara region.


Once again,many women were called to the frontline at home with the task of keeping food production steady during wartime. While many women stayed back and occupied jobs that were traditionally male-dominated,WWII also saw a shift on the armed forces side as more than 50,000 women served, according to veterans.gc.ca. Those who didn’t go overseas were relied upon heavily back in Canada, including in southern Alberta. In an in-depth these from 2003 titled ‘From overalls to aprons - The paid and unpaid labour of southern Alberta women, 1939-1959’, Lindsey Bingley highlights the work of 16 women during this period. While many of these 16 women stuck to traditional jobs during the war, Bingley highlights the fact many Albertan women were not opposed to finding work elsewhere in the country. “Because southern Alberta women had fewer local opportunities for well- paid wartime labour, it seems that they were more mobile than women from many other regions as many of them travelled across Canada for work, almost regardless of their original occupation,” stated Bingley. In the Taber area, Japanese Prisoner of War internment camps were set up in early 1942 and many Japanese-Canadians were forced to work the beet fields.


In British Columbia,many Japanese men and women were transported to southern Alberta because of their farm experience. In Ann Gomer Sunahara’s book titled The Politics of Racism:The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, details are shared on the process of transporting Japanese living in B.C. to Alberta. “In March 1942,a committee of prominent Albertans associated with the sugar industry took upon itself the task of explaining why the B.C. Japanese were enough of a threat to be moved from the Pacific Coast but not a threat to Alberta.The sugar representatives appealed to the patriotism of southern Albertans.The B.C. Japanese, they informed public meetings in Raymond and Lethbridge,were dangerous in B.C. because of a threat of a Japanese invasion. It was, therefore, the duty of patriotic Albertans to do whatever was required to alleviate that danger. Sugar beet production, they pointed out,was a necessary part of Canada’s war effort,and the B.C. Japanese, while undesirable,were the only available source of experienced farm labour,” reads a passage from the work. Alberta also demanded a written agreement guaranteeing the removal of


the B.C. Japanese after the war. While the removal of Japanese-Canadians from B.C. to Alberta was carried


out,many communities in Alberta expressed disdain. “Even the small communities in which Japanese Albertans had lived since


before the First World War were not immune.Making careful distinction between ‘their’Japanese and the B.C. Japanese, Raymond, Lethbridge and Taber all held public meetings to protest the importation of B.C. Japanese as beet labour.Such a program, they felt,would simply export British Columbia's ‘Japanese problem’ to Alberta,” reads a passage from the same chapter.


In the end, Japanese Canadians were finally given full citizenship in 1949


and were finally compensated for their work, though it was severely reduced down to $1.2 million.


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