Evelyn Armstrong of Stratton may not have fought on the front lines in the Second World War but she certainly did her part contributing to the war effort by helping build the famous Spitfire fighter planes.
A 20-year-old woman in 1940, Armstrong volunteered for the position of riveter at the Canada Car Corp. at the Lakehead (now known as Thunder Bay).
“I was working at the Canada Car at the time the war broke out,” she recalled. “I volunteered to be a riveter because I wanted to work by myself.
“I was also kinda interested in making the money. It was good money at that time,” she added.
Armstrong helped to rivet the wings of each warplane before they were sent to England to be assembled.
“I knew what I was doing and no one bothered me. I liked that because I liked to work alone,” she noted. “They used to call us ‘Rosey the Riveter’ back when we were working on the planes.
“I still am ‘Rosey,’” she joked.
During the war, many women on the homefront were hired by companies to help in the construction of planes and other military weapons.
Tiny parts of equipment could be easily handled by the small hands of the women workers, and the small-framed women could easily work inside cramped places that the men had a hard time fitting into.
“She worked inside the nose of the planes,” said Armstrong’s niece, Mary Curtis. “She was small and could fit into that small place.”
“We really didn’t get too much training,” Armstrong remembered. “At first, there wasn’t really that much to do. When we did start to work, we just learned as we went.”
For four years, Armstrong, along with a number of other women, worked at Canada Car. Every day she would take her toolbox and tools, and begin the often tedious job of riveting.
“On my spare time, I made myself a tool box,” she said. “My husband is still using it to this very day.
“I didn’t have my own tools but the Canada Car supplied us with some,” she added. “Every night we returned our tools, and then picked them up the next morning when we got to work.”
Though the war seemed worlds away from the factory on the shores of Lake Superior in Northern Ontario, Armstrong was aware of what was going on.
“Everyone knew about what was happening,” she stressed. “Even though we heard about what was happening over there, we weren’t that concerned. We had no reason to be.”
After the war, Armstrong left Canada Car and returned to her home in Stratton, where she married her husband, Dennis, a farmer from the area.
“After the war, I came home, got married, and raised kids,” she said. “I was happy the war was over, and I was happy to go home.”
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
