On the home front:

In 1943, all 18-year old Fort Frances resident Clora (Dumeney) McEvoy wanted to do was join the Navy and do her part to help in the war effort.
But at the insistence of her brother, Frank, who himself was enlisted in the Navy, McEvoy didn’t pursue that route. Instead, she went to work at Canada Car in Fort William and helped build Helldiver bombers for the U.S. Navy.
The Fort William plant was billed as “A Hornet’s Nest for Japan” since the bombers built there were used in raids on Japanese warships.
Today, at 73, she isn’t looking back with regret on the path she chose 55 years ago. Instead, McEvoy cherishes her wartime memories–and still carries on the tradition of helping the rest of us remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of peace.
“I wanted to join the forces but my brother said no sister of [his] is going to join. He said he’d run into some bad girls [in the forces] and that’s not what he wanted for me,” McEvoy, a 46-year member of the local Legion Ladies Auxiliary, chuckled last week.
“So I went to work on the assembly line putting together packages of small parts to finish off the planes,” she said, noting her department on the assembly line preceded the huge booth where the planes received a final paint and camouflage job.
“We helped put out one plane a day,” she added, estimating more than 1,000 men and women were employed at Canada Car during the Second World War, with shifts at the massive plant going around the clock.
Employees had some basic security rules to follow, said McEvoy, which included keeping their hair covered. Each employee also had to carry a specific piece of identification to allow them access to the job site, and no one could take photographs inside.
“There was security at the gate and each of us had a passport we had to show,” she recalled. “If we brought our lunch pail with us to work, we had to open it and any packages we were carrying either had to be left behind or examined.”
“Foods like butter, sugar, tea, and coffee were also rationed and when they ran out, you didn’t get any more until a certain time,” McEvoy remarked.
“We were allowed one bottle of liquor per month–but I never thought we were that deprived of any of those things,” she added.
McEvoy recalled her wages weren’t too shabby, either. In fact, she made more per hour in 1943 than today’s minimum wage earners.
“I got $7.50 an hour. It was good money for that time,” she smiled.
Meanwhile, McEvoy pondered a treasured memory of joining her female co-workers on frequent trips to the train station to show their support for the soldiers heading off to war.
“The troop trains would stop at Fort William and we would go and give the [soldiers] hugs and talk to them,” she recalled. “We wanted to let them know we were thinking about them.
“Going into battle they must know ‘I may not come out.’ That’s a sacrifice,” she added.
If McEvoy does have any regrets, it’s most likely that she was not at work on the one day everyone had been so anxiously waiting for–the end of the war.
“We all knew it was coming but, of course, we didn’t know the day. I missed out and it was not funny,” she recollected. “It was my day off and I was baby-sitting for my sister.
“I found out when she came home later than she should have,” she noted. “I guess it was really something to see . . . the whole of Fort William and Port Arthur went wild. People in the streets, yelling and kissing each other.”
The end of the war signalled an automatic layoff for McEvoy and her co-workers. She went on to other jobs in the city and eventually married army veteran Weldon McEvoy.
“Not unless people keep talking about the war, and keep doing things to [promote] its history, will it remain with us,” she reasoned.