Female wartime aircraft builders in Fort William to be celebrated on new website

A 1999 documentary about the women who worked in Fort William's Canadian Car and Foundry plant during the Second World War is getting new life as an interactive website. 

The site will combine material gathered for the original film with new material that was contributed by a staff member at the Thunder Bay Alstom plant — the former home of Can Car — according to Lakehead University history professor Ron Harpelle.

"A former student of mine, a Master's student, was working at Bombardier [now Alstom], and I received a phone call, Harpelle said. "He said that they had a bunch of material, and they just wanted it out of the factory. And it was basically on its way to the landfill perhaps."

The site will feature some of that material, along with interviews, transcripts and other material from the film, he said. 

"I talked to over 100 women, and men of course, but only a fraction of that ends up in the film," said director Kelly Saxberg. "And so I've always wanted to do something more with all of the things that remain."

Rosies of the North, whose title derives from the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter, tells the story of the approximately 3,000 women recruited to help build Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft while many of the men of the region were off fighting in the war.

It also tells the story of the plant's first female chief engineer, Elsie MacGill.  

The women made up around 40 per cent of the plant's 7,000 workers during the war, and they reported experiencing sexism and bullying from many of the men, while being paid less than them for similar work.

One memorable anecdote from the film involves the women getting back at a particularly offensive male colleague by welding his lunch box to a piece of steel. 

"I think it left a really lasting legacy in terms of how women felt about their choices in their lives," Saxberg said. "You know, they ended up being this force of the feminist revolution in the 1970s, where women said, 'Okay, enough with these glass ceilings. Enough with them not being able to get educated and not being able to have a career path and get paid.'"

Harpelle expects to launch the site in about six months, he said.

Anyone with a relative who was a Rosie is invited to contact Harpelle and Saxberg at rosiesofthenorth@gmail.com.