Every Kitchen is an Arsenal
Catherine C. Cole
Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher of For King and Country: Alberta in the Second World War;)
Membership in various organizations frequently overlapped. In Fort Saskatchewan the women's organization of the Red Cross became the nucleus for the local branch. At first it met in the Council Chambers, and later in the O'Brien Watt store, where materials were distributed and finished goods collected every week. The output was prodigious; from Fort Saskatchewan, then a town of only 900, the WI and other local townswomen combined to send thirteen shipments to the Red Cross in 1942 alone. The total output included: 974 garments and knitted articles, five quilts and comforters, 76 pairs of seamen's socks, 440 pairs of service socks, 29 pairs of mitts and gloves, 76 sleeveless sweaters, hospital supplies, pyjamas, gowns, baby clothes and layettes.14
The womens' institute reported that:
Anyone who could wield knitting needles was conscripted to fill the quota. Even if they were unable to use knitting needles, they were quickly taught. The women prisoners in the Provincial Gaol were given instruction by Mrs. McLean, the warden's wife and a good institute member, and a great quantity of knitting was obtained in this way [500 articles in the first two years of the war].15
Other incarcerated volunteers were inmates in the Ponoka provincial mental hospital who contributed by making ski suits for children.
While the Canadian Red Cross Society was not strictly a women's organization, knitting and fundraising efforts for the Red Cross were primarily women's contributions. At the outbreak of the war, the National Headquarters urged dormant local branches across the country to be placed on a wartime basis immediately. In September 1939 there were only 47 active branches of the Red Cross in Alberta; within six months there were 325 branches with thousands of women active.16 Other women's organizations experienced similar increases in membership. While most people supported their work, the Red Cross inevitably became the target of some criticism during the war. The Red Cross was concerned about the quality of goods produced, and approved the use of particular patterns and yarns, and issued knitting instructions through the newspapers as well as knitting booklets to reach readers in rural areas. For example, the "Lux Knitting Book" was available by sending one box top and 35 cents to the Lux company, and was promoted through window displays. Red Cross members questioned the value of producing socks of inferior materials and at a meeting in Fort Saskatchewan "a sample sock was displayed, showing that after a few washings by the boys, it had shrunk so badly that it was impossible for a grown up to wear it".17 Members of Parliament argued in the House of Commons about the merits of hand-made versus machine-made socks. The superiority of hand-made socks was eventually conceded but Walter Kuhl, MP for Jasper-Edson, complained that women were wasting their time knitting for the war effort.
The basic fact was that one knitting machine could make 3,000,000 loops in the time the human hand took to make 300.18
Other criticisms were made of the way the materials were collected and distributed. The organization responded, saying:
If your neighbour tells you the Canadian Red Cross Society is selling the socks and sweaters that patriotic women knit for the soldiers and sailors, it's a Nazi lie. The Red Cross has never been able to obtain proof that socks so made are being sold for 49 cents a pair, or any other price. The canard has been officially denied a score of times, but is still circulating.19
The Red Cross requested that groups fill specific quotas of articles, and many groups set targets for numbers of knitted goods. One chapter of the IODE established a "Socks for the Soldiers" drive, with a goal to produce at least 500 pairs of socks for Edmonton soldiers per month.
Knitting was pervasive; the Junior Hospital League even left yarn in the beauty salon of the Hudson's Bay Company store for women to knit afghan squares while their hair dried.20 The importance of the knitting cannot be exaggerated. For the women, knitting was a concrete expression of their ability to assist men at the front and refugees who had lost their homes; unable to care for them personally, women worked constantly to keep them warm. For the soldiers and refugees, the hand-knitted goods prevented illness and no doubt in many cases death, and signaled that women in Canada cared. From the various women's organizations throughout the region, Red Cross goods were sent to the depots at the Hudson's Bay Company annex in Edmonton or the Tegler Building, where they were sorted and forwarded to eastern Canada. By February 1943, twenty million articles had been sent overseas from Canada through the Red Cross since the beginning of the war.
Sometimes they were handed to the men directly, whenever they walked into the Red Cross headquarters in London, but the majority went in great bales from the warehouses, where they were stored on arrival from the ships, to the troop clothing stores where they were distributed by the units themselves.21
The IODE, AWI and other organizations also sent goods overseas, independent of what they sent through the Red Cross. In this way women were assured that they had "played their part in the victory of the battle of London".22
Notes
14. Fort Record, 3 February 1943.
15. Helen Thorne, personal interview; Mrs. C.C. Bodill, “History of the Women's Institute, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, founded 1915”, [unpublished manuscript].
16. Edmonton Journal, 26 February 1940.
17. Fort Record, 3 February 1943.
18. Edmonton Journal, 8 June 1940.
19. Fort Record, 5 June 1940.
20. Edmonton Journal, 8 June 1940.
21. Fort Record, 24 February, 1943.
22. Edmonton Journal, 1 March 1941.