Marking the 81st anniversary of Victory in Europe Day |
May 8 is the 81st anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, the end of the Second World War. During the war, with many of the men in the services, there was a shortage of workers in offices and manufacturing plants. Thousands of Canadian women rose to the challenge of filling those jobs, moving from farms and small towns to larger centres.
Helen Reeder was the eldest daughter of 11 children growing up in an impoverished Saskatchewan farm family during the Depression. Seeing no future for herself there, she studied shorthand and typing through correspondence. She got a job at the Department of Munitions and Supply in Ottawa, which is where she met Harry Culley who was playing at a social with the RCAF dance band. When he went overseas, they became engaged, and she moved to Toronto taking a job as a cashier and stenographer at the Toronto Transit........