Today is Remembrance Day and I will be spending it acknowledging the courage and sacrifice of those who served their country. As for my blog today I wanted to supply you with a roundup of posts done about Canadian’s/Canada specifically during WW2.
Starting off, please head over to my friend Elinors Blog ‘Wartime Wednesday‘. I have mentioned her before on this blog (several times to be exact) because it’s a wonderful piece of Canadian History (and beyond) that needs to be read by everyone! All month she has been sharing blog posts on her Facebook (and other social media channels) on stories from her new book ‘My Favorite Veterans’ and they are fascinating. Please take the time to read some of them today.
2. Another friend Jessica from Chronically Vintage wrote a marvelous blog post on the ‘Canadian Ration Book of WW2‘. It’s a interesting read on how Canadians handled rationing.
3.Victory Gardens. “We urge every citizen to endeavour to grow more vegetables in order to make an appreciable difference in the situation that confronts us,”– Emily Schofield and Elizabeth MacKenzie
I personally have written various posts on Canada during WW2. Here are a few of them:
4. Tale of the Canadian Army Show. This idea behind the show was to entertain troops, promote recruitment by enhancing the army’s image, to increase the sale of war bonds, and to bolster civilian morale.
This blog post is very special today, not just for the content (provided by Elinor Florence) but because of the below comment I recently received from Marie:
I served in the RCAF Womens’ Division during 1942-46 stationed in Ottawa at Princess Alice’s Barracks. I am now 92 yrs old and remember those years with much fondness. I just recently had my greatcoat cleaned and pressed and donated it to the Legion in Aurora, Ont. My family still enjoy my tales of my time as a WD.I am grateful that I was able to serve Canada during that stressful time.
Isn’t that comment incredible? I’m so glad that Marie reached out to share this with myself and my readers. Thank you for your service.
And with that comment, I’m going to end this blog post today so that I can go off and reflect.
This past weekend I had a fun vintage weekend so thought I would share it with you. First up on Saturday I was part of an event in Toronto called “Rosie O-Rama in conjunction with 2 events. V-J day (Japanese surrender that marked the end of World War II) and the Guinness Book of World Records “Most Rosie the Riveters in one spot” that was happening in California that day.
Some of the original “Rosie the Riveter” women sitting in the first row, who worked in the Richmond shipyards during WWII (Anda Chu/The Contra Costa Times via AP)
Since I don’t live in California a few of us got together (including fellow blogger Irene from Petite Plus Meow) and dressed up as Rosie (or for us Canadians ‘Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl‘) and met at City Hall in Toronto by the fancy new 3D sign for photos.
Vintage Inn-Rosie the Riveter
Toronto’s ‘Rosies”
We then got out of the hot hot sun and zipped over via public transit to our fav “Rosie the Rebel” reproduction clothing store for some shopping and then ended our adventures at the super cool vintage Malt Shop- ‘Bean and Baker‘ for yummy goodies.
On Sunday my hubby was working so I decided that I was going to jump on the streetcar and head to one of my fav vintage stores in Toronto-Gadabout on Queen St. East.
Gadabout is one of these stores where you need to clear your calendar and even go alone so that you can spend hours filtering thru all the wonderful goodies they have. The owner Victoria is so nice and so is all her hardworking staff. I feel so welcomed every time I go.
For today’s trip I was on the hunt for vintage photos (I love my vintage photos) AND possibly a new Tiki dress for the TVS Tiki Party August 29th. I spent a couple of hours and brought home the following:
Find #1: This great souvenir photo taken at the Historic King Edward Hotel in Toronto in the 1940s.
It looks like these lovely young people are on a double date at one of the fanciest hotels in town. I wonder if they went dancing after in one of the gorgeous ballrooms at the hotel? Don’t they look like they are having so much fun? The gentlemen on the left is in mid laugh 🙂
Find # 2: Beautiful photo from the 1930s of a very well dressed mother and her adorable son.
Style alert! The mothers dress is simply beautiful and her shoes…wow!!! I love the hat as well. Very very nice.
Find # 3: This image instantly caught my eye when I saw the wonderful head scarfs and the cool Hawaiian shirt the man on the right is wearing. Then I started to look at it more and realized that I believe these lovely people are at a seaside resort somewhere. Wonderful!
Find # 4: I love her dress, that is why I took this image home with me.And I giggle when I see that someone’s finger got in the photo 🙂
Find # 5: I believe this picture is of a mother with her very handsome son and gorgeous well dressed daughter (isn’t her dress just divine and her hair is perfect). I’m enjoying that the mother does not seem happy to be taking the photo but the kids have nice smiles on their faces and don’t seem to mind at all.
Find # 6: I remember when I went to summer camp and at the end of the week we would get a photo of the whole camp and then we would spend the day running around getting everyone to sign the back of it. When I found this image of a group of young ladies in the 1940s, possibly at summer camp and the back was signed I just knew this was a keeper.
The back has cute “nicknames” that the girls had given each other. Like “Tiny” Jones and “Cookie”.
Find # 7: Here comes the bride all dressed in..not white but who cares! She looks wonderful (want her dress!) and her husband..so handsome. He reminds me a bit of Don Draper of Mad Men fame.
Image # 8: Here is another happy couple from the 1930s. Her husband/boyfriend/”friend” looks so in love with her, I just adore how he is looking at her in this picture. And once again, the lovely lady wins in the style department. Look how dainty her gloves are? Swoon…
Find # 9: FLAMINGOS!! I love flamingos and when I saw this wonderful menu from a still in business restaurant in Toronto, I just had to have it. I belive it’s from around the 1950s from the prices you see in the next image.
Inside of the menu. I love the section on “Milk drinks”. Milk Shakes, Malted Milk, Egg Nogg, Egg Malted. That’s a lot of Milk 🙂 And don’t forget the “Hot Ovaltine”.
Last but not least I also bought myself a vintage dress for the Tiki party I mentioned above. Here is the fabric but you won’t see the dress until Tiki party time (it’s a surprise).
Did you have a good weekend? Find any vintage goodies yourself?
