By mid-1943 women formed a large proportion of the labour force in Canada's war plants. In the aircraft industry, which had expanded rapidly under the impact of war, women constituted fully one third of the employees. Through the War Emergency Training program or on the job, some were given the opportunity to learn heavy machine work.
One trainee on a lathe was reported as exclaiming, with a look of amazed delight on her face, "Why, it's easier to run than a sewing machine." Another woman remembers the satisfaction of seeing "what you really could do with a good machine." Here two women operate a large crane in the extrusion department of the Aluminum Company of Canada's plant in Kingston, Ontario, in January 1943.
Courtesy: National Film Board Second World War Still Photograph Collection, National Photography Collection, Public Archives of Canada (PA-129856)
