We Did It, Too

I remember the image of Winston Churchill standing akimbo and chomping down on his cigar. And the defiant American poster girl with her bicep flexed, ready to do her part for the war effort (while simultaneously giving Hitler the finger).

Maybe because hers is the image in colour, it’s the one that comes to mind first when I think of the Allied war effort on this Remembrance Day. The artist who created this famous femme of the factory didn’t give her a name. She came to be known as Rosie, although Howard Miller could easily have called her Olga.

Olga Cutmore is in her nineties now, but it’s not hard to imagine her as the young woman with her sleeve rolled up like Rosie’s. Olga still lives in Long Branch and, as a young woman she hopped the radial car every weekday morning to Stop 2 in Lakeview to her assembly line job with Small Arms Limited in Mississauga.  

Olga was just one of a growing number of women who left the family home each morning, but not before sending her children off to school with homework, warm clothes and a full stomach. In 2004, Olga was made the first honourary Canadian member of the American Rosie the Riveter Association. ARTRA is dedicated to preserving the history of women in the workplace during WWII.   Rosie the Riveter proudly declared, “We Can Do It”. Olga is a reminder that Canadian women did it, too.

Being Canadian, Olga was more of a “Bren Girl” than a riveter. The Bren was a machine gun built at Lakeview’s small arms plant. Brens were also manufactured at the Toronto factory of John Inglis and Company which made boilers and pumps during peacetime. Like the US’s War Production Coordinating Committee, which put Miller’s poster girl to work campaigning for the war effort, Canada’s National Film Board created “Bonnie the Bren Girl” when a film crew arrived at Inglis’ plant and snapped a series of photos of assembly line inspector, Veronica Foster at work – with overalls, the obligatory hairnet, and a cigarette in her hand.

The NFB one-upped their American counterpart, following Veronica that same evening to a dinner party where she danced the night away. The point, of course was that Canada’s Rosie had a life, although with so many eligible dance partners serving at the front, most of Lakeview’s women retired each night to the 235-room women’s dormitory complex built for them across the road from the factory, on the northeast corner of Lakeshore and Dixie.

Many companies with slumping wartime sales and rising wartime patriotism converted their assembly lines to make ammunitions, weapons, planes and trucks for the Commonwealth. But in a reverse of the normal trend, Mississauga’s historic weapons factory began as a purpose-built weapons factory and then converted to peacetime purposes after WWII.  

Ontario Power Generation was the last tenant in the former administration building at the small arms site. OPG’s training facility here was closed soon after the nearby Lakeview Generation Station was demolished. Ratepayers in Lakeview rallied their forces to save the historic building. Mississauga city council agreed to designate the building earlier this year.

This set in motion a plan for a $4.5 million upgrade to turn the former small arms site into a 4,000 square metre multi-use complex, featuring WWII memorabilia.

Seneca College and UTM plan to occupy part of the grounds to conduct studies on methods to clean up toxic and hazardous industrial lands as part of a centre for environmental excellence. The 1,600 square metre room where guns were once assembled will become a place where people assemble for conferences, exhibitions, lectures, performances and a farmers market.

The Lakeview Legacy Community Foundation was organized to get the Small Arms Project moving forward and to obtain artifacts appropriate to the history of the plant and of the role of women in the workplace during the Second World War. LLCF obtained the first item in its new collection this past June when ARTRA presented a plaque to Ken Cutmore.

Recognize that name? Ken is Olga’s son. Ken and his brother Bob are members of LLCF and have dedicated much of their time to getting the Small Arms Project on the go as a museum and a community centre.  

For decades, Remembrance Day has been a time to honour the men who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. With the anticipated success of the Lakeview Legacy Community Foundation, it will be that much easier to remember the thousands of women, too who surrendered whatever dreams they had for their own lives to commit to something larger than themselves.