When one thinks of feminist imagery associated with the Second World War, the persona of “Rosie the Riveter” invariably comes to mind. Female industrial war workers — usually wearing a bandana or head scarf, with sleeves rolled up ready to produce weapons to take on the Axis — were used in recruitment posters, propaganda films, newspaper articles, and other forms of media to encourage women to join the war effort. The era gave women a chance to demonstrate their skills and abilities in realms outside the domestic and the other traditional jobs many had been confined to, and, for many, the desire to shake the system up endured after the war ended.
While the image of “Rosie the Riveter” was American, one of its inspirations came from Toronto. During the war, the John Inglis and Company plant on Strachan Avenue produced thousands of Bren light machine guns — weapons that were cheap and easy to manufacture, easily fired, and worked in cold or muddy conditions. When the National Film Board of Canada searched in early 1941 for someone to use in photos for propaganda encouraging women to sign up for industrial war work, it chose 19-year-old Inglis employee Veronica Foster.
The NFB built the persona of “Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl” around Foster. In May 1941, she was featured in a series of photographs depicting her at work and at play: she prepared for work by tying her head scarf on, for example, then leaned over a lathe (the emphasizing of her bust suggested that, while she was hard at work, she was still feminine). The most iconic image in the series, writes Canada’s History magazine, shows Foster in “curve-hugging overalls while effortlessly exhaling smoke from her cigarette as she admires her recently assembled Bren gun.” Foster wasn’t a smoker, but it was felt that showing her as one would lend factory work a glamourous appeal.
Other photos depicted her during downtime. In several, she wore stylish clothing straight out of a fashion magazine as she prepared to party at the Glen Eagle Country Club (likely the Glen Eagles Manor Hotel, which was located in present-day Rouge National Urban Park, in Scarborough). She also enjoyed drinks with friends and danced the jitterbug.
Veronica Foster, “The Bren Gun Girl,” preparing to go to a party at the Glen Eagle Country Club. (National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque. Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN 3195800)
The effect of these images was to promote a sense of normalcy on the home front and to show that women could handle the challenges and demands of an industrial workplace. “Taken as a whole, the image series presents women war workers’ bodies as beautiful and feminine, both in their factory uniforms and outside of the workplace,” historian Sarah Van Vugt observed in a 2017 post on the website Unwritten Histories. “The Bren Gun Girl series is part of a larger body of wartime images featuring the symbolic figure of the beautiful woman war worker. This imagery emphasized womanly bodies, physical attractiveness, whiteness, middle-class status, and femininity. It constantly reminded North American society of women workers’ difference, making them not just workers like all others, but special, temporary, feminized workers. The legacy of Rosie the Riveter imagery, then, is rather more complicated than the straightforward feminist message many associate with it now.”
"The Bren Gun Girl" having a beer at the Glen Eagle Country Club in May 1941. (National Film Board of Canada/Photothèque. Library and Archives Canada, PA-11756)
Articles periodically appeared in the mainstream press praising the efforts of female war workers. In a December 1941 Star Weekly feature, writer Eleanor Bruce noted that there were around 1,000 female workers at the Inglis plant who worked nine-hour shifts daily, with every eighth day off. Their wage was 30 to 40 cents per hour (equivalent to $5.56 to $7.41 today). Bruce added that “the small, tapered hands of women often make them actually better equipped than men for war factory jobs requiring precise work with delicate instruments. Girls who have the trained fingers of typists, waitresses or needlewomen are often especially successful.”
The popularity of the NFB’s campaign inspired similar efforts in the United States. In 1942, artist J. Howard Miller created a poster produced by Westinghouse’s War Production Co-ordinating Committee showing a headscarfed woman rolling up her sleeve and flexing her muscle as she declared “We Can Do It!” Around that time, Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb wrote the song “Rosie the Riveter,” which was recorded by many artists. Norman Rockwell’s cover for the May 29, 1943, edition of the Saturday Evening Post cemented the image, depicting a female plant worker with a “Rosie” lunchbox eating a sandwich while holding a rivet gun, with the American flag serving as the backdrop.
"The Bren Gun Girl" inspects a lathe at the John Inglis Co. Bren gun plant in May 1941. (National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque. Library and Archives Canada, PA-129380)
As the war continued, Foster also worked as a model and big-band singer, sometimes performing for troops still in Canada. A January 1944 Ottawa Citizen review of a performance she gave with Norma Locke and Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen at Lansdowne Park noted that she “experienced no trouble in quickening the heartbeats of the vast throng of boys in khaki and navy blue.” She also sang with ensembles led by Joe DeCourcey and Bobby Gimby (of Centennial-era “Ca-Na-Da” fame). Among her gigs that received press was a “Teen Town Time” dance at Maple Leaf Gardens in April 1946 sponsored by Simpsons department store to benefit local youth centres. A photo of the event published by the Toronto Star shows her surrounded by happy male attendees.
Photo published in the May 24, 1946, edition of the Windsor Star.
The teens in the picture might have been disappointed to learn that she was married. While with Kenney’s orchestra, she fell in love with trombonist George Guerette, and they tied the knot in 1944. By the end of the 1940s, the Guerrettes had moved to Edmundston, New Brunswick, where they would raise five children while her husband worked as the sales manager of radio station CJEM.
Following her husband’s death from cancer in 1963, she worked briefly as a sales manager for CP Hotels before moving back to Toronto, where she worked as a real-estate agent and volunteered for a local music organization. She was interviewed by the Toronto Star in 1975 as part of a series profiling women at different stages in their lives — in her case, being widowed for more than a decade. “I have a love affair of 19 years to look back on,” she said. “My daughter has read our love letters from that time and she finds them incredibly beautiful.” She added that, while she didn’t regret giving up her career after the war to raise her family, working as a widowed mother had been good for her. “It got me out of the house to meet people and I found the challenge of the business world fulfilling. It helped fill the gap left by the loss of my husband. The exhilaration of the mind was a revelation to me. With each minor victory I’d say to myself, ‘You did it!’”
In the years since her death in 2000, Foster and the image she cultivated in the NFB’s photos have remained in public eye as a symbol of women’s roles during the war. A travelling exhibit prepared by the NFB in 2016 included the iconic pictures. To mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day in 2020, Canada Post issued a stamp in her honour.
Veronica Foster at Teen Town Time dance at Maple Leaf Gardens. (Toronto Star, April 27, 1946)
In her Star Weekly piece, Bruce considered whether women who worked in the factories would be willing to return to their pre-war status when the conflict ended. Her conclusion: while many wouldn’t object to going back to their former occupations, “they would definitely object to being dismissed and told that their country had no further use for them.”
Sources: the January 18, 1944, edition of the Ottawa Citizen; the August 15, 1944, edition of the SaintJohn Telegraph-Journal; the December 6, 1941, edition of Star Weekly; and the April 27, 1946, and October 10, 1975, editions of the Toronto Star.
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