Rosies of the North

National Film Board of Canada

Geraldine Hoff Doyle of Lansing, Mich., the woman behind an iconic image of a bandana-clad, muscle-flexing Rosie the Riveter during World War II died last month. Doyle was 86 upon her death, a lifetime older than the 17-year-old factory worker who was captured in a United Press International photo in a metal-pressing plant near Ann Arbor.

Her photo was later used by the U.S. War Production Coordinating Committee in an illustrated poster called, “We Can Do It!”. The poster was designed to encourage other women to enter the workforce in support of the war effort but has grown to become a pop-culture icon of women’s equality.

This NFB documentary reveals some Rosies of the North in Canada - NYC

They raised children, baked cakes... and built world-class fighter planes. Sixty years ago, thousands of women from Thunder Bay and the Prairies donned trousers, packed lunch pails and took up rivet guns to participate in the greatest industrial war effort in Canadian history. Like many other factories across the country from 1939 to 1945, the shop floor at Fort William's Canadian Car and Foundry was transformed from an all-male workforce to one with forty percent female workers.