CORNWALL, P.E.I. - When the boys went overseas for the Second World War, a young a young girl named Rita Gallant stayed behind to help build the Tribal class destroyer HMCS NOOTKA in Halifax.Born Rita Gallant in Woodstock, Prince Edward Island, she is now Rita St. Onge of Cornwall P.E.I. She was the first woman ever hired to work on the construction of a Canadian destroyer. Today, she remembers the panicky feeling in 1940's Halifax mostly generated from the lack of real information about the situation in Europe and the Pacific, and the atmosphere of irreverence created to ease those anxieties and her extraordinary role in Canada's war effort.

In 1940, St. Onge decided to leave home and find work. With only $5 to her name, she borrowed $10 from a farmer who lived down the road from her just to pay the $7 train fare to Halifax. When she arrived, she used the rest of her money to buy something luxurious she had always wanted - a wristwatch which she saw in a shop window. Luckily, she soon found a job as a domestic and worked at that for two years. Then, one day, she saw an newspaper ad: The National Selective service sought applications to fill rapidly vacating positions in a Halifax shipyard. She decided to apply.

"I took a little quiz and was quite surprised to later find out I was hired", she recalls. "Out of the hundreds or workers, only six women helped construct HMCS NOOTKA and she was the first". She says it was the best job she ever had. "We worked as pattern makers in the mould loft where all the plans of the ship were on the floor. The plans were all drawn to scale. We would take measurements for an individual part then make it using one inch plywood. We would drill holes and inset the rivets through the wood. Next, the model would be taken to another room and they'd make it in steel. The destroyer took three years to build, so we only built one".

Meanwhile, thousands of sailors, soldiers and airmen were being shipped out of Halifax, the last stopover point in North America. "There weren't many men left, and ships were always leaving", St. Onge recalls. "It was terrible, no one knew what was going on. There was no media. A little bit of news at night on the radio, and the paper". Military protocol demanded certain information be kept from the public, but some people, like St. Onge, had some of their suspicions confirmed after the war, like the time a German submarine made it to the gates of Halifax Harbour. "I was at a Christmas party in 1944 when it happened and the guys at the party were all called into duty", she said. "I became suspicious then. I found out later the Germans tried to get under the net at the gate but were stopped. A lot of people never think it happened but the Germans really meant business".

Besides the war, St. Onge had another thing to think about - her new position as a minor Canadian wartime celebrity as the first woman shipbuilder. "I got cards and letters from Maurice Duplessi's government in Quebec, from other politicians and got my picture in the paper. I was even interviewed on the radio in Halifax", she recalls. "Everyone thought it was exciting but me. I never thought of it that way - a celebrity".
 
 

This photo of  Rita Gallant was taken on the day she christened NOOTKA.  (Photo courtesy of her daughter Debbie Joslin <joslin@pris.ca> )

For the most part, St. Onge said that people had no problem with the idea of a woman building a destroyer, but she laughs about the time Lorne Green telephoned her for an interview. Greene was the Canadian newscaster who went on to fame across North America for his acting role on the TV show bonanza. "When he said, 'I'm Lorne Green', I said 'who?' and hung up", she recalls. "He called back and I gave him an interview, but he kept asking me these stupid questions like, 'Do you use a left-handed wrench? and 'Did you ever hear of a sky-hook?' Obviously there's no such thing as hook that hangs from the sky. He was trying to catch me on something to see if I really knew what I was doing. In the end though, I was paid $35 for the interview".

Perhaps the most exciting moment of her experience occurred shortly after the ship was built, when she was asked to christen the NOOTKA during the launching ceremony. "It was launched April 25, 1944. They asked me solely because I was the first woman to work on the construction of a military ship," she said. "The NOOTKA was the second Canadian destroyer to be launched during the war and the Governor General's wife had christened the first one, so it was a big deal. There were thousands of people at the ceremony. I cut the ribbon and smashed the bottle of champagne on the ship before it went down the ramp into the water. I was 21, a slim pretty girl and the navy took lots of pictures", she said, indicating newspaper photographs she had clipped. She still has the silver plaque recognizing her role in the christening. It's valued at more than $8,000 today.

Her picture was in the paper again the next year when shipbuilders went on strike and she was one of the few who continued working. She said she was dead set against the strike, especially considering how important the work was for Canada's war effort. "A lot of the striking workers were pretty hostile but the manager, R.J.R. Nelson, protected me" she said. "One time, the workers searched the trunk of his car because they thought he was trying to sneak me in that way. You did have to sneak to get to your job, though".

The destroyer they had built, HMCS NOOTKA, replaced HMCS NANOOSE, a ship sunk at the beginning of the war by the Germans. It went on to be used in the Korean War and was mothballed in Vancouver in 1964. St. Onge keeps a copy of NOOTKA's log book that the navy gave her with her wartime memorabilia. Rita Gallant became Rita St. Onge when she married a returning soldier and moved back to P.E.I. She never worked in construction again. "I loved that job. I think I would have liked to work with wood again, maybe making picture frames. I wish I had kept my tools. I owned my own when I was working, but I gave them to the person who replaced me when I left."

St. Onge remembers her time as a shipbuilder as being very interesting and even fun. "People played a lot of pranks and joked around a lot to ease the tension," she said. " There were really bad times too, like the ship that exploded in July of 1945 and all those men lost in Dieppe. I was glad when it was over. Wars don't solve anything and I hope it will never happen again".