Written by: Calya Lindley
Good company, a strong drink and music to dance to, what more could anyone want… Except perhaps a spouse. The 1940’s became synonymous with dance halls and a good time out, usually done on a budget due to war-time rationing. It may have not been the glamour of the 20’s but the 1940’s epitomized as much lighthearted laughter and a good time when the world seemed like it was falling apart.
During the Second World War, servicemen from all branches of their respective militaries found themselves posted all over the world. Many Canadian servicemen would spend much of the war time years stationed in England. These men would take their leave and attend the dance halls and clubs in the British towns they were stationed nearby. This meant there were plenty of shared dances, stolen kisses and clandestine moments between the local British women and the servicemen passing through.
However, many of these meeting would lead to love. A woman by the name of Joan S. Oakes remembered meeting her Canadian husband, Thomas, fondly at a dance. She was tall and her and her friend could never seem to find a good dance partner-until the Canadians. She and Thomas decided to get married only three months after they met. But the road would not be straightforward.1 There was a lot of paperwork for an English woman to marry a Canadian soldier. Having learned lessons from the First World War, where many men took wives abroad, even when they had a family waiting for them back home. The red tape and legal paperwork were designed to make sure everyone knew what they were getting into and that no woman went back to Canada to find her husband already married with children.
But even if all the paperwork came through and the couple could be married, the journey still wasn’t over, at least physically. Women would give up their life in England to move to Canada. Country girls ending up in the middle of big cities like Montreal or Toronto and city girls ending up in tiny towns scattered around the prairies. This move was not for the faint of heart and would have challenged even the strongest relationship. The journey itself could be harrowing. Most women did not have the money to take a plane across the Atlantic which meant that they crossed by sea. It could be made even more daunting for those women that made the trip during wartime, which meant a 7-day journey could last a month from dodging German U-boats.2
Making it to the ports off the East Coast didn’t signal the end for many women. Most were loaded onto trains to take them as far west as British Columbia. Traveling the vast country by train took days on the already travel weary women who may not even know if anyone would be waiting for them at the other end.
To some, this sort of sacrifice seems astronomical to make for a person whose family you have never met, whose hometown you never knew existed and who you have only known for a few
months. But many of these war brides loved Canada and built their lives and homes here. And to think, none of it would have happened had it not been for a dance.
1 Ben Wicks, Promise You’ll Take Care of My Daughter: The Remarkable war Brides of World War II (Toronto, Stoddart, 1992), 19, 20, 21, 69, 99.
2 Ibid.