A Guelph woman’s image is being immortalized on a commemorative Canada Post stamp, just in time for Remembrance Day.
The stamp’s photo honours the work of the farmerettes, a group of young women aged 16 and older who helped fill the labour shortage created in part by men who were sent to fight in the First and Second World War.
The image itself is of four women standing in a field, including Mary Barnaby Fountain.
“We’re very honoured,” said Georgina Taylor, Mary’s daughter. Mary passed away in 2021.
“We were a bit surprised cause there’s a lot of people that have saved photographs and we were very pleased that this one that they thought would represent the farmerettes.”
Mary was a 16-year-old going to Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute when she spent the first of three straight summers in the Niagara region.
“She was not a farmer – they lived in the downtown core of Guelph – but she was very patriotic,” Taylor said of her mother, whose family grew up through the Great Depression, which had a generation of hard working women to learn from.
The women lived in chaperoned camps, and would work 10-hour days in canneries, orchards and farm fields, planting, tending and harvesting fruits and vegetables.
The piece work would pay 25 cents for filling a six quart basket of apples or cherries. On a good day, Mary would make $2.25.
“This was the first time a majority of them had been away from home, and they were making a bit of pocket money too, and they were starting to learn independence,” Taylor added.
“It was very hard work, and I’ll never downplay that, and 90 per cent of the girls that arrived on site – including my mother – had no idea what they were walking into, of how much work it was going to be.
“But she stuck it out, and she quite enjoyed it after they got used to it.”
Not only did she stick it out, but she made many lifelong friends along the way.
“They made a lot of quick friends. They would work very hard through the day, and then there were core soldiers in the area at the base up training, so on the weekend, the girls would all load up in the farmer’s truck and head into town to go to the movies, and there would be dances on too. So they had a blast for part of their time.”
It is a time workers looked at fondly, despite the hard work and the long days.
Many farmerettes came from the Wellington County area, and took on the roles to help the country in providing food during the war time.
“That’s a time of history where it’s very special, and it’s a side of the war that our country should be proud of,” Taylor said. “It’s sort of a happy story because they bonded and made a lot of friendships.”
So how does she think her mom would feel?
“She would be really stunned, and really excited and proud,” Taylor said. “She would be very proud.”
