October 23, 2025

‘FARMERETTES’ MADE THE GRADE WORKING HARD, FEEDING ONTARIANS AND MAKING LIFE-LONG FRIENDSHIPS

GRAVENHURST — Picking strawberries for 25 cents an hour was a dream job for thousands of teenage girls intent on skipping exams early in the Second World War.

However those first, long summer days of sunburns and back-braking harvesting were unexpected hard work that sent a few packing home — at their own expense.

Being a “Farmererette” wasn’t easy in 1941.

Moderator Autumn Summer, left, director Colin Field and author Bonnie Sitter enjoyed the post film Q&A that provided more lively discussion and laughter Sunday about the forgotten Farmerettes. PHOTOS Mark Clairmont MuskokaTODAY.com

But within a couple of weeks of “surviving,” the “camaraderie” in camps like St. Gregory was life-changing for many as they filled in for more fathers, brothers and other man off at war.

Like Nancy (Matthews) Raithby, 96, who to this day still has two good friends who were with her in the orchards east of St. Catharines where many Farmerettes worked. She went their from her home and school in Guelph.

And recently when one friend in Montreal told her about the documentary ‘We Lend a Hand: The Forgotten Story of Farmerettes,” Raithby said Sunday she was happy to be reminded of their childhood experience that none of her other family or friends knew then or now much about.

So she was thrilled to come up from her home now in Etobicoke to see it at the Opera House.

Spark Muskoka presented the film, which drew more than 150 farm-interested viewers.

Raithby said the 13-week Ontario government summer works program had led not only to the lasting friendships, but also a lifelong love with gardening.

**Nancy (Matthews) Raithby, 97 next month, still has the green thumbs as a gardner today she used picking strawberries on a farm in 1941 east of St. Catharines.**

Her story is typical of the 20 survivors of the 11-year program that Bonnie Sitter found, researched wrote the book “Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of Ontario Farmerettes” in 2019.

Now with the help of director Colin Field they expanded it on to the screen.

The Farmerette program was centred around south western Ontario with some girls travelling from northern Ontario.

In a Q&A after the film, which was very well received, Sitter said the girls were “treated well” and many like Raithby became best friends during the year they spent in the fields and avoiding exams.

Field noted that one Farmerette admitted she liked the farmer better than his wife, “because he understood their physical limits while his wife was more ‘let’s get to work.’”

Sitter said 15 of the 20 Farmerettes they interviews have been able to see the documentary.

She said one Farmerette, 102-year-old Barbara (Wilson) Murray still lives in Fort Frances and became a high school gym teacher and United Church minister.

“Sadly,” she said, “six of them have died since March.”

So it was nice to see Raithby Sunday.

A Farmerette graduate who made the final grade without writing her exams.