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War brides: From the Netherlands to the flatlands
Surrounded by falling bombs, strict rationing and nightly blackouts, a generation of young women found love. They were the war brides: British and European women who married Canadian servicemen in the Second World War. After tearful goodbyes to their families, they embarked on a grueling journey by ship and train to join their husbands and in-laws in a new country. Once they arrived, many war brides had to confront culture shock and desperate homesickness before embracing their new lives in Canada.
Program: Identities
Broadcast Date: Nov. 9, 1980
Host: Doug McIlraith
Duration: 5:44
Last updated: December 13, 2012
Page consulted on January 14, 2013
All Clips from this Topic
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A Canadian Army Newsreel welcomes Canada's newest citizens.
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After two years in Canada, a war bride has learned much about life in ...
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Wives and children of
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A war bride train stops in Toronto's Union Station, where families are...
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A London office organizes the war brides' journeys to Canada and educa...
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A former luxury liner is converted to transport a backlog of brides ac...
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A group of war brides' mothers travels from Liverpool to see how their...
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Air raid sirens are the soundtrack to romance as young British women f...
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A Red Cross volunteer remembers her experiences helping war brides on ...
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A Dutch war bride talks about meeting her husband and the long trip to...
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War brides remember homesickness, hardship and depression after coming...
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In 1983, a British woman reconnects with the Canadian soldier she met ...
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Peggy Holmes, a war bride of the First World War, recalls coming to Ca...
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War brides who went from Piccadilly to the prairie reunite in Brandon,...
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After living through the Blitz, Albertan war brides travelling to the ...
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Canadian soldiers in Holland left behind thousands of now-adult childr...
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Proof of status as a war bride helps a woman get a passport in a hurry...
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At an opening ceremony for Halifax's Pier 21, war brides gather to rem...
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A former Red Cross escort officer remembers her time aboard the Queen ...
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War brides of Ontario and Quebec meet for the last time.