Will you help us repatriate 40 quilts to Canada that are an important part of our nation’s living history?
During the Second World War, Canadian women voluntarily made over 400,000 quilts and sent them to Britain and European countries for victims of the blitz, refugees, orphans, the wounded, land girls and soldiers. Many of these quilts were deeply treasured by the recipients; though they had no idea who made them, they knew that someone cared for them in a desperate time.
Since 2005, the Canadian Red Cross Quilt Research Group (CRCQRG) in England has been collecting and researching the tiny number of these quilts that have survived into the 21st century. British institutions hold some of these quilts in their collections. Now, we hope that forty of these quilts will be able to “travel home”. The CRCQRG was founded by three women, as a subgroup of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles, specifically to rescue these quilts, in whatever condition they were found. One of these women, Dr. Anna Mansi, died in 2016. Her husband Anthony Mansi (Tony) has generously offered to donate the bulk of the quilts they collected together to be gifted to a museum in Canada as a whole collection. He has titled the collection “Comfort from Kindness – ‘In Her Name’ – The Anna Mansi WWII CRCQ Collection”.
Most of these quilts were donated to Anna and Tony over the last 20 years at no cost to them, and Tony is generously donating those to Canada. On several occasions, Anna and Tony purchased quilts for the collection, and for these we have committed to reimbursing his costs. The funds raised through this initiative will also cover shipping costs of returning the quilts to Canada and ensure their proper storage and conservation until a permanent home for the collection is secured. We are also working to record and archive the incredible stories that accompany the quilts.
This fundraising is being initiated by Joanna Dermenjian and Heather Smith, two Canadian scholars who are researching the voluntary textile production and quilt-making by Canadian women on the home front in the First and Second World Wars. The fundraising initiative to support the return of this quilt collection is being guided by Dr. Lisa Binkley, Associate Professor of History at Dalhousie University and Director of the Material Culture Collective.
About Joanna Dermenjian
Joanna Dermenjian holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University and is currently a Visiting Scholar at Toronto Metropolitan University. A researcher, speaker, collector, and practicing quiltmaker, she explores women’s voluntary domestic production in textiles and investigates Canadian women’s cultural legacy at the intersection of world wars and unpaid labour.
Her primary research focuses on quilt-making across Canada during the Second World War, when hundreds of thousands of quilts were produced by women and children and donated through the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) for distribution to civilians, hospitals, and soldiers in Britain and Europe. Joanna’s work examines these quilts not only as historical artifacts but also as material traces of care, community, and sustained collective effort, highlighting the emotional and social labour embedded in their production.
In addition to her scholarly research, Joanna actively engages in public history and curatorial practice, giving lectures, developing exhibitions, and collaborating with museums and heritage organizations to bring these stories to wider audiences. She maintains a research blog and social media presence to document and share insights on Canadian textile history, bridging academic scholarship with community engagement and contemporary quilt-making practice. View the ‘Events’ tab to see current presentation topics.
About Heather Smith
Heather Smith holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Victoria, a Master’s degree in art history & museum studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently a PhD Candidate in History at the Western University. She is a curator and museum professional that has contributed to curatorial exhibitions and from Yukon to Nova Scotia.
Her curatorial work, undertaken over a long career, has explored a range of interconnected themes, including contemporary and historical craft, war art and wartime craft, material culture, and the lives and work of women artists and craftspeople. From 2016 to 2019, her exhibition Canadian Keepsakes of Conflict: Trench Art & Other Canadian War Related Craft, travelled across Canada including to the Military Museums, (formerly the Museum of the Regiments) in Calgary, Alberta. This exhibition expanded on the idea, first expressed by Nicholas Saunders, a British material-culture historian, that trench art can be defined as any craft associated with war either directly or peripherally. Using this perspective, she has also examined red and white quilts created by women for community or war-related fundraising purposes. This line of inquiry has led to two recent quilt exhibitions at the Waterford Heritage Museum in Ontario: Red & White Quilts of Southwestern Ontario, a 2025 exhibition that included 53 quilts borrowed from 12 public and private collections, and Quilting for a Cause: The Red Cross Quilts of the Great War, an exhibition which was co-organized with James Christison and also travelled to The Military Museums, Calgary, Alberta, 2019.
Another defining thread in Heather’s work is the sustained attention to the creative lives shaped within Canada’s smaller, rural communities. Places such as Dawson City, Yukon; Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; and Port Rowan, Ontario (all places Heather has lived) exemplify how distinctive artistic and craft traditions emerge from the interplay of landscape, local history, and the realities of limited resources or outside influence. In these settings, the relationship between art, craft, history, and community takes on a particular richness and complexity that is often collaborative and essential to everyday life.