by Joanna Dermenjian | Jun 30, 2025 | Artifacts, History, Research
I know – the image is blurry. But you get the gist of it. This embroidery pattern was published in Canadian newspapers in 1947. The Canadian National Exhibition or ‘CNE’, was reopening in 1947, after being closed from 1942-46 when the grounds were in...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Jun 25, 2024 | Article, Artifacts, History
“My 100-year-old friend Joan died recently, and I am trying to sort her belongings. I have a quilt that was given to her during the war; she told me that it had come from Canada and that when she first had it there was a note saying where it had come from. It is in...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Jun 5, 2024 | Article, Artifacts, History, Labels, Research
This post is written by me, with additional conversation provided by an IG follower, Deb Greensill, from England. Joanna writes: During the Second World War, Canadian women on the home front knit socks, scarves, vests and balaclavas for the military, and sewed...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Nov 10, 2023 | Article, Artifacts, Children, History, Research
I made a discovery last year on Carrie Lord’s Instagram account called @homefronthistory. On March 17, 2022, she posted about war stamp corsages, called ‘Warsages’. Carrie has several in her collection of fabulous American home front WW2 collectibles. I had just...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Sep 21, 2023 | History
Quilts tell stories. Quilt tell stories about who made them. The designs, the colours, the materials used, the patterns in the fabric, the quality of the construction and stitching, all tell us something about the person or group who made it. Quilts from wartime also...
by Joanna Dermenjian | Sep 3, 2023 | Article, History, Red Cross
I am often asked what we know about how Canadian women went about completing the work of producing over 50,000,000 items for the war effort during WWII. Where did they meet, how did they organize, who was in charge, did they work on an assembly line, did they work to...
