Powder Room

Rosie the Riveter became ubiquitous after the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, with her pithy “We Can Do It!” slogan, but her Canuck predecessor, Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl, remains lesser known throughout North America. Her real name was Veronica Foster, and she was one of more than 10,000 women employed by the Toronto arms manufacturer John Inglis and Company. “Looking for an iconic figure to inspire women to consider war work,” the National Film Board photographed the nineteen-year-old in May 1941, wearing factory-issued navy coveralls and a tight turban. In multiple shots, she’s brandishing a Bren light machine gun. “Ronnie represented all bomb girls — whether they produced munitions or guns, gun sights or parachutes, uniforms or aircraft,” Barbara Dickson writes. “A nation of women pulled together.”

With Courage and Grit, Dickson considers many other women like Foster whose work on the home front helped sustain Canadians and...