The Jenny Wren statue at Queen's Square
A parade, a proud past, and a statue honouring 7,000 women
It’s perhaps five feet tall and nondescript, but the Jenny Wren statue on the grounds of the library (Idea Exchange) at Queen’s Square in Galt has a story behind it that should make all of Cambridge, and Canada, proud.
Sculpted by WREN Frances Gage (1924-2017), the statue honouring the more than 6,000 women who did their three-week basic training as part of Canada’s navy in Galt during World War II, was given to the city of Galt with gratitude in October 1972.
On October 22, a pristine autumn Saturday, a crowd gathered around the statue to pay tribute to the 80th anniversary of HMCS Conestoga, the so-called “stone frigate” training facility just off Hespeler Road.
A commemorative parade led by the naval band began at the Cambridge Armoury and proceeded down Main Street to Queen's Square, where dignitaries celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service WRCNS or ‘Wrens’, which was the logical slurring of the British WRNS) Training Establishment HMCS Conestoga.
The HMCS Conestoga might sound like the name of a ship, and indeed, it was regarded officially as a “stone Frigate.” Although the Royal Canadian Navy was slow in creating a women’s service—the Galt facility didn’t open until July 1942—over the next three years of war, 6,800 women came through their basic training at Galt. Wrens trained on “land ships” designated “Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship.”
The Wrens was modelled on the Women’s Royal Naval Service, which had first been active during the Great War and then revived in 1939. The Canadian Navy established their women’s service nearly a year after both the Canadian Women’s Army Corps and the Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division were initiated.
HMCS Conestoga at Galt
HMCS Conestoga was the basic training establishment, in Galt, Ontario, for the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS) during the Second World War.
Alan Butcher’s 2009 book about Frances Gage (Dundurn Press).
Sculptor Frances M. Gage
Canadian sculptor Frances M. Gage RCA, who was born in Windsor in 1924, was a noted Canadian sculptor who was also a Wren and, after he basic training in Galt, later served in the intelligence service of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. After the war she met Frances Loring and Florence Wylie, who offered encouragement. Loring sculpted the Galt cenotaph. With the help of Loring and Wylie, Gage attended the Ontario College of Art and the Art Students League of New York and L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Gage died November 26, 2017, in Cobourg, Ontario.
A parade honouring HMCS Conestoga and the WRENS
HMCS Conestoga set records
By war’s end, nearly seven thousand women had came to town, later serving with the Wrens across Canada and Europe—many in harm’s way—having been trained in 39 trades. Several died during the war.
The local HMCS Conestoga was notable for all of this, and more. It became the first-ever female-commanded Canadian commissioned “ship” in the Canadian Navy when, in June 1943, Lieutenant Commander Isabel Macneill was appointed commanding officer. Commander Macneill was the first, and only woman outside the Royal family, who rates being piped over the side on Canada’s naval vessels when coming aboard or going ashore.
Just months later, in September 1943, Adelaide Sinclair was appointed first Canadian director of the WRCNS, a position she held until disbandment in July 1946, though the Wrens was revived as part of the Naval Reserve at the onset of the Korean War, until disbanded for a second and final time in 1968 when the Royal Canadian Navy was folded into the unified Canadian Forces.
Of the nearly seven thousand women from across Canada who served in the Wrens as part of the Canadian Armed Forces, almost all came to Galt to do their basic training at HMCS Conestoga between 1942 to 1946. It was a stepping stone for non-commissioned women who would go on to provide non-combat support for the duration of the war. The Wrens were employed in mostly land-based jobs, including administration and naval intelligence, which freed up men to go to sea.
HMCS was a “stone frigate” on dry land, located at the Galt Training School for Girls facility, which was located out back of the present-day Waterloo Regional Police facility on Hespeler Road.
The facility offered everything needed for a women’s barracks and training facility, with residences, a cafeteria, teaching space and an administrative building, as well as ample parade grounds.
The Wrens was an active element of the Royal Canadian Navy that was active during the Second World War and afterward as part of the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve.
Although the Jenny Wren statue at Queen’s Square is often overlooked, Jenny Wren looks out toward the Galt Cenotaph, both war memorials at Queen's Square sculpted by a female; the cenotaph was sculpted by Frances Loring.
Sculptor Frances Loring
Frances Loring, born in Idaho in 1887, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. She lived most of her adult life in Canada, sculpting the Galt Cenotaph as well as the monument on the Queen Elizabeth Way, among others. She died, February 5, 1968 at the age of 80 in Newmarket, Ontario.
Loring and Frances Gage were friends, with Loring providing moral support in Gage’s pursuit of a career as a sculptor.
Although Loring died before Gage received the commission to sculpt the Jenny Wren statue, her work now looks over at Loring’s Galt Cenotaph at Queen’s Square.
About Us
Isabel Macneill
Lieutenant-Commander Isabel Macneill was the commanding officer of HMCS Conestoga, the first female commanding officer of a navy ship in the British Commonwealth, and later became the first female prison superintendent in Canada.
Adelaide Sinclair
Adelaide Sinclair was the first female Director and temporary commander of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS). She was later the second Chairman of the UNICEF Executive Board from 1951-1952. From 1957 to 1967 she was deputy executive director for programs of UNICEF, one of the highest ranking women at the UN.
The Wrens helped empower future generations of young women
Honouring the 80th anniversary of the Wrens
Jenny Wren signifies a contingent of volunteers—some 7,000-strong—who enlisted during those dire years of global war. After they enlisted, almost all of the women came to Galt, and went on to serve in 26 non-combatant occupations in Canadian naval bases at home or abroad. By late 1943, nearly 1000 Wrens worked in the Halifax area and lived in HMCS Stadacona. Together, the Wrens were trailblazers, making a significant contribution to Allied victory, and paving the way for future generations of Canadian service women.
Their service, and sacrifice, helped raise questions about the equality of women in the civilian world. They served as wireless telegraphists, electricians, and a number of other roles, including flying transport planes. Some also became prominent support staff at the Government Code and Cypher School at the now-famed Bletchley Park. Although it is not known if Wrens served at the Canadian Camp X location in Oshawa on Lake Ontario, several women from the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC) did.
Some Wrens loaded torpedoes on to submarines and commanded and crewed powerful harbour launches. Boat crews also served as coastal mine-spotters, an important, though dangerous job. All told during wartime, the service lost 303 women, which included 11 Canadian Wrens who died on duty.
At war’s end, the school was decommissioned in 1946, returning to its former task as a training school for delinquent girls. Macneill served as superintendent of the school from 1948 to 1954, overseeing changes to the school including the introduction of psychologists and caseworkers and providing training and treatment for the girls.
The reputation of the HMCS Conestoga during the war couldn’t have been higher, but years later, long after Macneill’s tenure, the school, which was renamed Grandview Training School for Girls in 1967, took on an altogether different tenor. The school closed in 1976 after an investigation revealed abuse of girls at the school from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. When the abuse came to the public’s attention, several former guards and employees were charged and convicted.
A half-century ago, and three decades after Canada’s Wrens became a violable part of Canada’s military, at the unveiling of the Jenny Wren statue just before Cambridge was born, several original Wrens who received their basic training in Galt, were on hand for the ceremony.
Women have played an increasingly significant role within Canada’s military in the 80 years since the Wrens was established. Today women are fully integrated into the Navy, in all trades and roles, including the officer corps and seeing combat duty. The statue at the library bears witness to how it all began some 80 years ago with the Wrens, a group of women who pioneered equality and the expanding roles of women in what had been a male-dominated world.
After the parade, the Naval band relaxes on a pristine late
Commander was a pioneering woman
The statue at Queen’s Square may be nondescript until the history of what it stands for is known. Then it becomes a towering testimonial to those first trailblazing women and their contributions to a victory that was far from certain when they enlisted.
Isabel Macneill deserves a good measure of the credit for the early years of the Wrens. She received her education at the Halifax Ladies’ College and Mount Saint Vincent Academy, and following her graduation in 1926, she went on to the Nova Scotia college of Art and the Heatherly School of Art in London, England. She worked as a scenic designer in professional theatre in England during the days when another Canadian, Vincent Massey, was making his mark on the British stage, before teaching art and dramatics in the United States at Sea Pine School on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Fairmont Junior College in Washington, D.C.
With the advent of war in 1939 she returned to Canada and immediately volunteered for war work. Initially, she worked at the North End Services Canteen, s place where service personnel came to relax and eat a light meal. She also helped co-found the Ajax Club, a place for servicemen to unwind when off duty. By the time the Wrens began she was the person judged to be best-suited to head it. This made her not only the first and only female commander of a ship in Canada, but in the entire British Commonwealth during the Second World War. As such, she was entitled to be “piped aboard” any warship, the only woman outside the royal family to be accorded this honour.
She had taken her basic training in Ottawa prior to the Galt facility’s debut, part of the first group of women to be trained. Commissioned as an Officer, she then attended the first course for female officers at His Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Conestoga, the navy’s shore establishment in Galt, before being promoted to lieutenant-commander and appointed Conestoga’s commanding officer.
In addition to the statue in Cambridge, there is another monument honouring the Wrens in Halifax, where a Historic Sites and Monuments' board of Canada plaque describes the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service in the military during the Second World War as challenging “the tradition of all-male armed forces.” The plaque notes that “Between 1942 and 1946 close to 7000 volunteers enlisted in the WRCNS and served in 26 non-combatant occupations in Canadian naval bases at home or abroad.”
Last month, some 80 years after the first class of young women came to Galt to do their basic training at HMCS Conestoga, the war still raged on, with no end in sight, and no certainty as to the future. The evolution of women’s roles in society and in war was in its infancy; in terms of equality, much was still to be defined. It was a lifetime ago, and today, only a few Wrens still live. The statue in Cambridge, and the plaque in Halifax, are two reminders of the contributions of women who wanted to serve their country.
The nearly 7,000 women who served in the Wrens and their first commander, Macneill, established the service as a credible unit of the navy. Macneill continued on a superintendent of the training school for girls until 1966, when she resigned. In 1977 she was asked to lead a study into drug addiction by the Ontario Drug Addiction Research Foundation. When her report was issued two years later it contributed to the development of a better treatment programme for addicts.
Macneill is recognized today as a pioneer in establishing women in nontraditional leadership roles in the navy and the correctional system. In both sectors today the employment of women in senior positions, as well as in other institutions, is commonplace. Within the Canadian Armed Forces as a whole, Sheila Hellstrom became the first female brigadier-general in 1987. And as of 2019, 27 women had been promoted to flag officer (navy) or general officer (army/air force) rank. In the navy, Laraine Orthlieb became the first female to hold flag rank when she was promoted to commodore in 1989, while Jennifer Bennett became the first woman promoted to rear admiral in 2011. Wendy Clay was the first woman to be promoted to major general (1994) and Chris Whitecross was the first female lieutenant-general (2015).
In 1971 Macneill was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and received the 1977 Jubilee Medal, as well as honourary doctor of law degrees from Queen’s University (1977) and Dalhousie (1981).
She continued to remain active after retiring to Mill Village in rural Nova Scotia serving as director of the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice from 1979 to 1982, and then serving as the first female member of the board of governors of the Nova Scotia Division of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires until her death in 1990.
The next time you see the Jenny Wren statue, take a closer look, and remember the thousands of women, almost all with ties to Galt, and the history that it stands for. They not only served their country in a time of war, but empowered future generations of young women.