Wartime Student Labour

Students were turned to in order to assist in the farming labour shortage. During the summer of 1942, the first summer which followed the removal of Japanese farmers from coastal areas of British Columbia, there was an attempt at using students as farm labour in Canada. This did not work out due to lack of planning. In the following years there was a higher turnout of students, housewives, and businessmen, which allowed for the crops to be saved. Many students were given leave from school in June, as well as September leading to lower enrollment during these months in 1943 and 1944.¹

At this time many students did not graduate high school. Many students went off to work. This was sometimes because they were not doing well academically, such as Jim Hamilton, who had chosen courses that were not connected to his skill set and consequently started working at Bert Grantham’s General Store. During the war the number of Surrey high school students leaving their academics to work was even higher because war jobs offered higher rates of pay than they would be able to get elsewhere, even after graduating. This may have been short-term thinking as these jobs would not last following the war. Other students worked, while continuing their studies, either taking summer jobs (often in war industries), or working on the weekends. Outliers, like Bill Fomich not only worked summer jobs in logging or on tug boats, but also managed a fulltime job working nights at the Port Mann shops for the Canadian National Railways. Other students left school to go off to war, including female students, such as an ex-student, who, when she returned to visit in her uniform, “was the envy of some of the girls.”²