Honouring our Hometown Heroes: Petty Officer (ret’d) Alice Adams (WRCNS) 1922 -

As the Second World War (1939-45) intensified, particularly at sea, a growing number of men were needed to crew the country’s naval vessels. To fulfil a range of trades on shore, freeing up sailors for active duty, the navy created the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS) in 1942 to allow women to volunteer for service. This approach was so successful that by war’s end, a little over 6,700 Canadian women from coast to coast served their country in uniform at home and overseas as “Wrens”.

One of these women was Alice Adams (born Rutherford). Teaching at an elementary school in rural Saskatchewan at the start of the war, Adams came across a recruitment notice for the WRCNS and travelled to Saskatoon to enlist at HMCS Unicorn, a naval reserve division of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). While aboard the train to Galt, Ontario, for basic training at HMCS Conestoga, Adams met others her age who would become friends for life.

With basic training completed, Adams was selected to be among the first group of wireless telegraphists and was sent to signal school near present-day Scarborough, Ontario, where she learned to be proficient in Morse code. She was then sent to Ottawa to help establish Number 1 Station HMCS Bytown, a station to intercept German naval communications, and where Wrens formed the core of the personnel. After a few months in Ottawa, Adams received further wireless operator training at the signal school in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, before being posted to HMCS Coverdale in Moncton, New Brunswick. At Coverdale, as at Bytown, her duties included copying enemy naval traffic as well as tracking the bearings of enemy German submarines, known as U-boats.

The vital intelligence gathered from these stations, along with stations in Newfoundland and the United Kingdom, assisted the Allies in determining the location of U-boats. Merchant convoys in the North Atlantic Ocean – essential to the survival of Britain, the liberation of Europe, and to help supply the Soviet Union – could then be diverted from the path of U-boats, saving countless lives and protecting this essential lifeline between North America and Europe.

With Japan’s entry into the war in 1941, the Pacific Ocean also became a significant theatre of war. Although she hoped for an overseas posting, Adams instead found herself at signal school in St. Hyacinthe once again. This time Adams learnt Kana, the Japanese version of Morse code, and how to transcribe it on special typewriters. With this training, she was posted to the Gordon Head Special Wireless Transmitting Station on Vancouver Island in 1944. At the time, the location of the station was kept completely secret, and personnel were billeted in nearby Esquimalt. Today, the former grounds of the station form part of the University of Victoria campus.

Throughout the war, the vital intelligence she and her fellow wireless telegraphists gathered at intercept stations became an important component of the Allied signals intelligence system. These Canadian posts were considered ‘outstations’ of Bletchley Park, the top-secret British military intelligence headquarters located in the United Kingdom. Due to the covert nature of this work, it would only be decades later that her role in this larger system of intelligence would become known to her, earning Adams the Bletchley Park Commemorative Badge.

The war in the Pacific came to an end with the surrender of Imperial Japan in August 1945. Adams continued in service as part of a WRCNS unit at Gordon Head Military Camp processing freed Canadian and British prisoners of war from the Battle of Hong Kong, returning by the thousands through Naden’s dockyard after being held in camps since 1941. Arriving with nothing, and in very poor health, these soldiers and nurses were sent to the hospital at Gordon Head for evaluation and to complete administrative procedures. This experience brought her in direct contact with victims of war, an experience that has stayed with her to this day.

Having achieved the rank of Petty Officer, Adams’ wartime service came to an end in the spring of 1946. Upon her transition back to civilian life, she completed higher education to become a Reference Librarian. She eventually married, moved to Ottawa, and raised three children. Following her retirement, she returned to live in Victoria in 1985, where she continues to reside.

Like many women who served in uniform during the war, Adams’ experiences gave her a sense of confidence she would carry throughout her civilian life. The shared experiences and camaraderie she lived brought her very close to a number of other Wrens, leading to life-long friendships.

Alice Adams is one of the approximately 50,000 Canadian women who served our country in uniform, fulfilling a variety of functions at home and abroad, during the Second World War and making important contributions to Allied victory. While women were not allowed in combat roles at that time, these trailblazers demonstrated their proficiency in even the most highly technical and advanced functions and paved the way for full integration of women in the Canadian Armed Forces in the second half of the twentieth century.

Even more women – one million strong – contributed to the war effort at home in manufacturing roles, producing necessary war materiel in the nation’s factories and shipyards. Women also took on the roles of ‘Housoldiers,’ ‘Waste Wardens,’ and ‘Kitchen Commandoes,’ keeping their families healthy and strong despite wartime rationing, sending care packages overseas, and doing fundraising and charitable work.