{"id":18885,"date":"2017-11-08T16:09:54","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T21:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18885"},"modified":"2017-11-22T15:53:36","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T20:53:36","slug":"the-century-of-sergeant-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/the-century-of-sergeant-strange\/","title":{"rendered":"The Century of Sergeant Strange"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir <\/p>\n

You joined up to get a husband.
\nNearly eighty years later these words still ring in the ears of Sergeant Peggy Strange.
\nLanding a man was not, of course, her objective. She was there to get the work done. It was good work. Work she\u2019s very proud of. And, in the end, it was behind-the-scenes work that was invaluable to the war effort.
\nSgt. Strange, who celebrated her 100th birthday with family at her Aurora residence on Wednesday, will spend Remembrance Day as she has for the last few years: visiting children at local schools to highlight the importance of remembering those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.
\nBut before the poignant commemoration, there was plenty of time for celebration as she marked her momentous milestone, although she kept her excitement well-hidden sitting down with The Auroran ahead of the bash.
\n\u201cI am in a fog \u2013 so much is happening,\u201d she says. \u201cMy 100th birthday doesn\u2019t mean anything. I just live every day. People are excited about my 100th birthday, but it doesn\u2019t even fizz on me. It seems like when I turned 65 or 75. It doesn\u2019t seem that different and I carry on.\u201d
\nWe\u2019ve all seen those \u201cKeep Calm and Carry On\u201d posters on walls and in stores, but for Peggy Strange and her generation, it was \u2013 and is \u2013 very much a way of life.
\nSgt. Strange\u2019s story began on November 8, 1917 in a place that is no longer on the Canadian map. She proudly carries her Saskatchewan birth certificate with her improbable birth location to challenge those she meets to guess where it might not be.
\nPlace of Birth? \u201cSec. 14, Tp.11, Rge. 3, W.2.\u201d
\nRoughly translated to today\u2019s maps, it is just outside the village of Kennedy, SK.
\nThere, Frances Margaret MacMillan came into the world.
\nLiving and working on the family farm, she set out as a young woman to Regina, where, in the 1930s, she landed a job at Simpson\u2019s department store. She was working there when war broke out in 1939 and her life changed forever.
\n\u201cMy brother and sister had joined the war, and I worked in Robert Simpson\u2019s in Regina for a number of years and [after the war broke out] there was nobody left, nobody was buying anything,\u201d she recalls. \u201cOne day, five of us girls were called in by our supervisor, whom we got along with well, and she asked us to meet her for tea. We thought that would be lovely. When we got there, we had a nice tea, but then she told us the story that nobody was buying anything, people were disappearing for the war, and she had to let us go.
\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t know what to do. After [our supervisor] left, one of the girls said, \u2018I can\u2019t go home because my parents are poor and I have a brother and sister who are going to school and I don\u2019t want to be a burden on them.\u2019 It was the same situation with me. There were younger children at home and I would just become another burden, so we went and joined up.\u201d
\nHer first stop was Toronto where she got her uniform and was put through basic training.
\nNowadays when women join the Canadian Armed Forces, they have many paths available to them. When Peggy Strange enlisted, however, she could count her options on one hand. She could be a \u201cmess woman, a dishwasher, a secretary or an equipment assistant,\u201d she recalls. She and two of the other girls chose the latter option and they were off to what is now CFB Rockcliffe where she earned her corporal stripes.
\nOne day, the Sergeant Major came up to her and said he wanted to talk to her.
\n\u201cI wondered what I had done because we weren\u2019t very well liked when we joined,\u201d she says. \u201cThe airmen used to say, \u2018You joined up to get a husband,\u2019 or \u2018You joined up, now our friends are going overseas where they can be killed,\u2019 and it wasn\u2019t very nice. However, I just made up my mind I would do the best I could, work hard, and I won my stripes.\u201d
\nIn the end, the Sergeant Major offered her a new posting with two options: officers\u2019 training or a posting to a Canadian Detachment in Dayton, OH. She chose the latter after a friend said the last thing she wanted to be was an officer from the treatment she was receiving from the men.
\n\u201cYou ask any woman and they will tell you the same story,\u201d she says. \u201cYou were alone. You didn\u2019t have anybody, you didn\u2019t know the rules. When you did know the rules, you knew officers were officers, they were your boss, they could say anything to you and you would stand at attention.\u201d
\nThe promotion, she says, was very important to her and in Dayton, where she served as an equipment assistant, keeping the supplies flowing, she felt like she came into her own.
\nWhenever she received a snide remark from a male counterpart, she says she kept her head down, sure in the knowledge that she was doing my job and she was doing it well.
\n\u201cI am proud of that,\u201d she says. \u2018Our officers knew what we were doing. If you wrote a telegram, they had to be short and concise, then it went to the head officer. He would say, \u2018That\u2019s just perfect, MacMillan\u2019 \u2013 they didn\u2019t call you anything but your last name. You were proud of what you did and you worked hard to do it. They were like a family, but you knew your place. Our promotions didn\u2019t come easy. You had to prove yourself.
\n\u201cWe worked away and we never gave it a thought. Each of us had our different sections to work on and mine bought things that were needed. [Translating orders between Canadian and American units] was quite an experience. There were two gentleman [in charge of the books] and we would show the exact number. If we were correct, he would say, \u2018You Canadians are so smart, you get the number right every time.\u2019 I said, \u2018That\u2019s what we\u2019re trained to do, but thanks for helping anyway!\u2019\u201d
\nStrange, who eventually earned her Sergeant stripes, was still stationed in Dayton when the war ended.
\nFrom there, she was transferred to Winnipeg where, after doing the very necessary and exciting work, she and her female colleagues were back to doing more pedestrian desk work. It was necessary work, she says, but work that didn\u2019t require the work of a sergeant once the men came back from the front, so she weighed her options.
\nEventually, she asked for \u2013 and was granted \u2013 her discharge. She then returned to help her mother on the family farm (her father had died by then) but her mother encouraged her join her sister in Toronto and pursue a career.
\nTaking a course on running a comptometer (think a very large adding machine), she landed a job in the accounts department at the Toronto Transit Commission where she worked for many years. It was on this job that she met her future husband, Francis William George Strange, himself a war veteran.
\n\u201cI got to know him by checking his work,\u201d she says with a smile. \u201cAfter I got to know him, I said, \u2018What would happen if I found a mistake?\u2019 He said he\u2019d buy me a beer, but I didn\u2019t drink beer. So, after three years we finally got married in 1950.\u201d
\nThey were married for 48 years until his death in 1998.
\nShortly thereafter, Sgt. Strange settled in Aurora, eventually moving into Hollandview Trail Retirement Residence, where she is a very active centenarian. In addition to her passion for reading, she loves to knit and sew, is an active member of Hollandview Trail\u2019s knitting club, and is well underway in making her Christmas presence.
\nThis time of year, however, Christmas present production takes a back seat to memories.
\n\u201cI think about all the other veterans,\u201d she says. \u201cMy brother was a veteran and my sister was a veteran, so I think of them as well, but they are all gone. Thank goodness the Legion is kind and they come to visit.
\n\u201cI think it is wonderful that teachers are teaching students about Remembrance Day and what the soldiers went through.\u201d
\nAnd the work of the women is remembered too. Last year, at Rick Hansen Public School, Sgt. Strange, who is not bowed to age and still stands ramrod straight, was hugged by a young girl \u2013 whose arms reached little higher than her knees.
\nShe simply wanted to say, \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“You joined up to get a husband.”
\nNearly eighty years later these words still ring in the ears of centenarian Sgt. Peggy Strange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/2017-11-09-12-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4UB","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 21:17:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}