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(Gilberte Rochette, munitions worker, 1940 to 1942, at St-Malo and Côte du Palais. She addresses the camera seated in an armchair in her living room. )

They sit you down at the table and put a few hundred shell cases before you and ask you to examine them. There's a huge barrel right there beside you.

The checking goes on and on, and when the number of shell cases starts to go down, they make other cases tumble down like a sack of potatoes.

Imagine the noise! These are made of copper.

It was always like this, and it never stopped.

(The camera pans across an archive black and white photograph that shows the inside of a large munitions factory with women working throughout the factory floor. )

About twenty of us sat like this like we were on school benches. There would always be one whose table was empty.

(Back to the interview)

At the Côte du Palais, we worked on .303 calibre casings which looked like small revolver bullets.

(Géraldine Parent, Worker & foreman, from 1916 to 1951, Cove Fields and Valcartier. She addresses the camera from a chair in her living room. )

When I was hired, one of my sisters was working there. My work at Donohue as an apprentice seamstress had ended. My sister said, come work with me - and bring your lunch.

And that's what I did. They took me on right away.

(Rosette Parent, Worker, from 1946, Côte du Palais. She addresses the camera from a seat in her kitchen. )

I started working on one part and asked them to check that it had been done properly.

They said it had, and seeing that I paid careful attention to my work, they assigned me other parts.

This carried on until it became routine for us to do this work.

(The camera zooms out from a close up of a black and white archival photograph of a woman munitions worker standing in front of a machine on the factory floor. )

People stuck together. We helped each other with our problems.

(The camera pans across a black and white archival photograph. It's a group photograph of workers at a munitions factory, most of whom are women. )

Things went well. It definitely gave us a certain financial independence.

(Back to the interview)

We could spend the money as we wished and even give some to our parents. It was our money, and we could spend it as we wished.

(The camera zooms out from an archival black and white image taken from the First World War era of five women working in a munitions factory. )

I believe it was from that moment that women began going out into the workforce. Many women, like me, had never worked outside the home.

When these openings came along, we took advantage of them. They made things really easy for us to go to work.

(The camera slowly pans up an archival photograph of a munitions factory filled with women working. )

They made it especially easy for people who genuinely wanted to work.

(Back to the interview)

If I had the chance, I would go back in a heartbeat!