Past Exhibition

A Community at War

Sep 26, 2013
to
Jan 05, 2014
EXHIBITION
Members of the Gifford unit of the Pacific Coast Militia Rangers, Norm and Jack Hill, 1942

To complement The Navy: A Century in Art and provide a local perspective, Our Communities Our Stories will show local military artefacts from The Reach’s material culture collection, local veterans and military historians and archival photos that document the ways in which Abbotsford has been affected by wartime.

The term “home front” entered the English language during WWII, in a speech by U. S. President Franklin Roosevelt who stated that the efforts of civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice were as critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves; that the civilian populace constituted an additional front at home.

Civilians supported the war effort through Victory Loans, reducing their demands on resources to enable them to be redirected to military use and to the needs of civilians abroad, increased regulation of manpower to ensure that both homeland and military demands were met. An accompanying education program examines how children were affected by wartime shortages and rationing and how the home front sacrifices might look today.

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