{"id":37073,"date":"2021-06-25T01:57:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T08:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=37073"},"modified":"2021-06-24T23:48:16","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T06:48:16","slug":"honouring-womens-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2021\/06\/25\/honouring-womens-courage\/","title":{"rendered":"Honouring women\u2019s courage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anne Petrie (photo from Maurice Yacowar)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The University of Calgary has organized a virtual exhibition to honour the efforts of Jewish women in the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War. Called She Also Served, it comprises a series of nine banners by various artists.<\/p>\n

Originally scheduled to be displayed at the Military Museums in Calgary during Jewish Heritage Month in May, it has been made available online throughout 2021 and will be physically hung in May 2022. Of the 17,000 Jews who served in the Canadian armed services, more than 275 were women.<\/p>\n

Among those selected to display their work is Anne Petrie of Victoria. For her banner, a digital print called \u201cIn the Tradition of Service,\u201d Petrie chose to list all the known names of the Jewish Canadian servicewomen. She used a font that is reminiscent of the typewriters of the 1940s. Another layer of the banner has the names of 12 biblical heroines, confirming the tradition of Jewish women\u2019s courage and dedication to serving their communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was immediately struck by knowing that, although they would not have had to hide their Jewish identity, it was still in those days not something that you would be comfortable being completely open about,\u201d Petrie told the Independent. \u201cEven if it was, at best, very casual antisemitism, it was a reality when they would have signed up. So, there you are fighting (even if it\u2019s only at a desk) for something \u2013 a religion, a people, a culture \u2013 that you can\u2019t really be openly passionate about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>
Anne Petrie\u2019s \u201cIn the Tradition of Service,\u201d 2021. Part of the She Also Served exhibit, now online.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Petrie, She Also Served is an opportunity to reveal and contextualize the \u201cJewishness\u201d of that other \u201cthem, the unsung and \u2013 worse \u2013 unidentified Jewish-Canadian women soldiers.\u201d She said she is honouring them by naming them in \u201ctheir doubly suppressed identities, as women and Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petrie\u2019s intention was to present the full names and rank (where available) of all the Jewish women known to have served. The collection of names fills the background layer of the 75-by-165-centimetre banner. Each name is in the colour of their respective services: olive green for army, dark navy for the navy and a lighter \u201cair force blue\u201d for the Women\u2019s Army Corps. Emerging from the background in a larger, translucent Hebrew script, and in a camouflage pattern, are the names of Judaism\u2019s biblical heroines, \u201cthemselves often subordinated by patriarchal tradition to the male heroes,\u201d said Petrie.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn making the banner itself, I was struck by how powerful it was to actually write out all the 279 names of the Jewish servicewomen that have so far been identified. I knew none of them personally, of course, but I felt that typing each name was a kind of acknowledgement and, strange as it sounds, I did feel a kind spirit or presence as I typed each of the names. I only wish we did know more about them, but I understand that research is continuing and, hopefully, there will eventually be stories attached to each of these women\u2019s names,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Petrie thanked Janice Shulman and Rabbi Lynn Greenhough for their assistance with the project.<\/p>\n

Prior to beginning her work as an artist, Petrie\u2019s career spanned more than 30 years in radio and television, where she worked as a researcher, producer, documentary-maker, columnist and commentator in news and current affairs. She is also the author of several non-fiction books: Ethnic\u00a0Vancouver, Vancouver Secrets and Gone to an Aunt\u2019s: Remembering Canada\u2019s Homes for Unwed Mothers.<\/em><\/p>\n

After retiring from the CBC, she returned to school and obtained a bachelor of fine arts from the\u00a0Alberta College of Art and Design in 2008. Since then, she has\u00a0had a number of exhibitions. Her next exhibit, said\/unsaid, is a two-person show with Jane Coomb \u2013 it opens at the errant artSpace gallery in Victoria (975 Alston St.) on July 9.<\/p>\n

The other artists whose work is featured in She Also Served are Razieh Alba, Sophia Borowska, Alysa-Beth Engel, Lily Rosenberg, Talie\u00a0Shalmon, Jules Schacter, Bev Tosh and Susan Turner. The representations exploring the servicewomen\u2019s experiences range from naturalistic to abstract. Some works use archival photographs, while others use media include oil painting and paper-cutting.<\/p>\n

The stories of 41 Jewish servicewomen are also featured on the website. These accounts were an impetus for the call for submissions for the exhibition, which was curated by the University of Calgary\u2019s Prof. Jennifer Eiserman and librarian emerita Saundra Lipton. They ask for help in \u201ccompleting the story\u201d from anyone who has more information about the featured servicewomen and any of those identified in the list of names collected.<\/p>\n

To view the exhibition, visit live-ucalgary.ucalgary.ca\/she-also-serves\/exhibition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sam Margolis <\/strong>has written for the <\/em>Globe and Mail, the <\/em>National Post, UPI and MSNBC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne Petrie (photo from Maurice Yacowar) The University of Calgary has organized a virtual exhibition to honour the efforts of Jewish women in the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War. Called She Also Served, it comprises a series of nine banners by various artists. Originally scheduled to be displayed at the Military Museums […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,989],"tags":[20658,2466,3157,54,20660,3189,20659,20015,3021],"class_list":["post-37073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-visual-arts","tag-anne-petrie","tag-art","tag-canada","tag-memorial","tag-military-museums","tag-second-world-war","tag-she-also-served","tag-university-of-calgary","tag-women"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}