Orangeville woman who served with the Wrens in the Royal Canadian Navy reflects on service

By Sam Odrowski

Orangeville Legion Branch 233 recently received a donation from a local woman who monitored the movement of submarines off Canada's shores with the Royal Canadian Navy in the late 1950s.

Rosalie Bailey-Chidwick, who served with the first Class of Wrens following World War Two, donated her class photo from August 1958, with the assistance of K&G Engraving in Orangeville, on August 13.

The Wrens was a group of women who tracked and identified submarines off the shores of Sandy Point Beach in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. 

“Some subs used to come in under the fishing trawlers, so we would have a hard time identifying them,” Bailey-Chidwick recalled. 

She served from 1958 to 1960 with the Wrens. Her job was photographing and developing pictures from sonar machines to catalogue submarines for surveillance purposes. 

“We had to learn as many engines on submarines as we possibly could while we were training, and then we worked on sonar machines,” Bailey-Chidwick explained. 

She is originally from Grafton and Cobourg, ON., and worked as a bookkeeper and machine operator before joining the Royal Canadian Navy at HMCS York, Toronto Naval Division. 

In September 1958 she was in HMCS Cornwallis in Nova Scotia to complete basic training over eight weeks.

Bailey-Chidwick went from Cornwallis to train at U.S Fleet Sonar School in Key West, Florida.

Her group of Wrens participated in a Remembrance Day Parade there on November 11, 1958.

They were the only women marching in the parade and fittingly won the trophy for the Best Female Military Group.

Bailey-Chidwick graduated, along with her class, after eight weeks of training.

“Then I ended up back in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in December, and my first date with my husband was New Year's Eve,” she recalled. 

At that time, her late husband, Ron Chidwick, was serving at HMCS Shelburne with several members of the U.S. Navy who were manning the base until the Canadian navy took over in late 1958. Ron had previously commissioned the HMCS Ottawa and sailed on this destroyer from November 1956 until he landed in Shelburne in June 1958.

“He ended up in a fight with an American sailor and went back to the base in a paddy wagon – my first date,” Bailey-Chidwick laughed.

The pair got married in February 1960 and spent the following 64 years together until he passed, raising their three children. 

Bailey-Chidwck was honourably discharged from the Navy in May 1960 when she became pregnant with her and Ronald's first child.

They moved to Toronto after Ron got out of the navy in August 1960 and later bought their first house in Malton in 1970. They eventually ended up in Amaranth in 2015. 

The machines Bailey-Chidwick operated for the Wrens were very precise in tracking submarines. 

“We were actually able to tell that the Alderney, an old English sub, had something wrong with her propeller,” Bailey-Chidwick said. “That's how sensitive these machines were.”

HMS Alderney launched in June 1945 through the United Kingdom's Royal Navy and when it came to HMCS Shelburne's shores the Wrens had an opportunity to tour the ship.

“I don't know how the guys ever lived on those subs, because all you could smell was body odour, stinky feet, and diesel,” Bailey-Chidwick said. 

That was in stark contrast to an American submarine that the Wrens got to walk through. 

“We toured an American sub when we were in Key West, and it was like a big floating hotel. It was absolutely beautiful,” Bailey-Chidwick recalled. “Everything was amazing, all nice and clean, and everything smelled nice. They had nice showers.”

The donation of Bailey-Chidwick's class picture with the Wrens to the Orangeville Legion came about as a way of preserving Canadian history and honouring the Wrens' contributions. 

Petra Thomas, owner of K&G Engraving, takes on personalized projects, framing and memorializing family history or significant events.  

When Bailey-Chidwick came in looking to preserve her photo with the Wrens, Thomas framed it for free, with an engraving highlighting the Wrens' contributions, and organized the donation.

Thomas said she feels it's important that the history of the Wrens is remembered, as they played an important role in keeping Canada's shore safe. Especially, at a time when women didn't hold many positions in the Canadian Armed Forces and were still fighting for fair treatment and equality.

All of the technical information on HMCS Shelburne can be found online at military-history.fandom.com/wiki/CFS_Shelburne.