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Girls From Away: The Mill Girls of Hespeler

Join playwrights Bernadine Stapleton & Nicole Smith in conversation with Valerie Spring about the incredible women who inspired their new musical, 'Girls From Away.'

During World War II, hundreds of young, single women were recruited from Central Newfoundland to work at Dominion Woollens in Cambridge, Ontario – which, at the time, was the largest textile mill in the British Empire. By the 1970s, one in four Cambridge residents could trace their roots back to Newfoundland, all because of these women. Playwrights Bernardine Stapleton and Nicole Smith, in collaboration with composers/lyricists Tim Matson and Kiersten Noel of Best Kind Productions, have teamed up to create an original musical based on this incredible true story. 

This event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Spin, Twirl, Twist and Celebration of Women.

Bernardine Ann Teráz Stapleton is a Newfoundland and Labrador artist of unique distinction. She has been a professional theatre artist for forty years. She is the Artistic Director of Girl Power Inc. She is co-artistic director of the Kitchen Party Theatre Festival based in Grand Falls-Windsor. She is the Program Animateur for APTNL’s Thriving Together project. She’s had almost forty plays professionally produced in Canada, including the iconic Offensive to Some, also Woman in a Monkey Cage, Brazil Square, Our Frances, and, a new musical, co-written with Nicole Smith Girls from Away. Her two latest books were just released. Love, Life is available from www.breakwaterbooks.com. Girl Muckle and the Queer Hands is available now from www.problematicpress.com. Bernardine began her lengthy career forty years ago with the Stephenville Theatre Festival. For more about Bernardine visit www.bernardinestapleton.com.

Nicole Leona Smith is a writer, theatre creator, director, and producer. She studied theatre at the University of Guelph and her work as a playwright has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), the Metcalf Foundation, the Shaw Festival, mammalian diving reflex and Canadian Stage. Girls From Away is Nicole’s most recent play-in-progress – a co-creation with Bernardine Stapleton about the hundreds of women who were recruited from Newfoundland to Cambridge during WWII. Nicole's essays and short fiction can be found in The New Quarterly, Textile Magazine, Deathcap, Ember Chasm Review, and others. She has a graduate certificate in creative writing from Humber School for Writers and is currently working on her first novel. Nicole is also co-founder and co-Artistic Director of the Kitchen Party Theatre Festival (KPTF) in Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland. The inaugural season launched virtually in 2020 and is a partnership between Girl Power Inc., the Gordon Pinsent Centre for the Arts, the town of Grand Falls-Windsor and Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). Nicole splits her time between her homes in Cambridge, ON, and St. John’s, NL.

Valerie Spring grew up in Cambridge listening to the story of how her maternal grandparents immigrated from England to find work and found each other at Dominion Woolens. Years later, as a Canadian history student at the University of Waterloo, Valerie interviewed women who worked at Dominion Woolens during the war years. In order to get these interviews however; Valerie had to convince the women their stories needed to be told as they didn't believe anyone would be interested in how they arrived in Hespeler and the work they did at the mill. Valerie also met some of the managers at Dominion Woolens who talked about the recruitment process and the impact these young women had, not only on the operation of the mill, but the entire community. Valerie is thrilled that all these years later there is a new, expanded audience for these stories through the work of Nicole and Berni.

Image courtesy of Hespeler Heritage Centre.

This program is delivered through Zoom. You only need to register once per viewing device.

Cost: Free

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