The Dollar a Year Men

On Thursday, January 29, Winnipeg historian Allan Levine gave a presentation to the Canadian Aviation Historical Society meeting at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada on his latest book–“The Dollar a Year Men” to about 35 meeting attendees. Senate members Watts and Gerbrandt attended. The topic was about the relatively unknown story of mostly volunteer Canadian business leaders who were recruited during the Second World War to convert Canada’s under-utilized industries into factories that produced war materials, weapons and equipment (for a theoretical salary of a dollar a year). By the end of the war, with a population of only 11.2 million, Canada had not only put 1.1 military personnel into the war effort, but became an industrial powerhouse.